There are families in which the father will say to his child, “You’ll get a thick ear if you do that again,” while the mother, her eyes brimming over with tears, will take the child to her arms and murmur lovingly, “Now, darling, is it kind to Mummy to do that?” And who would maintain that the second method is less tyrannous than the first?

George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]

Essay (1947-03), “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool,” Polemic Magazine, No. 7
    (Source)

Collected in Inside the Whale, and Other Essays (1962).