forgive me, father and mother

what shameful methods are sometimes practiced to prevent the birth of men, and cheat nature; either by brutal and depraved appetites which insult her most beautiful work --appetites unknown to savages or mere animals, which can spring only from the corrupt imagination of mankind in civilised countries; or by secret abortions, the fitting effects of debauchery and vitiated notions of honour; or by the exposure or murder of multitude of infants, who fall victims to the poverty of their parents, or the cruel shame of their mothers; or, finally, by the mutilation of unhappy wretches, part of whose life, with their hope of posterity, is given up to vain singing or, still worse, the brutal jealousy of other men...

how many young and unhappy victims of their parents' avarice plunge into vice, or pass their melancholy days in tears, groaning in the indissoluble bonds which their hearts repudiate and gold alone has formed! fortunate sometimes are those whose courage and virtue remove them from life before inhuman violence makes them spend it in crime or in despair. forgive me, father and mother, whom i shall ever regret: my complaint embitters your griefs; but would they might be an eternal and terrible example to every one who dares, in the name of nature, to violate her most sacred right.

-jean jacques rousseau on the origin of inequality