‘Since in sober truth things are so ordered that children can only have their being and their lives at the expense of our being and our lives, we ought not to undertake to be fathers if that frightens us.’
‘I condemn all violence in the education of tender minds which are being trained for honour and freedom. In rigour and constraint there is always something servile, and I hold that you will never achieve by force what you cannot achieve by reason, intelligence and skill.’
Michel de Montaigne. ‘On the affection of fathers for their children’. c1580-1590
