It has been said, and by no less a luminary than Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that ‘man is born free’ … but that, I have to say, without wishing to drag in the rest of the quote, is manifestly untrue. The newborn child remains umbilically tied to its mother and, even after severance, remains directly dependent on her for several months and even years. One is not born free; one is born into maternal slavery, or dependence on one’s mother, and only gradually becomes free or, at any rate, freer, eventually going one’s separate way as a young adult individual who may or may not end up ‘in chains’ to a particular woman, having passed through sexual freedom or experimentation en route to familial responsibility and accountability, only to glory in the sight of somebody else – namely one’s offspring – even more enslaved than oneself.
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