And though
this proposition may seem highly questionable at first sight to
those who imagine that only parents spoil children, yet those who
realize that children are as often spoilt by severity and coldness
as by indulgence, and that the notion that natural parents are any
worse than adopted parents is probably as complete an illusion as
the notion that they are any better, see no serious likelihood
that State action will detach children from their parents more
than it does at present: nay, it is even likely that the present
system of taking the children out of the parents' hands and having
the parental duty performed by officials, will, as poverty and
ignorance become the exception instead of the rule, give way to
the system of simply requiring certain results, beginning with the
baby's weight and ending perhaps with some sort of practical arts
degree, but leaving parents and children to achieve the results as
they best may. Such freedom is, of course, impossible in our
present poverty-stricken circumstances. As long as the masses of
our people are too poor to be good parents or good anything else
except beasts of burden, it is no use requiring much more from
them but hewing of wood and drawing of water: whatever is to be
done must be done FOR them mostly, alas! by people whose
superiority is merely technical.
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