It seems to me that we're in danger of losing sight of certain basic civic values in society by allowing the growth of a whole generation of people who really have no sense of attachment to society.
There is a fuzzy but real distinction that can and I believe should be made between patriotism which is attachment to a way of life and nationalism which is the insistence that your way of life deserves to rule over other ways of life.
I have a neuroscience background - that's what my doctorate is in - and I was trained to study hormones of attachment so I definitely feel my parenting is informed by that.
I've become sort of an accidental advocate for attachment parenting which is a style of parenting that... basically the way mammals parent and the way people have parented for pretty much all of human history except the last 200 years or so.
Attachment parenting is not a passive parenting style.
If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment or an enlarged egotism.
He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is or very soon will be void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world of character my sense of the future and my attachment to it. I can't imagine what kind of writer I'd be if I didn't have my kids.
There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you except that which he gains by kindness and attachment.