And Father Egos
Oops. In my haste to blame selfishness on mothers, I forgot the dads. Ah... the dads. The proud dads. Especially proud when baby is THEIR baby. Just when you think we've turned a corner - it has to be THEIR baby. And I know this to be true - that wannabe dads, wannabe dads of the seeds of THEIR loins. Not some other guy's.
Back when I was wanting a baby - including wondering about adoption, my then better half said point blank, "Why would we adopt a baby when we could have a baby of our own?" I argued the line that having our own simply added to a baby glut, but he was adamant, "We can have our own, so we don't need to adopt." What he didn't need to add was, "And if we can't have our own, why the hell would be adopt? The whole point is to pass on YOUR genes - isn't it?"
No wait... he didn't NEED to add it. Because he actually DID add it.
I thought it was kind of politically incorrect of him but now that I've grown out of my politically correct phase in exchange for a realistic phase I can see that he was only being honest. He really saw no point in adopting children. If you couldn't have your own - why would you burden yourself with someone else's loin fruit? He may well feel quite differently now that our children are teenagers - I don't know. I know that I could see the interchangeability of babies right from the first drop-in center we attended together - me and baby. But dads don't have the same degree of interaction with other dads and their babies.
Oops. Correction. In fact, I learned the interchangeability of babies in the nursery of the maternity ward of Women's College Hospital when I ventured down the hall to find my baby and feed her - without my glasses. Now that was a lesson in humility. I mean - humanity. I was squinting down at babies whose bracelets said "Mohammed" and "JingJing" before I finally lucked upon little Sooeyette. And I could have sworn she was better than all the other babies on the ward, too. Well, not so much better - as the same, as it turned out...
Not that newborns look any more alike than do new parents. Look at a picture of new parents holding their newborn in the maternity ward of any hospital. Proud, successful seeder from his loins papa, tired, overwhelmed, bewildered-looking mama, sleeping baby.
Anyway, not that there's anything wrong with any of it, but I really think if credit is due anywhere it's due to the people - women, and maybe even more so, men - who don't feel the need to pass on their DNA and instead use their time on this earth helping out with the seeds of everybody else's loins. Or not.
But doing whatever they do quietly. So that their bragging doesn't drown out the bragging of the breeders.
