Why do we love our children so much

[Sonetimeswishiwasadog]

Sounds stupid, but not trying to be.

I adore my parents obviously and love my Dh and friends, but the child love is just so strong and intense. Is it because we carried them/they’re our dna? This doesn’t explain parents with adopted children and obviously the same love they have for them. Is it because we nurtured them, they were small and helpless?
I honestly think I could forgive my Dd anything and wouldn’t say that for anyone else, not even my parents

The non-DNA thing is interesting. I’m an adoptive parent and I love my kids to the depths of my soul and in my bones. I’d take a bullet for them. I can’t think of any other ways to put it without resorting to other clichés.

It’s a really good discussion. I’ll come back to it when I’ve thought more.

@Rainallnight See, this is what fascinates me too, so it can’t be purely biological.

Let's just get it out the way, Not everyone loves their kids, some people ar shits..

But on the whole, a regular mum at the school gates etc. I honestly think brains are wired to put offspring at the top of the priority list. .I know society has shifted priorities these days, but for millennia before the modern world, pare TS would die for their kids, feed their kids before they ate themselves, worked themselves to death to provide for their kids etc. That doesn't happen by accident and it's reflected in the a inal kingdom. Even a cow will fuck you up if you threaten their calf.

Whatever it's called, I think it's just how the brain works to ensure survival of the next generation.

But it's not just parents either. Massively generalising but if, for example, a gun wielding maniac burst into a crowded shopping centre, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the adults did everything they could to protect the children. That's where instincts come in.

So parents brains hardwired to prioritise offspring to ensure survival. And adults instinctively protecting and caring for the vulnerable and defenceless.

It's a shame that not everyone is built this way really. Pedophilia, abuse, child murder etc, they wouldn't be a thing.

The person you quoted @Rainallnight

See now I don't know if they'll agree or if this might be offensive to someone but..

Adoptive parents, speaking as an utter imbecile that I am, adoptive parents are parents.. I reckon that whatever reaction it is that sees a new.mum or dad's brain alter when they hold their newborn etc I reckon adoptive parents have that alteration already..

Let's say that there's a big old switch in the brain that's called 'parent'
Some people are natural parents and that switch is flicked from birth. Some people have a kid and that switch gets flicked. Some people that switch never gets flicked. I reckon adoptive parents have that switch flicked and it's what drives them and makes them dedicated to becoming an adoptive parent.

But like I say, I'm an imbecile, so it might all be bollocks...
.but if adoptive parents didn't have that switch flicked, the hoops they have to jump through? Well they'd give up and get a labradoodle.

It’s Nature’s way of making sure that we nurture and look after them as well as we can, and so ensuring the survival of the species.

Doesn’t work with everybody, of course, nor with every animal. But a pretty good percentage, I would think.

When they're little they're designed by nature to be physically appealing, cute smiles, big eyes, which helps. We have lots of physical contact with them which produces feelings of wellbeing.
They're also innocent so even when they do things that would hurt or annoy us, we can excuse them. They're dependent, and there's a huge cross over between being needed and feeling love. We're biologically programmed and socially conditioned as adults to care for the young and we often call this urge love. And the day to day proximity of having them in our lives creates a strong bonds of familiarity.
Loads of reasons!

Its an overwhelming love, too much at times. I have a child free friend that asked me about having kids, effect on me, etc and I said had I known the absolute fear I have of losing my children before I got pregnant, I am not sure I would have had them.
There are times I lie in bed in a cold sweat thinking of the 14 million bad things that could happen to them and I have to stop myself or I would go mad. My DS12 is also very very attached to me and I honestly worry so much that I would die and leave him utterly devastated.
He actually argues with me about how he loves me more, I can see it in him that he is overawed with his love for me - its all crazy!!

I know an adoptive parent who didnt count her adoptive child in with her natural ones after she had them - been led to believe she was infertile incorrectly - not much of a mum IMHO..

It’s the most basic instinct to keep the human race going. Obviously some people don’t have this instinct but the majority do.

I feel the same and often catch myself getting into a negative spiral about how my DC would cope if I died or how I'd cope if they died. It's horrible and underlies a lot of my anxiety about life and especially if any of us have health issues.

Let's just get it out the way, Not everyone loves their kids, some people ar shits..

@PurpleMonkeys - I'm not sure it's as black and white as that. I love my DC, I'm as good a parent as I can be, but I can't relate to the types of feelings described in the OP. I don't think I've ever experienced feeling that type of love for anyone, my DC included.

I have birth and adoptive children. For me the love for my birth children takes precedence over the love for my adoptive children. Do I let that show?. Not if I can help it.

I’m an adoptive parent too and what you are saying completely resonates with me - the total all encompassing love I have for my child and everything that goes with it that others have described. My question is though…how do you know it is all the same and we all are broadly talking about the same feelings for our children?

