When the family circle prepares the younger members for mature life, it does its duty. But when it sets itself up as the supreme value of human existence and its loyalties or attachments as the supreme forms of human ethics, it overdoes duty and breeds evils. It stifles individual growth and crushes independent thought. It is nothing more than enlarged self-centeredness. It turns a means into an end. Thus the influence of a useful institution, if over-emphasized, becomes unhealthy and vicious. Parents who refuse to release their children, even when the latter are fully adult, who constantly fuss around them with over-solicitousness and hover around with over-protectiveness, belong to the patriarchal age. They stifle the children's development, breed the daughter-in-law's or the son-in-law's resentment, and fill their own minds with unnecessary anxieties.
-- Notebooks Category 6: Emotions and Ethics > Chapter 2 : Re-Educate Feelings > # 202
