The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

otherwise deadens all his emotions.
The basis of the family is, of course, the fact that
parents feel a special kind of affection towards
their own children, different from that which they
feel towards each other or towards other children.
It is true that some parents feel little or no parental
affection, and it is also true that some women are
capable of feeling an affection for children not
their own almost as strong as that which they could
feel for their own. Nevertheless, the broad fact
remains that parental affection is a special kind of
feeling which the normal human being experiences
towards his or her own children, but not towards
any other human being. This emotion is one which
we inherit from our animal ancestors. In this
respect Freud seems to me not sufficiently
biological in his outlook, for anyone who will
observe an animal mother with her young can see
that her behaviour towards them follows an
entirely different pattern from her behaviour
towards the male with whom she has sex relations.
And this same different and instinctive pattern,