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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: children become rivals to their parents. Benefits are allowed by
reproaches, and gratitude debased by envy.
"Parents and children seldom act in concert; each child endeavours
to appropriate the esteem or the fondness of the parents; and the
parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their
children. Thus, some place their confidence in the father and some
in the mother, and by degrees the house is filled with artifices
and feuds.
"The opinions of children and parents, of the young and the old,
are naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope and
despondency, of expectation and experience, without crime or folly
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