The trouble is when your kid asks "why do you love me?" You're like "because I'm your mom? It's basically automatic?"
And they go "WELL THEN IT DOESN'T COUNT 😤"
So there's something to be said for, as your kid gets older, noticing their good qualities and making a point to like them as well as love them. I think you *can* like almost anybody if you try, because it's a matter of noticing good qualities more than you notice bad qualities, rather than them necessarily having all good qualities. It's good to enjoy your time together if you can. I try to get my kids into hobbies I like so that I will enjoy playing with them instead of sighing over barbies too often.
But it is also true that even if they did start sucking horribly such that I neither respected them nor enjoyed being with them, I would still love them. I know a person whose son molested her daughter's child. She insisted on notifying the proper authorities and seeing he faced consequences, but she didn't stop loving her son. She supports him as she can, to try to help him turn his life around. There is really nobody else but parents who will reliably do this, when you've gone that far wrong.
Hey! You forgot your own examples! Babies are rude and annoying, but no baby has ever cancelled PEPFAR, nor committed serial premeditated murder. Surely you can love them conditional on that?
1. I had a wise friend once who told me, "There's no such thing as a good baby or a bad baby. There are only easy babies and difficult babies," and not only did he love all babies, but he applied this to people in general. I've found it a sort of handy classification for adults in terms of, for example, road trips and general life. Easy babies are those people who don't mind stuff, don't have blood sugar crashes or get hangry if meals are delayed, and don't have special needs. The rest of us are difficult babies.
2. I had a boyfriend once who didn't really like my cats. Unlike most people, he felt no intrinsic attraction to even charismatic animals, and he thought that, judged by the normal standards of a person, cats were not good. They didn't respect personal space, they were undignified, they were greedy, and so on. (The standards of an adult human are bonkers to try to hold cats to, though of course one is free to like or dislike cats.) I wonder how he would have responded to a baby!
3. I sometimes feel unconditional love towards my friends, but I think it's probably a bit of an illusion. What I do find helpful is practicing unconditional positive regard towards my loved ones (friends as well as family). Side note: I tried to explain this once to one of my friends, after she had vehemently rejected the idea of unconditional love*, but the mere fact that I had any caveat to her assertion that unconditional love was fake was so upsetting that she forbade me to continue. (*She was not loved very well at all by her parents.)
"2. I had a boyfriend once who didn't really like my cats. Unlike most people, he felt no intrinsic attraction to even charismatic animals, and he thought that, judged by the normal standards of a person, cats were not good. They didn't respect personal space, they were undignified, they were greedy, and so on. (The standards of an adult human are bonkers to try to hold cats to, though of course one is free to like or dislike cats.) I wonder how he would have responded to a baby!"
I am exactly like that, and my response to a baby was pulling 1950 and saying it is the mother's job. I told my (now ex) wife before the pregnancy that I will take interest only when we have a functional little human around about 3 who can talk and play games. I made this clear this is the condition of we having a family and she accepted. I actually took interest earlier, because my ex was a strange mother. Extremely caregiving but not pushing enough when pushing is needed. So I pushed my daughter first into crawling at about 1-1.5 then walking at about 2. So I had to took interest earlier as a "trainer".
Am I the only one that keeps reading this as apartial / partial? Maybe aparental/alloparental would be better? Idk, I might just be dyslexic though, since I also keep writing my name backwards.
Interesting article for those of us who aren’t parents, but want to understand what parents think and feel. I admit until reading this article. I had always been of the opinion that obviously parents don’t literally unconditionally love their children and it’s just one of those things where unconditional love just means love that’s less conditional than usual, and it’s just that because most people don’t do much thinking about hypotheticals or thought experiments and admitting your love is conditional is a signal of unusually high levels of conditionality so most people don’t do the thinking necessary to realise this, and also consider it super rude to point out. Admittedly, I still think lots of parents who talk of unconditional love don’t actually love their children unconditionally. Although this has increased my likelihood that they are genuinely mistaken as opposed to being aware that if their child did something sufficiently heinous, they would stop loving them. Still until reading this article, I had thought that literally no one ever unconditionally loves someone else or close enough to make no difference whereas now I think it’s possible, that many parents might actually love their children genuinely unconditionally.
