Raising or caring for children requires sacrifice and service, which, I believe, heals us from the destructive forces of self-centeredness.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Caring for children is a dance between setting appropriate limits as caretakers and avoiding unnecessary power struggles that result in unhappiness.
In giving us children, God places us in a position of both leadership and service. He calls us to give up our lives for someone else's sake - to abandon our own desires and put our child's interests first. Yet, according to His perfect design, it is through this selflessness that we can become truly fulfilled.
Parenthood is such a lesson in self-sacrifice.
Positive social emotions like compassion and empathy are generally good for us, and we want to encourage them. But do we know how to most reliably raise children to care about the suffering of other people? I'm not sure we do.
Raising children uses every bit of your being - your heart, your time, your patience, your foresight, your intuition to protect them, and you have to use all of this while trying to figure out how to discipline them.
All children are born pure egoists. They perceive their needs to the exclusion of all others. Only through socialization do they learn that some forms of gratification must be deferred and others denied.
Even if you were aware of children and felt compassion, when you have your own, it multiplies. It breaks your heart to know that there are so many children in the world suffering so much.
The self-sacrificing, servant aspect of the Christian life has many parallels to parenthood.
Caring for your inner child has a powerful and surprisingly quick result: Do it and the child heals.
Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.