Claim. Parental love is non-zero-sum: distributing it across many children does not divide it but enlarges the parent’s capacity. This is precisely what conjugal love cannot do — the vertical/horizontal asymmetry of csg-parental-love-as-essential-and-unchanging-form shows up here as a difference in the economics of love, not just its structure.
Elaboration. The empirical observation is offered as evidence of an underlying principle: “Although people may not understand this, parents who have raised many children can see that their heart of love is wide, large, and deep. People who have raised many children can feel on their own that they cannot strike even their wicked enemies. They are standing on that broad a foundation and living according to that broad a law” (3.2. Parents’ love is complete even after being shared over and over again, 51-318, 1971.12.5).
The theological grounding is direct: loving children is “inheriting God’s great work of creation on the horizontal, substantial level. We are feeling the joy God felt after creating Adam and Eve. We are inheriting God’s love and God’s authority to create” (ibid, 76-45, 1975.1.26).
The cross-cultural claim — that western valorization of conjugal love above parental love is mistaken — is made bluntly: “Which is greater, conjugal love or the love between parents and child? Western people think that conjugal love is greater. But that is not so. Love for a child is greater than the love between husband and wife … the love of parents and child is the center and vertical, and follows the road that is close to the heavenly law” (ibid, 90-84, 1976.12.19).
The economics matters apologetically: the Western intuition that “spreading love thin” weakens it is treated as a horizontal-love category mistake applied to vertical love.
See also. csg-true-love-grows-by-investment