As many true-crime stories evince, it is not the case that all parents love their children; indeed, some outright murder them. But the majority of parents worldwide still presumably have unconditional love for their biological offspring.
So (as a so-far childless Doper) I would like to ask the Doper parents here what you would guesstimate to be the rough percentage of parents in the world who actually, do, feel the strong unconditional love for their children that is associated with parenthood - 70 percent? 85 percent? Are there many parents out there who actually don’t love their kids but feel obligated to go through the motions and say things like “I love you” even if they don’t?
As mean as I was as a teenager, if my parents didn’t truly love me, I don’t know if they’d have put up with my shit. (Data point: I, myself, am not a parent.)
Love is so individual. Do I love my kid more if I donate a kidney or help with homework. Can love even be measured like that? I’m not sure it can be. I see so, so many kids around here ( the south) that are neglected and in need of adult guidance. Are they less loved or the victim of a fast paced world with busy working parents? My kids will tell you I was a helicopter mom. Did I love them more than the parent who couldn’t volunteer at school? I don’t think so. I just loved differently. I needed to be close to where they were, alot. Probably too much. That says more about me. Again, it’s so individual.
I don’t think you can show hard percentages, because everyone has a differing scale and definition of ‘love’
I don’t think this is an either/or question. It’s a matter of degree, and even a one-dimensional scale is a huge simplification.
I would say the vast majority of parents do not love their children unconditionally. Its a continuum going from sociopathic selfishness to christlike unconditional love and parents fall on the spectrum, with a small % on the extremes of both ends.
I would assume neither narcissists or sociopaths truly love their children. They may love what their children represent, but they don’t love the individual underneath the shell. So just from that you’d assume 5-10% of parents don’t actually love their kids. Then there are all the parents who got trapped into being parents, the emotionally damaged who can’t love, etc.
34.78%
From what I’ve seen of the True Crime genre, it’s the children who murder the parents mostly.
But as far as child abuse goes, ehh, I’d say a fair ninety percent truly love their offspring. It’s just so frickin’ hard sometimes.
Call me a dumb idealist but I would say like 95%. Many people are terrible parents who love their children but just don’t know how to properly parent or demonstrate the love that they have.
I know I’ll catch hell but I believe it’s true.
These aren’t exclusive. My father made arrangements to murder me shortly before he took his own life, though the plan got interrupted. Although he’s not here to ask, and there’s guesswork involved, I interpret his attempt as a gesture of love. Suicides will sometimes attempt to take their loved ones with them, helping them escape from a world perceived as unbearable.
Love is a pretty hard thing to pin down, sometimes.
“Unconditional love?” If one of my kids turned out to be a serial killer or something like that, I would find it hard to still love them.
And there’s a whole lot of parents out there who feel, “I love my kids, but I wonder what my life would be like if I hadn’t had them”
There’s only one person I ever knew who flat out admitted that here kids were nice, and she’d never do anything to hurt them, but she had absolutely no maternal feelings, wished her father had stepped up and taken them, and wouldn’t much care if they never talked to her again after they moved out. Yes, the kids were just as nice as she said, and just as screwed up as you can imagine.
It’s possible to love someone and abuse them. Even murder them. So I’m gonna guess that even parents who do really terrible things to their kids still feel something akin to love for them.
That’s why I think we’ve given way too much value to love as an emotion. Its existence isn’t an indicator a good person or relationship.
Thanks for posting! I was going to post somewhere in the 90%s but was too afraid!
I sure love my children. I don’t always like them, but I always love them.
That’s always been an interesting take to me. As a 7 year old, I came to the conclusion that liking must come before loving. If I don’t even like a person, how could I ever love them? They’ve already proven to me that they don’t have likable qualities, much less lovable ones. Apparently I gave up on the concept of unconditional love. My mindset may have been shaped by trying to understand and separate myself from abuse, though.
I agree that 95% seems right. I also agree that outside forces, not necessarily a lack of love, can lead to abuse. And, there are people who have truly horrible humans as their children and still manage to love them. Love is complicated.
My father was so horribly twisted as a person that I really doubt he was capable of loving anyone. It wasn’t just that he abused everyone, it also that he was narcissistic enough that he often couldn’t tell the difference between how others could feel and what he was feeling.
My mother suffered from depression and PTSD such that even though she loved us, she was powerless to help.
She checked out of providing emotional support to us when I was eight or so.
It’s been interesting on trying to learn how to be a good parent with no role models.
I don’t think the question matters. Plenty of parents hurt their choked through abuse or neglect despite loving them.
The more relevant question is if the parent provides love AND emotional security for the child.
I would say the percentage of parents who love their kids is relatively high - may be as high as 80%, according to the information just pulled from my ass.
I would also say the percentage of parents who love their kids unconditionally is relatively low - 20% at most, according to the same unimpeachable source.
I love my daughter. Tons. More than anyone in the world.
If she kills her mom in a drug-fueled rage after 4 years of fighting her substance abuse problems*, then… well, not too sure how much I could love her after that.
*Hypothetical!
That is a pretty universal thing among children. Kids have an underdeveloped sense of these things, and perceive “love” as an extreme form of “like.” It’s obvious, though, that not is it that simply not the case, but that “love” can be applied to several types of very different emotions. The Greeks of course had different words for them; eros, storge, philia, and more.
I saw a very interesting documentary about the family of a teenage rapist/murderer. Really not the redeemable kind. These parents didn’t stop loving him.
And I suspect that would hold true for most parents who love their children. They’re still exactly the same child after the crime is disclosed than before (I suspect you might be picturing your hypothetical murderous child as someone completely different and horrible instead of exactly the same kid as before except that you now know he’s a murderer), so I don’t think the love button can be switched so easily.
Maybe for my wife, but my family has a long and vivid history of holding grudges against each other. I won’t claim to be above that urge myself.