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

any real reason why parents should derive less
happiness from their children than they did in
former times, although undoubtedly this is the case
at present. Nor do I think that there is any reason
why parents should fail to increase the happiness
of their children. But this requires, as do all those
equal relationships at which the modern world
aims, a certain delicacy and tenderness, a certain
reverence for another personality, which are by no
means encouraged by the pugnacity of ordinary
life. Let us consider the happiness of parenthood,
first in its biological essence, and then as it may
become in a parent inspired by that kind of attitude
towards other personalities which we have been
suggesting as essential to a world that believes in
equality.
* gaoler = jailer /
The primitive root of the pleasure of parenthood is
twofold. On the one hand there is the feeling of
part of one’s own body externalised, prolonging its
life beyond the death of the rest of one’s body, and