Rosseau's relevance (?) In modern times

The 18th Century French philosopher Rosseau, wrote among other things, a treatise on education. It is ironical that he abandoned his own children to a foundling home. He stated as his reason that their mother was a seamstress with other children also, who lived with her mother & unsuitable siblings. He did not "wish to entrust the children to a family brought up badly to be still worse educated. He thought a foundling home education may be better."

His thought might strike a sympathetic chord with the older generation, who are "blessed" with children, who though prosperous, increasingly think it is acceptable to park their parents in old age homes. There is a saying that parents look after many children, but when they are grown up, the aforesaid many children find it impossible to look after a single set of parents. Curiously this is not common in Muslim & Jain families.

These find examples in literature also. Shakespeare's King Lear, after his run-in with daughters Goneril & Regan, exclaimed "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child." Balzac's "Pere Goriot" suffered a similar fate with his daughters Anastasie & Delphine.

Modern parents may not be blamed if they think like Rosseau with an additional proviso that a American H-1B visa be thrust into the baby's hand, as the young are obsessed with emigration to "The Land of Milk & Honey."