Fathers, Children, and the Art of Letting Go — The Essays of Montaigne

Montaigne dedicates this essay to Madame D'Estissac, praising her maternal constancy through widowhood, sharp difficulties, and the promise of her son, promising the boy a written account of her care if these papers reach him after Montaigne is mute.

If any law is natural, parental care ranks just after self-preservation, though children's return is weaker because nature seeks succession more than gratitude.

Parents who confer benefits love more than children return, Aristotle says, because giving is honest action while receiving is merely useful; children owe less because nature aims at succession, not gratitude. Reason should conduct inclination: Montaigne will not dandle infants he cannot esteem, preferring affection that grows with knowledge, though many fathers dote on childish games and stint real support later.

It is cruelty not to share goods and domestic counsel when children can use them; old men amassing treasure in a chimney corner steal sons' best years and drive them to dishonourable shifts, while jealousy at children enjoying the world they will leave makes fathers niggardly. Montaigne knew thieves made by paternal avarice, including a gentleman trapped stealing rings after an upbringing of severity; he condemns rod education as servile, having whipped his own children scarcely twice, and cites Terence that rule by force is less stable than rule by friendship.

He married at thirty-three, following Aristotle and Plato on late marriage, Thales on timing, and ancient Gauls who delayed sex for courage; a gentleman of thirty should not yield all place to a son of twenty, yet a worn father should strip himself like Charles V resigning grandeur to his heir.

Old misers are cheated by households they rule through need alone; keys stay in pocket while wine and kitchen leak away, and scarecrow severity in decrepitude wins mockery not obedience. Montluc mourned that grim masks kept his son from knowing love; Montaigne reformed the custom forbidding children to say father and urges familiar kindness over cold state.

He would resign use of house and goods while keeping revocable authority, stay near but not suffocate, and advised an old widower to give his main house to his son and retire nearby with profit to both, unlike a dean of St Hilary who had not stepped out of his room for two and twenty years. Wives cross husbands, children cabal, and Cato warned many servants are many enemies; old blindness invites cheating, so Montaigne accepts he is fit to be cheated and values friends over civil ties, opening himself to family as he did to La Boetie.

Do we want children to love us while we remove every cause of esteem and keep them at a tyrannical distance, though no wicked wish has reason? Muley Hassan reproached his father for effeminacy; ancient Gauls kept sons from public company with fathers until they bore arms; Montaigne married late so age would not be confounded with a child's, and tells old men hoarding for authority they mistake physic for prevention.

A father known only through need of his purse is not truly loved; ashes of a worthy life still command reverence, and affection should be trained by reason and sweetness, not rods and necessity.

Wills should follow national custom rather than rash private fancy; mothers should be provided for yet not govern sons' estates after death when judgment should pass to men, and sons should not let mothers fall into indigence. Plato's legislator tells dying citizens they are not their own to bequeath at whim; France excludes women from the crown for fear of capricious succession.

Natural affection is weak: nurses, goats, and foster customs show love can transfer, and countrywomen call goats to suckle infants; Montaigne argues nobler second selves come from mind and craft, for what we engender by understanding costs more and represents us more vividly.

Labienus walled himself alive when his books burned; Cassius Severus wished his memory burned too; Cordus fasted to death when his histories were condemned; Lucan recited Pharsalia while bleeding out. Heliodorus chose a daughter over a bishopric; poets would rather father the Aeneid than Rome's handsomest youth; Epaminondas left two victories as daughters; Epicurus preferred his writings, and Augustine would rather bury children than his books. Pygmalion's statue softens under his hand; Phidias would guard a rare statue before natural children. Montaigne would rather beget a beautiful book through the Muses than a handsome child by his wife, gives his writings absolutely as to bodily offspring, and closes that the poet, says Aristotle, is fondest of his work; minds leave the truer portrait behind.