Love & Child

From my enquires, but not experience, the greatest love is reserved for our children. Buddha certainly noted this about his son Rahula.

Obviously this makes sense genetically. We have no genetic relationship with our partner (for genetics requires mixing) so we have nothing to gain from their survival. However our children is the real purpose because they survive our own death and continue this behaviour onwards.

So does it then follow that the "love" we experience for our partner is actually the seeing the partner as the necessary condition for our children? I need this person, we instinctively think, before I can reproduce so they are the missing factor in our producing children, they are thus imbued with the nature of our children and thus we love them.

This is not the true love which is a duty, but that feeling of attraction and unity with. We do both metaphorically and literally bond with our partner since they offer half the genes and in the case of the woman the egg.

Love is different then between men and women. In women who need only the small ingredient of the sperm to kick start the process which otherwise occurs within them love for the man is more shallow but longer lasting since the female will need some support during gestation. The male on the other hand has only a short involvement with the process but therefore owes more to the female for his children - his experience of love ought to be greater I would hypothesise.