While shopping before the holiday in December, looking at parenting books at the bookshop, I saw this boy–small boy–and he crying, or whining really, and my heart began to ache. I mean, I ache so instinctively like a when a mother hears another crying child and she begins to lactate. My soul responds just so, like a physiological recoil.
And it’s only this analogy that works because of its maternal implications–why do we understand mothers more than fathers–for there is not a parallel for paternal response.
