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Originally Posted by boost
A couple points:
1. I think being brought up in a loving and stable household is by far the exception, not the rule.
As long as it gets you safely and sanely into adulthood, it should be good enough. In that respect I'd argue that it is the norm.
2. I think you are willfully misinterpreting wuf's post, so as to avoid contemplating that your unconditional love may be anything but selfless. Most parents probably do think that they unconditionally love their children, and most parents probably do. But this is in no way in contrast to wuf's assertion that it is a vicarious love. I would think it would be clear that this is not a conscious distinction in the parents mind. Vicarious and unconditional are not in any way mutually exclusive here.
There probably is a degree of vicariousness but I'd still argue it's a relatively minor point even with the assumption that a mother's love is completely selfless.
I'm using specifically mother's love here because based on real-world observation I simply feel that on average it is stronger. There are probably many reasons for this including the caregiving nature of women and
not violating the simple psychological principle of cognitive dissonance (If I'm going to be carrying this thing for the better part of a year, it damn well better be worth it!)
But certainly nothing I wrote above *at all* conflicts with what Bode said about his child.
3. Suppose it was the case that parental love was a vicarious love, and therefore a selfish type of love. Would this make parents bad people? Hardly. It would simply be an interesting facet in the workings of the mind.
I agree.
4. This part of the discussion is sort of analogous to an atheist proposing that religion has a net negative effect on society. The religious person believes so strongly that their faith is a positive thing that they auto-reject a completely reasonable hypothesis.
I see little reason to bring religion into the argument from your perspective. It's not as if anyone has claimed that a parent's love is a divine gift or something of the sort. Besides, who has the better vantage point to assess a parent's love for their child- those with kids or those without? I'd argue the former.
5. First hand emotional anecdotes are pretty much useless. What you feel, especially concerning a highly emotional subject, simply has no bearing on what is.
Generally speaking, I think this is usually right. Although I wouldn't say it has 'no' bearing, rather that when you are emotionally invested into a situation you tend to be highly biased and it's very possible that you'd come to a different conclusion if you were a neutral bystander.
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Also, before it seems like I'm taking sides, I still think it's pretty obvious that this is just a byproduct of natural selection. It's not too terribly unlike why women prefer tall men. It makes very little sense in 2011 why women would so strongly prefer tall men but clearly in our evolutionary history height had both physical and social advantages. So women are naturally hard-wired to like tall men. It is what it is. I'd argue that the effect is much stronger when talking about love for their children. It's just such a huge evolutionary advantage to have parents (and again, especially the mother) who love and care for you, even if it would be virtually impossible to directly and logically explain right now why that should be the case.
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