The Free Family

Romantic love is very important to the individualist, because he will not settle for anything less than the one who is the embodiment of all he values, but when he (or she) does love, his love is all consuming and all the rest of his life revolves about that one who is the realization of all he values and lives for.

The desire for children, the creation of life that only their love makes possible, is the normal desire of those truly in love, and children will always be part of that relationship. Not desiring and having children is exceptional.

The highest value to the independent individualist is the family that his values and love make possible, and it becomes the concretization of all his values—the highest possible manifestation of his success and achievement.

The independent individualist’s children are an extension of himself and the product of his love. They rank second in the priority of all things that are valuable to him. His wife (or husband) is first, of course, as the embodiment of all his values and that for which life is worth living, then his children because they are the product of that love.

Children And Freedom

I think some individualists allow themselves to be influenced by some common mistaken ideas about children that prevent them from making choices and taking action required for their own freedom. But freedom is an absolute necessity to raising children.

Children do not belong to the state and they do not belong to society. In one sense they do not even belong to their parents. They are free individuals, but very ignorant undeveloped individuals, requiring the loving care and nurture of their parents, which it is natural for the parents to desire to give them. (That “giving” is not charity, it is for the parent’s pleasure and their joy to do so.)

In addition to providing their physical requirements for food, clothing, and shelter, the most important part of a child’s nurturing is providing them with character and knowledge building tools and environment that will enable them to develop into responsible, self-reliant, independent, mature adults.

Parents who are not free are certainly not going to be able to adequately provide either the physical, or more important non-physical nurturing loving parents will desire for their children. The whole subject of families, children, and freedom, is a very large one, and this can only be, at best, an introduction. Many more articles on these subjects are planned, both here, in the Free Individual, and in the Independent Individualist.

In the meantime, please consider the following articles additional introduction to this subject:

If You Spank Him, He Will Not Die, which introduces the importance and nature of discipline in raising children.

Education and Children, which discusses some general principles of education and children, especially homeschooling.

Our Prussian “Public” Schools, which describes the source of the Prussian model in education and it’s destructive intentions and disastrous results affecting American society and culture, and why the free individual must never allow their children to be forced into that system.