I heard a bit (when the house is full of rampaging school-holiday children, few things survive uninterrupted) of a radio article about the dispute over an American billionaire’s multi-million pound legacy for her dog.
One of the radio interviewees was critical of any such gestures, saying “Dogs aren’t loyal, they just have Stockholm Syndrome”. This is a reference, not to a pretentious American band but to the phenomenon when those helplessly in the control of others (usually hostages or abductees in the control of their captors) become loyal to their captors.
“There’s sort of a point there,” thinks I, up to my elbows in washing-up water, “although I’m no expert on dogs”. Owners usually choose their dogs, often on brief aquaintance or flimsy reasoning, and the dog’s famous loyalty is just out of circumstance. That’s not really love…
But isn’t it just the same with children? Other than choice of partner, we have no control over which egg/sperm combination makes it all happen. We get the child that appears 9ish months later - and return or exchange is not likely to be an option. Of course, even adoption works with some strict limitations: while finalisation of placements may be delayed for a period, one still does not ‘browse’ through an enormous range of children like clothes on a rail.
I chose my partner, but not my children. Each one of them is not what I would have expected, in so many ways! But I can’t imagine changing them and I love them fiercely just as they are. But unlike your average terrorist I was positively inclined towards them from the start.
And as for them? It will be a good few years before any of mine are old enough to come out with “I didn’t ask to be born”, “You’re not the king of me” and all those other adolescent evergreens.* Nope, they didn’t choose me and Fathersoup and the thought that they might one day find us lacking is not a comfortable one. But to belittle their honest, unconditional love - or anyone’s - because they had no control over their situation is poor-spirited.
What about the billionaire and her rat-on-a-string heir? I haven’t delved deeply into that case, but I’m guessing that with that sort of money, and that sort of family, there’d be challenges to the will whatever she’d done with the money. Some people are never satisfied…
* Though guineapigmum reminds me that it will seem to happen soon enough!
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