Parenting & Family Quote by Hesiod

Parenthood, for Hesiod, isn’t a soft-focus blessing; it’s a long-term liability that can colonize the soul. The line turns “mischievous children” into a permanent weather system: once they arrive, grief isn’t an episode but an atmosphere, “unending” and lodged in “spirit and heart.” That doubling matters. He’s not just describing sorrow as a feeling; he’s describing it as damage to a person’s inner governance, the part that’s supposed to keep a household and a life in order.

The intent is practical and moral, not merely sentimental. Hesiod writes in a world where family isn’t a private lifestyle choice but an economic unit and a reputational machine. A child’s misbehavior can cost you labor, inheritance stability, alliances, standing with neighbors, even favor with the gods. “Whoever happens to” signals the grim role of fortune: you can farm correctly, sacrifice correctly, plan correctly, and still roll the bad dice of offspring. That’s the subtext of anxious contingency in early Greek life, where fate and everyday work are always wrestling.

“Mischievous” here isn’t cute. It’s closer to disorderly, willful, the kind of character that corrodes the household from within. Hesiod’s voice has the clipped authority of someone offering hard-earned counsel: the world is already punishing; don’t underestimate how thoroughly your own children can become one more instrument of it.