Anyone who fathers a child who "will never lover her father half as much as he loves her" is either doing it very, very wrong, or has a psychopath for a daughter. There are no other possible explanations for such a daughter.

Make that, "will never love her father..." Anyone whose daughter will never lover her father is doing it right.

Parents absolutely expect their children to love them back. Good parents accept that sometimes it doesn't happen and take it in stride.

I dunno @1, imho Charles is right. Parents almost inevitably love their children more than their children love them. That doesn't mean the kids don't love the parents at all (as the weird Earth/Sun analogy suggests?) but only that it's not an equal reciprocation.

And then you have your own kids and the cycle repeats...

@4 - Exactly. It's just how it is.

@ 4, that may be true in many, even most cases, but Charles has stretched it beyond the breaking point. Well, that's how a good troll works...

Oh Jesus Christ, just shut up about your parenting hang-ups already. I'm sorry reproduction has been such a bummer for you, but believe it or not, most of us actually have the ability to love our families fairly effortlessly.

I hate my mother, had to live with my birth family until I was 18 to ... still hate my mother, and according to society she was the "perfect" mother.

Oh Charles, you've done it again.

Yadda, yadda, parents vs. children's love... whatever.

But WTF is with the doctor peeling his skin off without anesthesia? What kind of fucked up doctor would do such a thing?

Thanks for the nightmares, Mudede.

it's ron paul's ideal!

Children should never love their parents as much as they love them. A parent whose world revolves around their children is a great thing, a child whose world revolves around their parents is in need of help.

The next time breeders demand that I won't have anyone to take care of me in my old age, I'll point them to this post. Thanks, Mudede, for once you were useful.

Agree w/@11 - wrong focus here. The idea of a doctor proceeding with the skin peeling sans anesthesia trumps the parent/child love issue. Ugh.

The article states that the father opted to take a local anesthetic rather than general due to it being a lower-cost option, and that he wanted to be awake for her operation. Sounds like a financial decision not altogether uncommon in this country as well. Also, I'd throw myself in front of a bus if it meant saving my daughter's life. That's the way it works.

In my nursery school, we learned that children were the clouds, and the parent was the rain. I disagreed though, and argued that the parent was the ocean, and the children were the coral. Of course this has nothing to do with the Chinese man and his daughter. ----agree with 11 & 15

@9: That explains a lot.

Today, you are a douche grasshopper.

This story sounds odd. I'd think that general anesthesia would be a minor part of the costs of performing a skin graft.

Eat a dick, Mudede.

per @21, i call bullshit on this story.

Children are not the greatest waste of love. The idea of a"waste of love" is laughable. Love affects the person who feels it far more than the beneficiary of said emotion. I love my children, I take care of them, they benefit from my love, but I benefit more. Look at the studies about care-takers and happiness, positive emotions and stress-reduction.

Who cares if the kids aren't going to love back equally? It's not about them. It's about me.

It always is.

Ron Paul 2012!

More painful - autografting without general anesthesia, or reading Mudede's musings? You be the judge.

Do your kids read your writing? I sure as hell wouldn't love a father that said that kind of crap about loving me.

@29, my mom says shit like that. I still hate Chuckles' musings more than hers though.

@ 14, any smart breeder will laugh in your face when you show them this in response to that. See @ 1 for why.

13 "A parent whose world revolves around their children is a great thing"

Save me from such people.

(I do have two kids, who I like and love, but, I don't worship them, they're just flawed humans like the rest of us.)

Love is never a waste.

So even in the socialist paradise of China, people still cannot afford healthcare? I wonder what the implications of this are for America. Is it possible we're screwed with or without Universal Healthcare?

While it is true that a parent's love probably exceeds the child's love back, in most cases a child's love for her mother and father is nonetheless deep and vast and magical and everything it should be.

Charles - You need to re-read 'Guess how much I love you' with your daughter. I'm going to do it tomorrow night at bedtime with my kids.

And you are underestimating the ability of kids to love. Adults just fuck it up by making it an empirical thing.

@33 I don't mean in the creepy over-obsessed my kids are perfect kind of way. I mean in the make sacrifices for their well-being and devote considerable energies towards them sort of way.

Blog readers can never love blog writers as much as the writers love them. The writers give and give and give with no hope or expectation that their generosity will be reciprocated.

@35 Since when is China a socialist paradise? I am pretty sure China is ironically one of the least regulated free markets in the world. In part this is because the government owns part of most companies that operate there. Those who stand to gain a profit make poor regulators. In China there often is no outside force to regulate industries. Private enterprise separates profit motive from the regulating body, unless we let them " Police themselves." Which always seems to work out so well...

Regardless of whether fees can be afforded or not, no ethical doctor would ever do such a thing without anesthesia. That is ****ed up!

@ 21 & 24, first off the skin grafting part of the operation was the point so one might do everything possible to scrape together the money for that but not for the "extras". Secondly, general is very costly - first you need all the drugs, then you need an anesthesiologist to calculate the amounts needed and then to administer the drugs properly. You then need the anesthesiologist and usually a nurse anesthesist to monitor the patient for the duration of the procedure, to make sure the patient never goes into distress, etc. Assuming nothing goes wrong you again need them to wake you back up. And then you need all kind of aftercare. And, in this case it may have been purely about cost, but general is dangerous. My physician father has had major surgery without general because he refuses to go under and risk his brain.

Oh, and @ 42, he did it without general anesthesia not without anesthesia. Big difference. Also, more fun facts!, general anesthesia doesn't work for everyone. For some people they just end up in a seemingly sleeplike state unable to call out but able to feel and hear everything that's going on. I'd rather have local and be able to talk to my docs than have general and feel everything and not be able to tell them that.

There is no such thing as wasted love.
On the other hand.

Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

@38 - oh, ok, cool!

@39 lol

@44 I've heard general anesthesia may work that way for everyone, except that most people get an amnesiac aspect that makes them forget what happened.

Charles is right that parents will love their children more than the children love back. It's the nature order of things. Those children will grow up to shower their own with a greater love than they receive back.

But Charles is a dumbfuck for saying this means children are the a waste of love. A dumbfuck who I would keep away from children.

They are a waste because they do not reciprocate with the same quanitity/value? Do you demand equal exchange for something to be worthwhile? That is an extreme capitalist/corporatecracy view of the world, Charles. Hand in your socialist card. (Hand in your children while you're at it, too.)

What @47 said. But I have to say, my kids when they were younger repeatedly threw themselves on me in an absolute expression of love. Most kids really do adore their parents for much of their lives. Of course, I love, love, love my kids, but they do have a way of really giving themselves over in uninhibited love.

Parental love is meant to be paid forward, not back.