Do we love them or do we owe them?

Spring in Toronto, with its fresh bloom of tulips, trees redressing themselves in green, and the misty evening breeze turning aromatic with lilacs, also brings into sight young fledglings of the wild world. While in the nest, birds care for these young ones intensely and protect them fiercely, but once the babies are able to fly and join the flock, the behavior of parent birds, especially the pigeons, towards their own young ones can easily bemuse an emotional human mind.

Pigeons, among all birds, are exceptionally devotional in caring for their babies. However, when the freshly-feathered, narrower than the rest, confused-looking baby pigeons enter a flock – still thirsting beaks of parents for crop milk – not only get turned away but pecked brutally by almost every adult in the flock, including their own parents. This sudden indifference, in a highly social pigeon world, is neither perceived as the parent being cruel nor the child as abused. In fact, once a bird is out of its nest, it may still be smaller and weaker than the rest, but is treated like every other pigeon in the flock. The younger ones get pecked a lot more simply for not picking cues of the flock’s hierarchy. The constant shoving, chasing and pecking, however, doesn't make the little ones feel rejected, unloved or emotionally hurt. The nascent birds simply adapt. They learn to defend themselves and be on their own, while staying persistent and integrating themselves into the flock.

Parent pigeons, though fully devotional in their service to their babies during the dependency phase, release completely once the fledglings become able enough to feed themselves. As the feeding and protecting reflexes shut down in parents, even parental recognition fades away. And this turns a juvenile pigeon into a flock member, instead of retaining their identity as someone’s progeny for the rest of their life as is the case with humans.

Contrary to what many assume, to care for a baby is driven by instinct and not emotions even in human parents. Much like in pigeons, these protecting and devotional caring instincts in humans are courtesy the biological changes brought about by increased bonding between a couple, and more specifically, the hormonal change in a mother's body during pregnancy and after childbirth. Now you may well question – if it is true, then why don't human parents stop caring when grown-up children are no more dependent on parents? Outside of the selfless love that humans are capable of beyond instincts, the life-long bonding between parent and child in humans is more an outcome of our psychology getting entangled with societal conditioning, rather than any biological requirements for parents or children to continue their co-dependency endlessly.

It is true that humans are the slowest-to-grow mammals with the largest brain that takes up to twenty years to fully develop. While a newly-hatched pigeon can fly in four weeks, a human baby barely begins to crawl in a year. Human physiology prioritizes brain development over rapid physical maturation. And though this requirement extends the nurturing window in humans to a much longer one than in any other species, it still doesn’t call for full dependency of children on parents beyond early childhood. A ten-year-old may appear smaller and may not be mature enough to cast a vote in electing the country’s prime minister, however, they are functional enough not only to look after themselves reasonably well and carry out their daily activities without much help, but also care for their little world around and beyond.

In ancient and pre-modern societies, human childhood used to be much shorter than it is today – not because the kids were stronger, but because society was structured differently. At age 7–10, a child wasn’t independent, yet not entirely dependent on parents, and rather relied on a larger community for support. Back then, humans lived in tribes, clans, extended families and multi-generational households. The child, thus, was supported by grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings, cousins, and the entire tribe. Dependency was distributed, not concentrated on two parents. Children aged 8–10 were not self-sufficient enough to hunt, gather and farm, but they were useful enough to help gather firewood, carry water, watch younger siblings, learn life-supporting skills of hunting, tool making, farming, cooking, weaving, and the rituals.

The idea of “childhood until the age of 18–20” is a modern invention, which emerged from industrialization, nuclear families replacing tribes, laws about child labor, modern safety norms, and particularly, formal schooling – which delayed economic independence. The modern schooling system, which appears to prepare children for the world, paradoxically, in many ways blocks the child’s meaningful integration into the world. The design of its curriculum not only extends a child's dependency on parents for the financial need of acquiring this education, but also steals precious time out of childhood, rendering children with little time to learn from parents, community and nature, as they stay occupied with homework, and preparing for exams and competitions, after attending 6–8 hours of school most days of the week. This realization comes as no surprise if we remember that the modern education system was first established to meet the demands of industrialization – to produce disciplined workers, obedient soldiers, and punctual, compliant citizens. Not thinkers, creators or emotionally healthy humans. This system wasn’t designed to educate or for human flourishing, but more for economic output, social order and predictable behavior. The evidence being – most of what children study in school and write for exams is forgotten after exams are over, most of it being irrelevant to real life anyway. Another real-life evidence can be found in many of the great artists, thinkers, inventors, philanthropists, social reformists and business tycoons, who happen to be school dropouts – as they didn’t find any real value in what they were learning in school.

