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Mothers and Fathers, Both Human and Not
The complexity of parental love in many species
Mother’s Day got me thinking about parenting. I grew up in a stable family where I knew my parents loved me but I know this is not always the case.
When I was a child, my uncle liked to tell me jokes and parables. One that I remember was about a monkey during monsoon season in India. She had a baby. As the rains came pouring down, the place she lived was getting flooded. As the water levels rose, she raised her baby above her head. Then she stood on tip toe. But eventually, the only way she could survive was by standing on her baby, which, of course, drowned.
This is not the case just with animals — sometimes people have sacrificed their children to save themselves. There are two old movies I remember which show this — Quigley Down Under and Secondhand Lions.
In the first, Cora, who is from Texas, related how she was hiding from the Commanches in a root cellar with her baby, who refused to stop crying. Fearing for her life as well as his, she covered his mouth. He ended up dying. She moves to Australia.