Honestly, this is a great example of a phenomenon I have observed where a lot of every day common sense which I used to think was obviously false becomes a lot more believable. When presented by someone who understands the peradimes I think in and knows how to present the arguments in the way I will find persuasive. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only rationalist adjacent person who suffers from this problem when it comes to understanding people with different thinking styles. Thanks so much for a very good explanation of a common every day belief that didn’t previously make any sense from a rationalist viewpoint to me.
There are many, many people who stop loving their children, I'd at least act like they stopped loving them (like, throwing them out of their house because they're gay/ trans/ non religious). I wonder how you square those? It is oftentimes people who would have killed for their child before too, so not already aparantal (which in my opinion would be the better word, because the other one is horribly confusing, as many commentators agree I think :D)
do you think those people would claim they no longer love their children? I think people have a nuanced and flexible (or maybe just bullshitty) definition of love where it covers acting in unloving/cold ways. "I love you, but the behavior you're exhibiting is unacceptable." (it's easy to pick on bigoted parents, but this covers heroin addiction, sex work, plenty of other things.)
in fact, many parents see that deep disapproval, and the cold/unloving behavior it engender, as founded in love. "I care deeply for you and wanted only a comfortable/safe/moral life (and afterlife.) it pains me deeply to see you moving away from that because of how much I love you, and I have decided it is most effective to act in an unloving way until you see the light." for many (not all, certainly, but many) parents this act is deeply painful. I don't have to respect their reasons for their behavior to see that pain, and the love that causes it, as real.
I think it is reasonable to use this to claim that most people do not love their children unconditionally, but I do not find it useful to think that people do not mean or understand the words that they use, especially if a lot of people use them that way, and so I have expanded my understanding of love to get pretty raw and unruly at the edges.
Sure, I can see that, but then I feel like this entire discussion is a bit useless. If we count that as love, I'm not sure we're having a useful discussion anymore? You catch my drift?
well one constructive aspect of my expansive definition is that you stop getting ignored by people because you tell them they don't love their kids. they might find other reasons to ignore you, but understanding that love is wide enough to encompass the behavior you find objectionable at least avoids that specific breakdown, which in my experience is a not uncommon sticking point.
to make it concrete: liberal therapists tell parents if they loved their kid they'd accept their sexuality. it makes the parents feel like the therapist doesn't understand them or respect them (because only horrible people don't love their children, etc) and it's counter productive in the extreme.
I would not dispute that my definitions of love do not make love a particularly useful tool for understanding people's behavior. but I am more materialist and consequentialist, generally speaking, so it's fine with me if we stop talking about love and start talking about what parents do or don't do.
Those are examples that people around here will all disapprove of, but it's obviously not at all a consequence of unconditional love that you will never kick your child out of your house. My ex-brother-in-law went entirely failson about a year out of law school and is still, AFAIK, five years later, holed up in his mother's second bedroom smoking weed, playing Call of Duty, and, oh yeah, making a baby with a hookup he refuses to support. Letting him stay is cowardice, not love.
Not to be rude, but I feel like everyone here is misunderstanding what I was getting at, but showing the epidemic problem here: is supporting your child, and not supporting your child are both signs of unconditional love, what good is unconditional love? Also *what* is it? Is it a feeling purely, but bears no actionable consequences to count, or is it about what one does as a result? I feel like Ozy gets those confused as part of his essay.
I’m kind of at a loss what you’re missing. Loving someone means in large part wanting what’s best for them. Sometimes enabling their self destructive behavior by too much direct support doesn’t lead to that. Something like this is probably what the most sympathetic of the anti-queer parents have in mind, though certainly in some cases, maybe all, they really just tore through the love that was supposed to be unconditional into hate and abandonment.
Im pretty sure my Mom didn't love me. In fact she really disliked me. Though she sorta tried to do her best given the unfortunate situation. Im not so sure about my dad, he definitely didn't love me that much. To be clear he was fairly explicit about this. Would commonly say there was something wrong with me. And thats the parent who liked me more!
I think if parent and child are "too different" there is often a pretty severe deficit of love.
What is it with rationalists and using AI art completely unnecessarily? In most other circles I'm in it's generally considered tacky. I thought the AI safety people would be against it?
People don't click on blog posts unless there's a picture in the link, and as a blogger this leads to an extremely annoying process of trying to figure out some vaguely related photo to go in the article.
