I love sea horses. I am sure it is because of their heads because I even loved them after I saw all the different kinds of sea horse there are even to those that look like bits of floating seaweed. And I was very interested when learning about their habits that the male and female fertilise eggs and then the male takes them into a pouch and brings them to birth. I know a few women who would think that a good idea. At first marine biologists thought the male might be giving birth until they studied it more closely – which probably meant cutting one to bits. For some reason we still view dissection as study.
I am interested in the dynamics of society and in how human beings choose to live with each other, and part of the psychology of the give-and-take of human life is revealed in language. The modern man, (everyone who has ever lived has been a modern so I guess this is a shorthand for something people think is new) takes a share in rearing children. The ‘division of labour’ – a phrase itself which shows how we think of parenting.
However we do concentrate on the ‘physical’, the woman gives birth, the male should be there to help out, the tax issue, the childcare issue. We don’t give as much importance to the emotional and psychological. We are changed when we become parents. Tragically sometimes those changes do not happen.
If we could dissect our thoughts as readily as we dissent nature, society would be the stronger for it.