In the ideal household of father and mother and adult children, the one
great aim of the parents ought to be to supply, as far as possible to each
child, that freedom and independence which they have missed the
opportunity of securing in homes of their own. The loss of this one thing
alone is a bitterer drop in the loneliness of many an unmarried woman than
parents, especially fathers, are apt even to dream,--food and clothes and
lodgings are so exalted in unthinking estimates. To be without them would
be distressingly inconvenient, no doubt; but one can have luxurious
provision of both and remain very wretched. Even the body itself cannot
thrive if it has no more than these three pottage messes! Freedom to come,
go, speak, work, play,--in short, to be one's self,--is to the body more
than meat and gold, and to the soul the whole of life.
Just so far as any parent interferes with this freedom of adult children,
even in the little things of a single day or a single hour, just so far it
is tyranny, and the children are wronged.
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