If “maternal instinct” is a synonym for wanting to devote your life to something, or be absorbed in someone other than yourself, then fine. But its having been invented in the first place means there’s no reason such an instinct can’t be invented differently, including in men. Men may not yet be able to biologically bear children (though how far off can that day be, or Firestone’s dream of test tube offspring?), but when women no longer have an exclusive relation to such things, no doubt raising children will become a more socially valued enterprise, and everyone will be far happier about the
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