Does Parenthood Make Us Better People?

I read a great article recently — recommended in my Facebook feed of course — from a female executive, publicly apologizing to all the mothers she had worked with prior to becoming a mother herself. She humbly recognized that she had made unreasonable assumptions about their ambition, made unreasonable demands as their boss, and above all lacked empathy. After becoming a mother herself and dealing with the tension of trying to be a perfect parent while having a successful career, she came to see the world through a more sympathetic lens.

The article got me thinking — does becoming a parent universally make us better people? Does having a child make us more empathetic and compassionate? No one would argue with the fact that parenthood is transformational. I have observed overwhelmingly warm feelings in even the coldest of friends, both male and female, on the arrival of their first child.

People have varying degrees of compassion — whether by nature or nurture — and I am always in admiration of acts of compassion or selflessness. Helping an elderly stranger cross the road, returning a wallet left in the back of a taxi, nursing a friend or a family member…. These acts restore my faith in humanity.

From an evolutionary perspective, selflessness is ingrained in our innate desire to survive and pass on our genes. In an extreme sense, however, this same argument seems to require that a compassionate act would be carried out only if it also serves one’s own self interest — in this case, personal survival. But I don’t like to believe that this is the only definition. Among my wonderfully generous friends and total strangers, I see acts of selflessness every day that I can’t rationalize into this mental model. Like just this morning when a Good Samaritan helped our intern Allison fix her flat tire.

Parents, on the other hand, suddenly have a charge in their care, a baby fully dependent on them and carrying the genes they successfully passed on. So from an evolutionary point of view, it does make sense for parenthood to make us more compassionate and selfless.

This piece was originally posted at VersaMe.com. VersaMe created the Starling the world’s first wearable engagement tracker that helps encourage and reinforce positive parenting behaviors.