Most mothers would say they would jump in front of a bullet for their children and we are always taught parents have a strong protective instinct. How true is this? How does it work?
One memory has stayed with me since I was 9.
My mother has a real fear birds, a proper phobia. When I was 9 I was walking with her side by side down country path, my older brother and sister a little way behind us. A swan crossed onto our path ahead of us and started hissing, this is where my mother, screaming in panic runs to jump over a shallow 'ditch' onto another path away from the Swan without me. My older brother and sister further back did the same and joined her and I just remember being so terrified from seeing how scared my mum was that I ended up just freezing and crying and panicking where I stood.
My mum would not come and get me, she just stood there shouting making me more scared until I eventually moved and joined them.
This left me with a long standing feeling of abandonment and lack of care or protection from her. I think sometimes maybe I am too harsh to judge her for that. I've been thinking about this incident a lot lately.
A swan can still do some real damage anyway but her bird phobia would have perceived it as a real serious danger, so I imagine if it was a man with a gun or something that would have been her instinctual reaction.
So what is a mother's protective instincts? Is there real psychology behind it? Would any other mother have gone back to grab their child? Or is it all a myth and I've been looking through rose tinted glasses at how I'd expect people to act?
**TL/DR - my birdphobic mother once ran away from an aggressive swan leaving me alone at 9 in its path petrified, would the normal reaction of a mother be to protect or is this actually normal