If it wasn't for the modern education system, children would perhaps integrate into society in a more meaningful and socially useful way much sooner than the modern education system allows.

The stretched dependency of children on parents for financial needs while they are still on their way to completing their academic degree programs and trainings, stretches the selfless devotional care of the parents far beyond their biology supports. Now this may be a lesser-known fact about human parenting, but biologically, the strongest parenting hormones peak in infancy and drop sharply after early childhood – with the “urgent caregiving instinct” fading as the child turns 5–7 years old. Beyond these years, parenting is mostly psychological and cultural, not instinctive.

While the instinctive or biological parenting program in humans still shuts down much earlier than 20 years, as it always did, the extended dependency is merely a demand of modern society – which expanded the education system into 12–20 years of schooling, that parents must bear the cost of – not only through extended care of the child, but financially as well indeed.

It is then natural for exhausted parents to expect reciprocation of the favors and sacrifices made by them to support their well-grown-up children, as they themselves slip into years well beyond their middle age while still caring for the clutch. And when such expectations are already embedded in societal conditioning, almost the entire length of raising children is unconsciously fueled by an unpromised reward for old-age security. In fact, in many cultures and regions worldwide, especially those with no communal safety networks or old-age pension plans in place, the very incentive of having children becomes the potential retirement benefit that is seen associated with children. Even without the need for financial security in later years of life, parents tend to tie their own identity with children, adding layers of cultural pressure, social comparison and their own fear of old age and loneliness on top of it. As such, unintentionally, even after initially caring for the children selflessly, they cling, expect, compare, guilt and demand loyalty. And when their expectations go unmet even a tinge, emotionally dependent parents are met with psychological conditions such as empty nest syndrome, identity collapse and guilt cycles.

And while most adults care for their aging parents irrespective of any verbal ask or expressed expectation by the parents, the deeper question is, do they do it for their genuine love and concern for their parents, or do they feel obliged to repay the care they once received? Similar would be a reflection for parents – do they still feel the need to provide for their college-going adult child as they did for their four-year-old, or do they feel compelled into caring out of the needs stemming from the societal setup?

A further deeper query underneath the above reflections is – does real, unconditional love still accompany the parent-child relationship in humans after the surge of hormones that once sustained it has withered away? Or does the purest of all – selfless love between parent and child – become tainted with the blemishes of emotional dependency giving rise to unintentional but binding egoistic expectations and obligations to repay, pinning both parents and children under the weight of it?

Inherent parenting instinct in humans is closer to that of pigeons than to the few species with lifelong bonds such as elephants, dolphins and chimpanzees in whom the hormonal drive to continue a parent-child bond remains intact life-long. However, even when parental instinct in humans resembles that of pigeons, it is human culture that forces us to behave like elephants, without the biology to support it.

Exceptional devotion to babies is hormonally driven and short lived in both pigeons and humans. The release after independence is natural in both too. The only difference is – that pigeons release completely, and humans don’t. Humans add emotional, cultural, and identity layers that pigeons don’t. Devotion is real in both, but it’s not personal in pigeons. The personal story that humans build on top of their initial selfless devotion, is the difference. And this difference is what creates the clinging attachment that shackles parents and children in humans.

If humans could release completely, selfless love could find space to breathe again and give unconditionally. Because humans are capable of extraordinary, selfless love, devotion and caregiving even outside of hormonally driven instinctive love, and even to beings outside of family bonds, including strangers and animals. Yet when it comes to our own adult children, we often cling, control, or impose obligation, unintentionally, stifling the relationship and sullying the purity of our own love, forgetting that independent children return naturally to care out of love, when love is free.