Children Abbreviations

In almost the entire non-Western world, having many children is a necessary form of life insurance. Who else should take care of the parents in their old age? Having many children also gives status. In the non-Western world, they don’t understand it when Westerners say they don’t want children. How can you reject such a gift from God? For example, if an elderly Indonesian asks if you already have children, you can say: ‘Not yet, God willing they will come’. Your respectful reply will be appreciated.

Westerners think about having children in terms of planning and conscious will. It happens more to non-westerners, it is more by chance or the will of God, or the fate that determines your life.

A current question in the Middle East is whether children need parental consent to become suicide bombers. No way, according to Mustafa Utman Achmed Mohammed Abu-el-Jazid: parents should not form a barrier between their children and paradise.

Most Muslims do not agree with him and believe that children who want to become martyrs need the permission of their father. Imam El Sharif Sayyed even states that children who want to become suicide bombers need permission from both father and mother. Emancipation continues, also in unsuspected places. Mammals must love their children. Almost all of them have a short nose, a high forehead, a round face and large eyes when they are babies. Those features release dopamine. That substance makes you more caring. ‘Whoever has no lovely children, verily knowsnot that he is alive,’ wrote the man, who also wrote the shortest poem in the Dutch language: ‘hindering children’.1 But children grow up and nature has left a stitch there. Even when children have grown up and become independent, their noses are longer, their faces are less round and their eyes are proportionally smaller, parents continue to love them. But the children have their own lives. The parents then miss their children and the children (sometimes) feel guilty because they do not visit their parents often enough. It would be better if parental love ceased when a child matures, P. said. He noted, however, that nature has not yet reached that stage, and probably will not. The larger a mammal’s brain, the longer the gestation and suckling time. Human evolution is moving towards bigger brains. If parental love remains associated with it, we will (have to) continue to love our children for longer; even if the dopamine stops flowing. Our brain size causes us many problems. (See: Anxiety and Communicating)

Linguistically, the relationship between parents and children is also complicated.2 Maternal love refers to the mother’s love for her child. Not turned around. You rarely hear of paternal love, and the word child love is only common in Greek. But pedophilia is the wrong childhood love.

List of Acronyms Related to Children