For the Sake of the Children

子供の為に (kodomo no tame ni): for the sake of the children. 子供 kodomo is a child or the children, one or many; の為に no tame ni is for the sake of, the purposive sense with the older sense of benefit behind it; the verb is left off, as in the English, and what one does for them is the reader's. Japanese drops the possessor, so the line holds my children and our children at once. It is older than a buyer would guess: a mother in a Chikamatsu play of 1718 feigns illness for her children's sake, and the 1891 translation of Little Lord Fauntleroy gives the words to Cedric's mother.