This is true about pets (the sexual minority thing might be visible but rare is the woman who is giving it much mindshare).
But the real maternal instinct still usually kicks in when the kids come. The demotion pets receive upon a child being born is a remarkable thing to see. One of my friends' wives agreed to straight up give away her "fur baby" after the real baby came (to be fair, the dog was a poorly-behaved, unhousebroken, yappy little thing, and my friend wasn't a dog guy and especially not a yappy little dog guy; she had the dog from before they met).
When I take my dog to the vet, sometimes I feel like an outsider there now because everyone is so dog-crazy (and I imagine those people are the bread-and-butter of that business). I like my dog, but I place the value of her life closer to that of my living room TV than that of my children. Meanwhile the vet talks to me like she's a pediatrician and this is my only child, not like someone just trying to show basic decency to an animal under his care that will be dead within a few years.
I think a lot of the maternal instinct has been sublimated to pets and sexual minorities.
This is true about pets (the sexual minority thing might be visible but rare is the woman who is giving it much mindshare).
But the real maternal instinct still usually kicks in when the kids come. The demotion pets receive upon a child being born is a remarkable thing to see. One of my friends' wives agreed to straight up give away her "fur baby" after the real baby came (to be fair, the dog was a poorly-behaved, unhousebroken, yappy little thing, and my friend wasn't a dog guy and especially not a yappy little dog guy; she had the dog from before they met).
When I take my dog to the vet, sometimes I feel like an outsider there now because everyone is so dog-crazy (and I imagine those people are the bread-and-butter of that business). I like my dog, but I place the value of her life closer to that of my living room TV than that of my children. Meanwhile the vet talks to me like she's a pediatrician and this is my only child, not like someone just trying to show basic decency to an animal under his care that will be dead within a few years.
"San Francisco, for example, is home to nearly 150,000 dogs but just 115,000 children under age 18"
https://www.city-journal.org/article/are-cities-going-to-the-dogs
This story in First Things is a devastating portrayal of the pain involved in multiply split and recombined families: "Three Christmas Dinners"
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/02/three-christmas-dinners