Parenting & Family Quote by Evelyn Waugh

Cruelty dressed as civility is Waugh's native tongue, and this line lands like a grin you don't quite trust. The first clause sets up the sort of confession you expect to be tender: a parent admitting to a problematic favorite. Then Waugh snaps the emotional steering wheel. The supposed moral progress - affection waning - doesn't mature into balance or humility. It metastasizes into democracy-by-contempt: the household as a parody of liberal fairness, where equality is achieved not through love but through evenly distributed dislike.

The intent is less about parenting than about puncturing a certain sentimental mythology: that family automatically ennobles, that time softens people, that self-awareness equals improvement. Waugh, a Catholic convert and a professional anatomist of social pretension, is allergic to those consolations. His wit works because it weaponizes the language of virtue ("equally") while confessing to a vice ("despise") with almost bureaucratic neatness. It's an ethical ledger entry.

Subtext: favoritism isn't the real scandal. The scandal is the narrator's inability (or refusal) to feel in the approved way at all, and the pleasure taken in announcing it. Waugh's world is full of institutions - marriage, class, religion - that are supposed to discipline the self; here, the self shows up proudly undisciplined.

Context matters: Waugh's letters and fiction are riddled with this kind of deadpan misanthropy, often aimed at the modern habit of demanding emotional authenticity on command. He doesn't offer warmth; he offers a raised eyebrow, reminding you that "family values" can be just another performance - with better costumes and sharper knives.