Esten

“a permanent change in my hormonal balance due to childbearing or breastfeeding . . . the psychological effects of motherhood”

Can’t be either of those, since I feel the same way since I’ve started getting involved in raising kids, and I’m a guy.

I feel the same way about such things. A friend of my son’s (age 12) has been coping with a nasty brain cancer for the past couple of years — several surgeries and brutal chemotherapies that wrack his body and appearance. It’s all I can do to keep it together when he’s visiting my son.

I’ll second rea’s emotion: ever since I became a father, my protectiveness instinct isn’t just limited to my daughter.
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I think a lot of people, male and female, are affected this way. At least I’ve got the reaction, “you, too?” whenever I’ve mentioned it at playgroups or the school gates.

I remember agreeing with my neighbour that even accounts of events centuries ago (for some reason Vikings taking children as slaves when they raided Britain had come up in conversation) that involved children being hurt upset us both in a way that they never had before we had children.

Explanations? – all yours seem plausible to me, but your second one seems most likely.

I’m not sure how related this is, but I don’t have children, yet I’ve found as I’ve gotten older that yes, the suffering of children, even implied, can at least cause me to well up a little.

Similarly, I’ve found that unlike when I was younger, I’m much more susceptible to cheap sentiment. I’ve found that even when I watch movie clips entirely out of context, if I hear a molodramatic string section, and say, a hearltfelt moment in a father son relationship, I’m quickly brought to tears.

This recently happened when I saw the tail end of finding nemo.

Well, I know of at least one study where the response to a crying infant were compared between men and women with and without children, and they were different – both between gender and child status. I can’t remember now how much physiology was done, and I can’t find it online. (I’m not where I have good library access right now)

If memory serves, though, there is some good biological data on this kind of thing. If anyone thinks I should find these and link to them or not bother commenting, I will make an effort to dig them up.

And Alex – I symphatise! I’ve had to watch Finding Nemo about 50 times in the last year, and it gets me every time.

brian, I would love to learn more about that study if you have time to dig it up (but of course you are welcome to say whatever you’d like to contribute without linking etc.) One problem with this kind of studies might be that one possible partial explanation for the differnece between parents and non-parents may be that people who are more sensitive are more likely to become parents (I wouldn’t support this hypothesis based on personal observations).

What would be really interesting, but I have never heard of anyone doing it, is to survey people (parents, non-parents, men, women etc.) on a regular basis, and from these longitudional data try to figure out whether parenthood really makes a difference in how sensitive one is to seeing the pain of others, or whether parenthood is correlated to something else that really triggers the tears.

I don’t know of any of such studies, but the comments in this section seems to suggest that both parental status and age matter (gender perhaps too, but since we don’t tend to change our gender over time, we don’t know from personal experience). Age might in fact be correlated to something else too – like going through the experience of losing important others. If that were true, then age itself would not be the factor, but certain important experiences in life.

I think there’s some biological change that curses parents of both gender. I’ve been suffering from the guy version of the malady for twenty years now.

Before children, I would look at a story of parents who threw themselves into a well to save a child and consequently drowned and wonder “what the hell were they thinking? Theyhad no chance of getting the kid or themselves out.” Now I think “those poor saps, they had no choice.”

I’m looking – it will probably have to wait until tomorrow…

it happened to me while I was pregnant for the first time. I suddenly couldn’t watch wildlife shows where the mother giraffe has to abandon an unhealthy newborn, or hyenas get the baby widlebeest. I am now ripe for the most formulaic child in danger movie scenarios when I used to find them too transparently manipulative to be effective. also, I can barely read anything about the holocaust now. or in the gulag archipelago where the women prisoners are saving up sugar somehow to make a little christening cake! I better stop now or I’ll cry.

Seems like someone should mention the CNET editor fellow about now… Can’t stop thinking about it.

What Rea said. I’m the dad of a 2-year-old, and I had to put down Niall Ferguson’s War of the World a couple of times due to horrible things done to children in the Armenian & Jewish genocides.

But even before that, I’ve gotten more mawkish with age, in general & not just about kids. For years now, I tear up when Leia tells Han “I love you” and he replies, “I know.” Which sounds like a confession of aesthetic illiteracy, I guess.