Comments on: Children, happiness and other stuff

By: freethinkingeconomist

freethinkingeconomist — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:02:44 +0000

I’m lucky – M is a real daddy’s girl. She even enjoys the Beano, and last night read my copy of Danny the Champion of the World through.

By: tim leunig

tim leunig — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:34:19 +0000

Halfway??? There are many times when J (6.7yrs) prefers the company of her contemporaries to mine.

By: freethinkingeconomist

freethinkingeconomist — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:25:53 +0000

I’m already getting a bit choked about the idea of them leaving. The notion that some day some other person will have a stronger claim on M, F or D’s affections is almost impossible to contemplate – and so unfair, given the investment and heartache sunk there. I warn M (now 7) that she is halfway to the age at which she stops wanting to be seen with me: I hope that if I keep saying this, it will never happen . ..

By: Bill le Breton

Bill le Breton — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:21:07 +0000

It was my daughter’s eighteenth birthday yesterday. This is part of what my son (16) wrote in her card, “I can still remember our own shop in our garage at R, where did childhood go!!” The gamut of feelings this releases is as wide as an ocean. It includes sadness and joy. His, hers, ours. In this statement we are together and apart.

By: freethinkingeconomist

freethinkingeconomist — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:17:16 +0000

Smith was there first on so much.

For me, Tim, the symptom is being able to recite entire scripts of Peppa Pig off by heart.

By: Paul Sagar

Paul Sagar — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:02:57 +0000

Sorry, missed off the first sentence:

“Nature, for the wisest purposes, has rendered, in most men, perhaps in all men, parental tenderness a much stronger affection than filial piety.”

By: Paul Sagar

Paul Sagar — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:02:09 +0000

“The continuance and propagation of the species depend altogether upon the former, and not upon the latter. In ordinary cases, the existence and preservation of the child depend altogether upon the care of the parents. Those of the parents seldom depend upon that of the child. Nature, therefore, has rendered the former affection so strong, that it generally requires not to be excited, but to be moderated; and moralists seldom endeavour to teach us how to indulge, but generally how to restrain our fondness, our excessive attachment, the unjust preference which we are disposed to give to our own children above those of other people. They exhort us, on the contrary, to an affectionate attention to our parents, and to make a proper return to them, in their old age, for the kindness which they had shown to us in our infancy and youth.”

- Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments

By: tim leunig

tim leunig — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:37:59 +0000

You know you’re a parent when you become a premier Butlins member, by dint of the number of times you have been…