It seems like a specious question at best, but I've found a hell of a lot more depth to it than I would have expected. Women (almost universally) and Men (past a certain age, when the half-sexual/half-violent torrents of puberty and machismo behaviour have passed) both feel the siren call of the newly-minted of our species. We are drawn, and for me (at least) the draw is part seduction and part repulsion. Not because the child (whatever child, whatever baby exists in potentia for the purposes of this conversation) is seductive or repulsive, but because that child is in itself abstract. It is potential incarnate, and potential is nothing if not seductive.
The longer I work with children, the more this question becomes urgent and practical in nature. If I am to be a positive force in the lives of these children (and I will allow myself to be nothing less) I must understand my answer to this question more completely. In the presence of these kids, and in particular the presence of Winston (because all babies look like Winston Churchill without being in any way like Winston Churchill) I feel this remarkable will to help, a pull that starts somewhere in my amygdala (that remarkable part of the human brain that kept thousands and millions of my ancestors from ending their day in the gullet of a large cat) and ends knee deep in dirty diapers. So it is instinct... but that's not all.
Those answers - It's instinct, It's biological, It's genetic - are too simple. Yes, there is a component of my reaction that is programmed in the code of my genetics, but there's more than that. Human beings are tribal creatures; civilization is what we do, an integral part of who we are. Civilization is the ordering of the necessary to preserve the future of our species. That future, of course, is our children.
So there's yet another element. Hope for the future and duty to those who come after, etc etc. Lofty, noble, thoroughly worthy... and completely weak. ‘Civilization’ is a purely abstract concept and, as such, doesn't even come close to the visceral reaction I've experienced. It’s not the ever-present possibility of massive legal backlash (just kidding, parents), though that’s certainly one hell of a motivator. We’ve eliminated fear and pheromones, so what does that leave us?
For quite a long time now I’ve been working at jobs that, upon successful completion, may leave me slightly wealthier, but in no way fulfilled or even mildly satisfied. I would never have predicted that children, in particular the early education thereof, would be the job that would fulfill that need, or that finding that fulfilling roll would be so gratifying. Maslow, by the way, is the one you can hear laughing from within his grave.
There you have it: self-actualization... Or it could be that if Winston and her ilk weren’t quite so cute, they wouldn’t make it home from the hospital in one piece. Never underestimate the need for self preservation when you’re annoying.
Cheers,
J.D.
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