I don't normally use AI art but for obvious reasons don't feel comfortable illustrating my blog post with an unaltered image of my kid.
Custom-made art is expensive, so most people aren't going to shell out for it for a blogpost, if only for the expectation you'd have to do it with each blogpost.
And the vast majority of artists lean left and would not work for a group with a bad rap on the left (even somewhat undeserved as in the case of EA) if only because of the future career danger (a guy making unrelated alien cartoons got cancelled because it came out he was prolife).
Also rationalists are techies and like new tech. I don't think there's more to it than that.
I think part of the idea is that generating an additional image on someone's flat-fee AI art software subscription, or using a free tool, doesn't meaningfully contribute to AI risk.
The problem with this is that we do not have a clear enough definition of loving. Same way it is hard to define who is romantic and who is aromantic, because we have not defined whether just liking to hug someone a lot is romantic or not enough for that.
What does it mean to love a child? Aside for endless repetitions of "I love you" ? Hugs? Wanting the best for them - which they will not understand? Just being generally nice?
I do not understand "attachment type theory" because I do not know how my parents loved me. They said me they love. They hugged. They were also angry sometimes and also criticized me like "you have really let me down, I expected better". Perhaps the most characteristic expression was "I really love you, but your behaviour often makes me angry, making it difficult to express". Is that unconditional or not?
I ended up anxious attachment type, eventually becoming avoidant, but I do not know why.
I try to lead with people are more important than things. It’s a really important mindset shift when your 4 year digs a nice big hole in your wall with a pen, or destroys the $50 toy you just bought him. It’s all about staying centered and remembering what matters.
That sane 5 year old often complains “no one loves me” after I chastise him. I try to explain that love doesn’t mean you do whatever you want with no repercussions, it means I get out of bed every day and give him a big hug, I’m not sure he understands.
"But what is heart-wrenching about many situations is that the parents don't: they know that their child has done some of the worst things it is imaginable for a person to do, and they still desperately want their child to be happy and would die to save their child's life. "
See Bryan Kohberger reportedly spending hours talking to his mother in jail
In my model of the world, there are much more parents who will die to save their children, then parents who will change behaviour pattern because it harms their children.
you talk about unconditional love, but i look around and see SO MUCH conditional love. there is charity nearby that give place to sleep to homeless LGBT kids teenagers that their parents throw out of home. it's actually happen often enough to be a thing. and if i talk to teen in not-liberal environment, i will tell them to plan for this possibility, not count on parental unconditional love.
there is a word, "disown". disown your child. it exist because enough parents do that to need this category to exist, to need this WORD to exist (in English. out of 3 languages i know, only English have it, though you can find more or less acceptable substitute in another).
I actually expect more parents to love their serial killer kid then their trans kid. and a lot of parents do substitution, love their imaginary kid while denying their actually-existed one. trans people are example to that, and parents who believe there is neurotypical kid in need of rescue inside their autistic kid.
i don't disagree with your conclusion - i think the chance someone will not love their child is small, and it's not reason to avoid children if you want them. but it's look to me like you ignore a lot of things that actually happen. in this model of unconditional parental love.
This is a beautiful and thoughtful reflection, ty! I don't have children, but I have been thinking about the conditions of unconditional love recently. Briefly, I think that unconditional love is a pro tanto fitting attitude towards anyone, since everyone is worthy of love in virtue of their personhood, but only people in special relationships have taken on an obligation to love certain others (particularly parents with children). I wrote about the rationality of love and anger, riffing on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, here: https://open.substack.com/pub/arrivingyesterday/p/what-love-demands-of-us?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=b23a3
The trouble is when your kid asks "why do you love me?" You're like "because I'm your mom? It's basically automatic?"
And they go "WELL THEN IT DOESN'T COUNT 😤"
So there's something to be said for, as your kid gets older, noticing their good qualities and making a point to like them as well as love them. I think you *can* like almost anybody if you try, because it's a matter of noticing good qualities more than you notice bad qualities, rather than them necessarily having all good qualities. It's good to enjoy your time together if you can. I try to get my kids into hobbies I like so that I will enjoy playing with them instead of sighing over barbies too often.
