Daily Inspiration Quote by Robin G. Collingwood

Collingwood strips parenthood of its usual sentimental packaging and puts it where a philosopher thinks it belongs: in the realm of choice, obligation, and sustained agency. The line is almost provocatively anti-Instagram. By denying parenthood the status of “appetite” or even “desire,” he’s refusing to treat it as a consumer preference, a lifestyle craving, or a romantic culmination. Appetite is hungry and self-referential; it wants gratification. Parenthood, Collingwood argues, only becomes intelligible as “will” - a deliberate commitment to a project whose rewards are intermittent and whose costs are guaranteed.

The subtext is a quiet rebuke to modern confusion between wanting a baby and wanting what a baby symbolizes: meaning, continuity, adulthood, social approval. “Purpose or intention” pushes the reader toward a harsher metric: are you prepared to do the work when the feeling evaporates? In that frame, love isn’t the prerequisite; responsibility is. He’s also insulating parenthood from the tyranny of mood. Desires spike and crash; wills can be trained, renewed, and held accountable.

Context matters. Writing in the early 20th century, Collingwood is steeped in a tradition that distrusts impulse and treats ethical life as something you make, not something you “feel.” The sentence reads like a preemptive strike against romantic-era authenticity: if you wait for a natural appetite to justify the act, you’ve already misunderstood the act. Parenthood is less a craving than a covenant - not a thing you want, but a thing you decide to become.