^{A Choice For Life}
The decision to be selfish or unselfish is not just a choice of the moment but is a fundamental part of character, as it is one of the first, if not the first, value that is formed by the developing mind of a baby. Nature delivers the infant with an incomplete set of values along with the ability to request succour. The history of the results of infantile demands insensibly teaches the first lessons of life, which become the foundation for understanding all other experiences. It is only through this process that the child discovers their importance in relation to others. They learn either their own desires are paramount, or bitter experience reveals the presence of other considerations. And once this sense of importance crystallises, the established value becomes the parent of all other values, and thus controls the understanding of the future adult. The subsequent personality will either be selfish or unselfish, depending upon this early education.

So the mother who drops everything to feed her infant is helping to create a selfish monster who can only view everything as secondary to its own wants, while the mother who enforces a program of feeding that is convenient to the household, is achieving the opposite effect.

^{Baby's Demands Hard To Resist}
Nevertheless it is not easy to resist the demands of babies, because nature has made adults sensitive to the appearance and sound of infants. Children enjoy the ready affections of most people, while many women have a strong desire to indulge and pamper babies; but it is the unrestrained application of such feelings that create immoral humans—selfish people. For unless a baby discovers the need for patience and endurance, the subsequent adult will never accept the need for self-sacrifice, or moral restraint.

^{Inevitable Results Of Undisciplined Upbringing}
Adults who allow their basic desire to pamper children dominate the way they rear their offspring, are placing the baby in control and insensibly teaching:

1. My Feelings Are All Important: The youthful students can only learn that the most important thing in its life is its feelings, because they rule the baby, who rules the household. When the baby cries adults leap into action to relieve the distress, regardless of the reason for the tears. And when the baby smiles, the adults smile.
2. How To Fool Parents: Having learnt how to get a response, the infant will invoke tears whenever it does not get its own way, and reward with a smile whenever it does. The lesson being foisted on developing newly born awareness is that their guardians can be manipulated by clever use of tears and smiles, so the way to get on is to display these emotions as required. Unless the adult imposes a regime immune to infantile demonstrations, the feelings of the child, not the reason of the adult, is what matters, regardless of the apparent power and wisdom of the adult. It cannot do otherwise because the controlling forces are its desires, which are only restrained by the adult's reactions to their demands, which in turn must also teach:
   • Disrespect For Authority: Allowing children to manipulate their parents throughout childhood can only teach the developing citizen that authority, with its restrictions and laws, is nothing but hot air that can be safely flouted by emotional appeal.
   • Truth Is Unimportant: By failing to enforce a fixed set of rules and allowing the child to avoid punishment despite fault, the lesson must be that truth (what actually happened) is unimportant compared to the subsequent emotional reaction of others.

   (see the examples of the law acting like an indulgent parent)

No code of self-restraint can be installed by this method of child rearing, only the opposite. The resultant adult must be immoral, an individual bent only upon selfish ends which are won by feigned emotional responses, regardless of the inevitable denial of truth.

^{Fathers Exercise Better Control Than Mothers}
And it should be noted that in the exercise of rearing children, the father has two advantages over the mother:

• Being larger and more aggressive the male finds it easier to invoke fear hence respect for his authority, and so finds it easier to enforce discipline.
• The male is less vulnerable than the female to the demands of babies, and so finds it easier to resist infantile manipulation.

^{We All Like To Be Thought Unselfish}
At a more mature stage in life many selfish people may wish to be thought unselfish, but this springs from self-seeking motives and is part of being self-centred. For well before the age of reason has been reached, this question has been irrevocably decided by childhood.

^{Decision Made By Upbringing}
The decision to be moral or immoral is not a conscious decision but is resolved in early childhood before awareness has properly developed. So unless unselfishness is imbued during infancy by enforcing a code of discipline, the subsequent adult must become selfish, and thus immoral.