But it is also true that even if they did start sucking horribly such that I neither respected them nor enjoyed being with them, I would still love them. I know a person whose son molested her daughter's child. She insisted on notifying the proper authorities and seeing he faced consequences, but she didn't stop loving her son. She supports him as she can, to try to help him turn his life around. There is really nobody else but parents who will reliably do this, when you've gone that far wrong.
Hey! You forgot your own examples! Babies are rude and annoying, but no baby has ever cancelled PEPFAR, nor committed serial premeditated murder. Surely you can love them conditional on that?
I think one baby kinda did cancel PEPFAR actually
Tangential thoughts:
1. I had a wise friend once who told me, "There's no such thing as a good baby or a bad baby. There are only easy babies and difficult babies," and not only did he love all babies, but he applied this to people in general. I've found it a sort of handy classification for adults in terms of, for example, road trips and general life. Easy babies are those people who don't mind stuff, don't have blood sugar crashes or get hangry if meals are delayed, and don't have special needs. The rest of us are difficult babies.
2. I had a boyfriend once who didn't really like my cats. Unlike most people, he felt no intrinsic attraction to even charismatic animals, and he thought that, judged by the normal standards of a person, cats were not good. They didn't respect personal space, they were undignified, they were greedy, and so on. (The standards of an adult human are bonkers to try to hold cats to, though of course one is free to like or dislike cats.) I wonder how he would have responded to a baby!
3. I sometimes feel unconditional love towards my friends, but I think it's probably a bit of an illusion. What I do find helpful is practicing unconditional positive regard towards my loved ones (friends as well as family). Side note: I tried to explain this once to one of my friends, after she had vehemently rejected the idea of unconditional love*, but the mere fact that I had any caveat to her assertion that unconditional love was fake was so upsetting that she forbade me to continue. (*She was not loved very well at all by her parents.)
"2. I had a boyfriend once who didn't really like my cats. Unlike most people, he felt no intrinsic attraction to even charismatic animals, and he thought that, judged by the normal standards of a person, cats were not good. They didn't respect personal space, they were undignified, they were greedy, and so on. (The standards of an adult human are bonkers to try to hold cats to, though of course one is free to like or dislike cats.) I wonder how he would have responded to a baby!"
I am exactly like that, and my response to a baby was pulling 1950 and saying it is the mother's job. I told my (now ex) wife before the pregnancy that I will take interest only when we have a functional little human around about 3 who can talk and play games. I made this clear this is the condition of we having a family and she accepted. I actually took interest earlier, because my ex was a strange mother. Extremely caregiving but not pushing enough when pushing is needed. So I pushed my daughter first into crawling at about 1-1.5 then walking at about 2. So I had to took interest earlier as a "trainer".
Are you real? Children normally learn to crawl and walk on their own as long as they're not impeded, and 2 is late for walking! What a strange story!
Exactly. this is why I felt some intervention is needed. In my family, poor motoric skills are common. I did not walk until 3.
> apatrial [...] patrial
Am I the only one that keeps reading this as apartial / partial? Maybe aparental/alloparental would be better? Idk, I might just be dyslexic though, since I also keep writing my name backwards.
"Aparental" really sounds like it means that you either don't have kids or don't like them very much.
It's okay, Sbocaj Bob, I feel the same
Interesting article for those of us who aren’t parents, but want to understand what parents think and feel. I admit until reading this article. I had always been of the opinion that obviously parents don’t literally unconditionally love their children and it’s just one of those things where unconditional love just means love that’s less conditional than usual, and it’s just that because most people don’t do much thinking about hypotheticals or thought experiments and admitting your love is conditional is a signal of unusually high levels of conditionality so most people don’t do the thinking necessary to realise this, and also consider it super rude to point out. Admittedly, I still think lots of parents who talk of unconditional love don’t actually love their children unconditionally. Although this has increased my likelihood that they are genuinely mistaken as opposed to being aware that if their child did something sufficiently heinous, they would stop loving them. Still until reading this article, I had thought that literally no one ever unconditionally loves someone else or close enough to make no difference whereas now I think it’s possible, that many parents might actually love their children genuinely unconditionally.
