Love for children is similar in many ways to love for mates. It is usually more giving, since the child is often in need of help and the parent usually provides much help, especially at early years. Love between parents and children are asymmetrical. It has a component of unconditional love. Most unconditional is typically love of grandparents. Grandparents are often wiser and give more pure love to their grandchildren than parents.
There is also a component of learning in the parenting experience. Every human child is unique - a child is a result of a unique combination of genes, unique soul and unique experiences. The parents and the child together are building a new personality. For every child it feels like the first time ever. It is like creating a new world. There are amazing opportunities and the influence of the parents if very strong. Their personalities and choices are strongly affecting the personality of the child.
Here is an example. My child received a new toy for a birthday present. It was a simplistic cheaply made plastic toy symbolizing a torch from Minecraft, his favorite computer game. This torch has batteries, electric LED lights and a switch. It is very much a night light with batteries. The toy made my son really happy. He was much happier having this toy than from many other things he received before. It symbolized for him something good in his imagination. I can only guess that it in a way connected his physical experience with his imaginary world of Minecraft and this way his physical life became more enjoyable. I noticed that my influence as a parent was huge in this case. I strongly support his playing and learning Minecraft for many reasons. First, it is a quite creative game - children build houses and other installations in virtual reality. It is better than many other games which are competitive and violent. Second, Minecraft is an arising culture that is more proactive than the traditional culture of watching children's TV which is also promotes the spirit of violence and competition. Third, Minecraft is largely a social game: people communicate in it; they build things together. My two sons make me really happy by building sophisticated automated installations together. On the negative side, I use Minecraft as an alternative to communicating with the kids personally. Instead, I work on my other projects and avoid direct playing with my kids. It takes much energy and requires being in good shape. Subsequently, I gave a few instructions to my son on how to use the toy and they created excessive fears in him. I simply told him to turn the torch off when not used to conserve batteries and not to flip its fixture part too much because it will eventually break off. This traumatized my son a bit; he rarely turns the toy on, and is telling others not to flip the fixture. He is likely much affected by gloom and doom in my family caused by our financial problems. Life with a sense of poverty and with a sense of lack of resources is traumatizing him. This is sad and I need to do something to heal him from these traumas. Writing this book is part of this effort.