Getting Married · Chapter
Large and Small Families explained
This chapter contrasts the social dynamics of large versus small families, arguing that large families provide better social training and resist excessive sentimentality, while small families foster morbid sentimentality.
What happens
This chapter contrasts the social dynamics of large versus small families, arguing that large families provide better social training and resist excessive sentimentality, while small families foster morbid sentimentality. It critiques the decline of large families and the shift from tyranny to sentimentality in parenting, noting the dangers of chronic sentimentality.
Themes in this chapter
Population and Social Consequences
Discusses the social implications of family size, contrasting large families that build community with small families that lead to morbid sentimentality.
Hypocrisy and Social Pretense
Exposes the hidden debauchery behind flogging and sentimentality, critiquing the pretense of innocent parenting practices.
Key passages
“Ten children, with the necessary adults, make a community in which an excess of sentimentality is impossible. Two children make a doll’s house, in which both parents and children become morbid if they keep to themselves.”
A large family of ten children naturally prevents excessive sentimentality, whereas a small family of two children creates an isolated, unhealthy environment.
Highlights the central contrast between large and small families.
“The advocate of flogging as a punishment is now exposed to very disagreeable suspicions; and ever since Rousseau rose to the effort of making a certain very ridiculous confession on the subject, there has been a growing perception that child whipping, even for the children themselves, is not always the innocent and high-minded practice it professes to be.”
Supporters of corporal punishment face uncomfortable scrutiny, as Rousseau's confession revealed that whipping children may be a form of debauchery rather than a virtuous discipline.
Critiques the hidden motives behind traditional punishment.