Honestly, this is a great example of a phenomenon I have observed where a lot of every day common sense which I used to think was obviously false becomes a lot more believable. When presented by someone who understands the peradimes I think in and knows how to present the arguments in the way I will find persuasive. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only rationalist adjacent person who suffers from this problem when it comes to understanding people with different thinking styles. Thanks so much for a very good explanation of a common every day belief that didn’t previously make any sense from a rationalist viewpoint to me.
There are many, many people who stop loving their children, I'd at least act like they stopped loving them (like, throwing them out of their house because they're gay/ trans/ non religious). I wonder how you square those? It is oftentimes people who would have killed for their child before too, so not already aparantal (which in my opinion would be the better word, because the other one is horribly confusing, as many commentators agree I think :D)
do you think those people would claim they no longer love their children? I think people have a nuanced and flexible (or maybe just bullshitty) definition of love where it covers acting in unloving/cold ways. "I love you, but the behavior you're exhibiting is unacceptable." (it's easy to pick on bigoted parents, but this covers heroin addiction, sex work, plenty of other things.)
in fact, many parents see that deep disapproval, and the cold/unloving behavior it engender, as founded in love. "I care deeply for you and wanted only a comfortable/safe/moral life (and afterlife.) it pains me deeply to see you moving away from that because of how much I love you, and I have decided it is most effective to act in an unloving way until you see the light." for many (not all, certainly, but many) parents this act is deeply painful. I don't have to respect their reasons for their behavior to see that pain, and the love that causes it, as real.
I think it is reasonable to use this to claim that most people do not love their children unconditionally, but I do not find it useful to think that people do not mean or understand the words that they use, especially if a lot of people use them that way, and so I have expanded my understanding of love to get pretty raw and unruly at the edges.
The extreme case would be something like honor killing...
Sure, I can see that, but then I feel like this entire discussion is a bit useless. If we count that as love, I'm not sure we're having a useful discussion anymore? You catch my drift?
well one constructive aspect of my expansive definition is that you stop getting ignored by people because you tell them they don't love their kids. they might find other reasons to ignore you, but understanding that love is wide enough to encompass the behavior you find objectionable at least avoids that specific breakdown, which in my experience is a not uncommon sticking point.
to make it concrete: liberal therapists tell parents if they loved their kid they'd accept their sexuality. it makes the parents feel like the therapist doesn't understand them or respect them (because only horrible people don't love their children, etc) and it's counter productive in the extreme.
I would not dispute that my definitions of love do not make love a particularly useful tool for understanding people's behavior. but I am more materialist and consequentialist, generally speaking, so it's fine with me if we stop talking about love and start talking about what parents do or don't do.
Those are examples that people around here will all disapprove of, but it's obviously not at all a consequence of unconditional love that you will never kick your child out of your house. My ex-brother-in-law went entirely failson about a year out of law school and is still, AFAIK, five years later, holed up in his mother's second bedroom smoking weed, playing Call of Duty, and, oh yeah, making a baby with a hookup he refuses to support. Letting him stay is cowardice, not love.
Not to be rude, but I feel like everyone here is misunderstanding what I was getting at, but showing the epidemic problem here: is supporting your child, and not supporting your child are both signs of unconditional love, what good is unconditional love? Also *what* is it? Is it a feeling purely, but bears no actionable consequences to count, or is it about what one does as a result? I feel like Ozy gets those confused as part of his essay.
I’m kind of at a loss what you’re missing. Loving someone means in large part wanting what’s best for them. Sometimes enabling their self destructive behavior by too much direct support doesn’t lead to that. Something like this is probably what the most sympathetic of the anti-queer parents have in mind, though certainly in some cases, maybe all, they really just tore through the love that was supposed to be unconditional into hate and abandonment.
Im pretty sure my Mom didn't love me. In fact she really disliked me. Though she sorta tried to do her best given the unfortunate situation. Im not so sure about my dad, he definitely didn't love me that much. To be clear he was fairly explicit about this. Would commonly say there was something wrong with me. And thats the parent who liked me more!
I think if parent and child are "too different" there is often a pretty severe deficit of love.
I think liking and loving can be different. Parents can dislike but still love their kids.
What is it with rationalists and using AI art completely unnecessarily? In most other circles I'm in it's generally considered tacky. I thought the AI safety people would be against it?
People don't click on blog posts unless there's a picture in the link, and as a blogger this leads to an extremely annoying process of trying to figure out some vaguely related photo to go in the article.