Two adoptive parents who have birth children as well as adoptive children described the love they have for their adopted children being different to the love they have for their birth children. The shocking thing for both mothers was the love they had for their adopted children early on was more intense and deeper. They described the extreme vulnerability of their adopted children and hell they had already been through and survived creating a love and protectiveness that just hadn’t been there with their birth children. Happily as each family grew together it all evened out but in trying to answer your question, I wonder whether we all (or most of us) experience the intensity and think it is for the same reason that we are parents but actually it’s all very different and comes from a beautiful mix of our life experience, pregnancy, love for the other parent and our children’s experience.

I don’t know but I’m grateful for it. I’d be interested in grandparents experiences too.

I really lhope this hasn’t upset anyone. I’m just glad we all love our kids so much.

Interesting discussion. I do not have children, but I have nieces and nephews. I would be willing to die for my biological nieces and nephews, have felt that since day 1, still worry about what may befall them.

I don’t feel as strongly about DH’s family. I am not as close to their parents though, and that may be it. But I do my best to appear to treat them all equally.

'I do not have children, but I have nieces and nephews'

Same, no children but one nephew. I feel very protective of him, love spending time with him, hate thinking of him being ill or in pain, really feel strongly about him thriving and learning. I can imagine that all those feeling would be so much more intense if he was my own child and my responsibility

I think this is really interesting in terms of ‘what is the chemical cocktail we call love?’ My love for my children isn’t, to my knowledge, less strong or complete than anyone else’s, but it isn’t how you describe it. Worry and fear have a function in it (so I don’t let them fall down the stairs that often) but aren’t a major part of it. My husband’s love for them is definitely more like yours.

@Dandydodandy
“I don’t know but I’m grateful for it. I’d be interested in grandparents experiences too.”

As the grandmother of a 19month old, I can’t get over how protective of him I am. I’m not an interfering MIL, but I cannot believe the love I have for him. I thought that kind of love was reserved just for my children, so this has blown me away. He’s really loveable and “smiley”, a little rogue at times, and I think he totally reflects my son and daughter-in-law’s relaxed personalities. They are fantastic with him, he’s surrounded with love and thriving on it.

Some of it must be sheer instinct. The majority of mothers in the world want to care for and look after their babies.
I include animal mums too. And nobody tells them how to feed their babies, they just do, they just know puppies, cubs, baby monkeys need milk, baby birds need mushed up worms etc etc.

But the majority of Dad, not all animal Dads, will hang around and not leave it all to mum. Penguin Dads are awesome.

Do it can't just be to do with giving birth, their must be something that kicks off in Dads and adoptive parents that makes them want to care for their young.

Not everyone feels like that though. So it's not a genetic trait.

My father abandoned.me. My mother was abusive.

When I look at people who had loving parents and people who had abusive parents, what I see is usually:

The loving parents are people who are doing well in life. People who were loved themselves

The abusive parents are people who either had abusive parents themselves, or are suffering in life.

A lot of parents are cruel to their own children.

Yeah I was gonna say that I think what distinguishes it from the love of others is this incomparable need to protect them. My baby was so fragile when she was born and it was at those moments when that thought crossed my mind which coincided with that overwhelming, terrifying love you feel deep in your bones.

Genes are selfish and want to replicate. And human infants are born so intensely dependent, because of the trade-off between infant skull size and adult pelvis size, and take so long to reach functional independence, that the only way those genes are going to survive into the next generation is if the adults are intensely primed to care and sacrifice for the infants. So that's what got selected for, for millions of years, because if adults didn't give a shit the progress of the genes through the generations pretty much collapsed then and there.

It's not a flawless process, obviously, but the whys are pretty straightforward.

Oxytocin

I think the love most people have for their children is so indescribable. I think part of it is the biological need to protect them, to keep the species going. Most animals protect their young for a certain amount of time then they go off into the world and they never see them again. For most of us the thought of never seeing our children again makes us sick.

When our children are born and until they are older they need us to survive but I honestly don’t know how I would go on if god forbid anything ever happened to my children, so to some extent do the roles reverse and we need them? They’ll never love us as much as we love them.

The day my first child was born I was sitting holding the baby and my dad was there and he said, do you see how much I love you now? And in that moment I totally got it

Why do do many mothers abuse and harm their own children then?

Not all parents are like this though are they, my mother being a prime example of a worthless waste of space.

But yes, most parents are like this. When I had eclampsia with my eldest I begged them to deliver him and deal with me afterwards. I just wanted him safe. But they said it didn't work like that and I came first.

I would even go so far as to say I would help other people's kids in a dangerous situation if it meant they would live.

Maybe it's just the fact they are kids. We just happen to feel it stronger for our own, whether biological or adopted