Pretty disturbing thought.

I was just sitting here thinking about the concept of opportunity cost.

Now, theoretically, we only do things that will make us better off in the end. Or as "rational" people, we are supposed to.

And let's also assume that we are rational much of the time. We procrastinate because the opportunity cost of doing things seem large until the pressure builds up and overcomes that opportunity cost. It's also one of the primary reasons why expensive things sell. You are paying for the "prestige" premium, which makes the product "better." Hence, the more you pay, the better it gets.

This law gets broken at many points, but it generally holds, IMO.

Now, let's apply this to a disturbing side of life. Giving birth.

It's universal "fact" that most mothers are closer to their children than the male counterparts. (Incidentally, I wonder if there are any discrepancies in closeness between a male partner and a female lesbian partner who didn't give birth.) They explain this in variety of ways, but the simplest version is that the mother carries the child and goes through a painful process to give birth.

That makes sense. If you worked so hard at it to get something you want, that something should be very valuable. Evolutionarily you can explain that because it almost kills the women to go through childbearing/birth, they care for them as to not lose them. They are more protective. After all, why damage something you worked so hard to claim?

Now, my thought is, if your childbearing and childbirth is more horrible, do you end up overprotecting your child?

Makes sense....right? Couples who barely can conceive are usually overprotective, or the ones that tried very hard are very protective. I'm not saying the ones that pop them out like Pfizer pops pills out don't care for them, but they are not as overprotective of their children as the ones that went through more labour.

Having said that, the trend is to make childbearing less and less painful. Modern medicine and technology has all kinds of stuff to make things easy on the mother.

So, do they end up protecting children a bit less?.... What does that mean in global scale?

HMMmmmmm