Blood Relatives

[Minute]

Is there any biological reason for a connection to a direct blood relative? If you never new your mother or father & met them at the age of 20 would you feel a connection? If you do, is that purely psychological?

[Taxious]

I see no ties between me and my family other than appreciating everything they have done for me. I have some sticklers in the family too and I don't feel any remorse for never knowing them.

If I'm meeting my parents for the first time at age 20 no special "connection" would be there other than physically knowing what they did for me.

[Ddrak]

I'd figure there may be some weird "connection" given the genetic similarity of your brain's wiring, but it would likely be a very subconscious recognition of the similarity rather than a conscious one (the conscious mind tends to be far more shaped by experience than genetics, afaik).

Dd

[Select]

It's also hard to separate any claims of a "true connection" from claims that stem from societal values. Society and pop culture really push that mom/dad/kid bond. It would be hard to tell if anything was "true" or just ingrained expectations/desires.

As an example: It's pretty taboo and you get some shocked reactions when you hear that a mom doesn't love their kid. It happens, though.

[Arathena]

Even the subconscious mind tends to be very heavily wired by experiences - the brain, in early childhood tends to make many, many more connections in the neural net than it will have in adulthood, and lets the underused connections atrophy away. Things that appear to be genetically programmed, are, to my understanding, partly influenced by the available structures that the brain can use to grow, as well as the available input from the body, where receptors, etc, are also restricted by available protiens. Where there is a brain defect, such as autism, ADD, dyslexia, etc, there tends to be a mutation in a protien somewhere.

[Fobbon Lazyfoot]

Most K-selected species like humans have very strong familial ties. It is definitely evolutionarily advantageous to recognize and bond with close genetic relatives.

That being said, its not going to be the same for everyone. I've met my sister once and she doesn't give two shits about my side of the family. My g/fs mother drove 500 miles every few weeks to take care of a heroin addict because she was her long-lost biological mother. If you feel it, then you feel it.

[Select]

Yeah. In the end, like Fobbon said, I think it's how you're socialized and how you approach the world.