The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
Interpretation
The father's role in a modern family has diminished, especially if he prioritizes leisure activities like golf.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell critiques the evolving dynamics of modern suburban families, suggesting that the father's traditional role has become less significant. He implies that indulgences such as golf can further marginalize a father's presence and impact within the family structure, indicating a shift in priorities and responsibilities that may affect familial relationships.
In practice
In a discussion about parenting roles, one might mention Russell's quote to highlight changing family dynamics.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
Never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's.
Fortunately for me, I had a father who didn't let us get away with anything. You were taught respect, and you were taught to be humble. That has a lot to do with how I am now, because I'm still scared of my dad.
If you've never wept and want to, have a child.
No parent should have their child die before he or she does.
Asking me to describe my son is like asking me to hold the ocean in a paper cup
Family life got better and we got our car back - as soon as we put 'I love Mom' on the license plate.
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