i was debating with a friend of mine:

when someone says they love their son/daughter, etc, does that mean anything? since they are so closely related, can you not-love them and if u did, would u actually say it? further more, loving them and wanting them to live well, be healthy sounds nice, but isn't it really more genetic selfishness?

 

i don't know exactly what you are asking, but it is definitely possible for parents to not love their children. heck, there are some parents that genuinely hate their children for whatever reasons. being blood related does not autmatically mean that you can and will love your blood relatives unconditionally. i don't know exactly what you meant by genetic selfishness, but parents generally have fond affection for their children because they created that life. i guess it's only something that one will fully fathom after they have created a life themselves. the experience is probably even more profound for the mothers because the child had actually lived and and grown inside her body for 9 months.

 

I thought you were talking about in-love cousins.

 

LoL i was ready for a story.

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107034/



"the good son" .... that was a movie with some devil kid and the mom chooses to save her nephew (or some other relative) instead of her own son.

I love my kids..... I couldn't imagine not, but there are lots of shitty parents who really don't give two shits about their kids (i have a whole pile of them as tenants..... they just scream at the kids, leave them unattended at age 2, let them lick pop-cycles off the disgusting floor, etc.... one lady "Queen" screamed fuck about 30 times in one minute one day when she didn't know i was there.

 

i think people who are eff'd up enough to not love their own kid are eff'd up enough to admit it... i don't think people "pretend" to love their kids, which is what i think you were trying to get at.

i went to a friend's of a friend's house once... my friend's friend had 3 kids under the age of 4 running around the house butt-naked or just in their underwear...unsupervised, of course. the front door was wide open and it was about 40 degrees outside, dead of winter. we're standing in the front yard and their 2 yr. old boy comes to the front door crying for attention... just then their gigantic pit bull (ghetto people and their pit bulls, scot knows all about this...) comes running out the door and knocks the baby over onto the pavement. i hear the kid smack the pavement... me and my friend were the only people who ran over to make sure the baby was okay. the "parents" & other "adults" didn't even bat an eyelash. they yelled at the kid to get back in the house and started petting the pit bull. it was totally unreal...

later on they fed the 2 yr. old pizza for dinner... he kept dropping his slice on the floor, picking it back up and gnawing on it, dropping it, picking it up, gnawing on it. i asked him to come over cause he had a hair hanging out of his mouth... i pulled a foot long blonde hair that he had half down his throat, half hanging out his mouth. (his mom had this long greasy blonde hair...) god, it was so disgusting. i wanted to kidnap those kids and save them.

 

^ different parents are parents for different reasons. some children are born because the parents actively plan to have that child. other children are born due to "accidents". and still some others are born because the mom wants to collect more welfare, etc. just by looking at this perspective, it's obvious that different parents will "love" their kids at different degrees.

 

A lot of people need basic parental skills.

One needs a license to drive, why not a test of one's parental skills before you can have kids?

 

It does mean something. It's positive reinforcement for a loved child to told he/she is loved. It gives them confidence. I believe that is the biggest plus of telling loved ones you love them.