I don't normally use AI art but for obvious reasons don't feel comfortable illustrating my blog post with an unaltered image of my kid.
It’s interesting that ghiblifying kids to preserve their anonymity is maybe the most defensible use case for ghiblifying in general.
Jeff Kaufman has an article about it: https://www.jefftk.com/p/ghiblification-for-privacy
Custom-made art is expensive, so most people aren't going to shell out for it for a blogpost, if only for the expectation you'd have to do it with each blogpost.
And the vast majority of artists lean left and would not work for a group with a bad rap on the left (even somewhat undeserved as in the case of EA) if only because of the future career danger (a guy making unrelated alien cartoons got cancelled because it came out he was prolife).
Also rationalists are techies and like new tech. I don't think there's more to it than that.
I think part of the idea is that generating an additional image on someone's flat-fee AI art software subscription, or using a free tool, doesn't meaningfully contribute to AI risk.
I see it on non-rationalist blogs too. I think it's just a Substack thing.
Luckily NIMBYs don't really blog.
The problem with this is that we do not have a clear enough definition of loving. Same way it is hard to define who is romantic and who is aromantic, because we have not defined whether just liking to hug someone a lot is romantic or not enough for that.
What does it mean to love a child? Aside for endless repetitions of "I love you" ? Hugs? Wanting the best for them - which they will not understand? Just being generally nice?
I do not understand "attachment type theory" because I do not know how my parents loved me. They said me they love. They hugged. They were also angry sometimes and also criticized me like "you have really let me down, I expected better". Perhaps the most characteristic expression was "I really love you, but your behaviour often makes me angry, making it difficult to express". Is that unconditional or not?
I ended up anxious attachment type, eventually becoming avoidant, but I do not know why.
I try to lead with people are more important than things. It’s a really important mindset shift when your 4 year digs a nice big hole in your wall with a pen, or destroys the $50 toy you just bought him. It’s all about staying centered and remembering what matters.
That sane 5 year old often complains “no one loves me” after I chastise him. I try to explain that love doesn’t mean you do whatever you want with no repercussions, it means I get out of bed every day and give him a big hug, I’m not sure he understands.
"But what is heart-wrenching about many situations is that the parents don't: they know that their child has done some of the worst things it is imaginable for a person to do, and they still desperately want their child to be happy and would die to save their child's life. "
See Bryan Kohberger reportedly spending hours talking to his mother in jail
In my model of the world, there are much more parents who will die to save their children, then parents who will change behaviour pattern because it harms their children.
you talk about unconditional love, but i look around and see SO MUCH conditional love. there is charity nearby that give place to sleep to homeless LGBT kids teenagers that their parents throw out of home. it's actually happen often enough to be a thing. and if i talk to teen in not-liberal environment, i will tell them to plan for this possibility, not count on parental unconditional love.
there is a word, "disown". disown your child. it exist because enough parents do that to need this category to exist, to need this WORD to exist (in English. out of 3 languages i know, only English have it, though you can find more or less acceptable substitute in another).
I actually expect more parents to love their serial killer kid then their trans kid. and a lot of parents do substitution, love their imaginary kid while denying their actually-existed one. trans people are example to that, and parents who believe there is neurotypical kid in need of rescue inside their autistic kid.
i don't disagree with your conclusion - i think the chance someone will not love their child is small, and it's not reason to avoid children if you want them. but it's look to me like you ignore a lot of things that actually happen. in this model of unconditional parental love.
This suggests another question: is it *moral* to continue to love someone even if they do terrible thought-experiment-type stuff?
Yes? Loving someone doesn't result in any harm. Love is a virtue
Hello! Was this post sent to emails? I didn't get one, and I think I didn't get an email for your previous post either
I got an email for both posts. I think the problem's on your end.
This is a beautiful and thoughtful reflection, ty! I don't have children, but I have been thinking about the conditions of unconditional love recently. Briefly, I think that unconditional love is a pro tanto fitting attitude towards anyone, since everyone is worthy of love in virtue of their personhood, but only people in special relationships have taken on an obligation to love certain others (particularly parents with children). I wrote about the rationality of love and anger, riffing on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, here: https://open.substack.com/pub/arrivingyesterday/p/what-love-demands-of-us?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=b23a3