Economic self-interest explanations of parental love predate Sade by millennia

Evidence

Dolmance provides the materialistic disenchantment of parental love: “These bonds derive from parents’ fear that they will be deserted in their old age; and the degree of care which they show us in our infancy is intended to bring them the same attention in their dotage.” Sade’s argument is as ancient as bourgeoisie. Even Democritus denounced human parental love as economically founded. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 91

Categorization

• SHARE: Democritus already reducing parental affection to old-age insurance — worth sending to anyone interested in ancient materialism or the genealogy of rational-choice thinking.
• XREF: Direct ancestor of Modern Evolutionary game-theory accounts of kin altruism; also echoes Trivers’s reciprocal-altruism logic. — connects to: Enlightenment radicalism exceeds even de Sade in its ruthlessness about society — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 496
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Enlightenment radicalism exceeds even de Sade in its ruthlessness about society — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 496