Obvious as these considerations may well seem to be, the logical carrying out of the conclusions to which they point is often far from easy. In practice it is often as hard for parents to wean themselves from their primitive attitude towards their children, as it is for the children themselves to acquire the necessary mental and moral independence of their parents. The intense and profound emotions stirred up in the parent by his relation to the child are not readily displaced into any other channel, and fixation at a level only suited to the early stages of the filio-parental relation may easily result. The consequent struggle of the parent to keep possession of the child gives rise to some of the most serious and tragic problems of family life. It is one of the chief causes of the friction that so often exists between the older and younger generations of the same family; it tends, as we have seen, to hamper the mental and moral development of children and to foster in them psychical conflicts which may produce permanently evil effects upon their character: in the parents themselves it often favours selfishness and real disregard for the children's welfare, under the guise of altruistic tenderness and care; and finally it causes much unhappiness to the parents when, as inevitably happens to some extent, they observe that, in spite of all their efforts, their children are in one manner or another drifting from them, as by coming under the influence of friends who are outside the circle of the parents' acquaintance, by the adoption of habits, interests or careers that are opposed to family tradition, or by marriage to persons who to the parents' eyes appear to be unsuitable[214]. [Sidenote: The attitude of parents to the marriage of their children]