The first emotion evoked by the birth of a baby is that of joy. However, before discussing this further, it is necessary to know that, as human beings, our psyche and emotional organization are embedded in three distinct orders, each of these with different priorities and sometimes incompatible with each other.
The biological order has first place in the hierarchy, and its objective is to serve the species to which it belongs. This order conditions the basic configuration of our senses and emotions, promoting instinctual guidance for our actions.
Secondly, beneath the biological order, is the social order, which appears due to the fact that we are intensely gregarious beings. Human beings need a great deal of non-instinctive learning. For example, although the impulse to speak exists, its development needs to be carried out through the acquisition of a particular language, which we learn thanks to the group. The social order has the inertia to continue serving the species – that is, to support the biological order. It does this by generating and maintaining group structures such as the family, religions, states, administrations, productive and economic systems, etc., all of which tend to be structured in ways that guarantee the continuity of the species.
Beneath the first two categories, there is a third level of organization, the individual order. Due to the inertia caused by biological and group pressure, the individual will most probably relinquish a good part of their personal freedom, surrendering their allegiance to the social and biological order. Paradoxically, human beings in reality have the preservation of their own lives as a fundamental objective, as a means of accumulating individual experiences and learning, using both the biological and the social order.
Let us now return to the point at which we began this chapter. Since the essential will of the biological order is the survival of the species, when a baby is born, it is this level that generates joy in the first place, since this is the emotion in charge of making feel both the continuity of life and the expansion of resources and profits. The social order replicates the biological intensification, thus generating even more joy, since society really also gains, at least in a potential way, when it has one more component.
And then we come to the individual, who struggles to imitate biological and social joy, when in reality parenthood is one of the greatest losses that can be experienced as an individual human being. The amount of effort, resources, energy and time that you will have to use to raise your children is enormous, resulting in a definitive loss of your previous status... forever. The emotion responsible for intensifying this feeling of loss is sadness. As a consequence, from the individual parent's point of view, the birth of a baby brings huge sadness, whether or not this is recognized. Any loss entails an increase in problems, which must be resolved, and in needs, which must be met. When there is no awareness or willingness to acknowledge the inherent loss of parenthood, individuals principally use two different types of perverse compensation strategies. The first is to turn the baby into a possession. This is the most prevalent conduct, to the point of being socially supported: children are yours, forever; it is a distorted way of generating joy, due to the fact that there has been an increase in your possessions. This strategy relies on an exacerbation of emotional dependence, both in the parents and in the children, being the source of the different types of abuse to which offspring can be subjected. The second form of compensation is less frequent and consists of abandonment. When a parent is unable to cope with the loss, he or she simply abandons or discards his or her children, either in reality or metaphorically.
However, a very different type of compensation strategy is possible. In a family of warriors, parents take impeccable care of their children, and as they grow, they dedicate themselves to self-growth and increasing their own consciousness, transmitting these values to their children, facilitating the means and the environment so that they are, if they so choose, luminous beings who unleash their potential, teaching them to place limits on the bonds of emotional dependence. Warrior fathers and mothers forgive their children’s debt, because they have transformed the pressure generated by that debt into conscience and personal growth. When children grow up they are allowed to fly free, because from the beginning they have been treated as travel companions, never as property, pets or investments. This is what is called true filial love and it is the seed by which the social order serves individuals in a primary way and the biological order in a secondary way – which is the opposite of what is currently occurring. This should be the next step in the evolution of the family, society and the individual.
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Parenthood by Chema Sanz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.