What Eagles Can Teach Us About Parenting
If we are smart enough to do the hard thing
Eagles are beautiful and majestic creatures. I have always admired their grace, stealth, and power. What I didn’t realize is that they had something powerful to teach me about parenting. Eagles co-parent, working as a team from building the nest to watching the last one fly away. Co-parenting is uncommon in the animal world. When the female is sitting on the nest, the male goes off to hunt for food and often shares with his sitting mate. He also gives her a break from time to time, and he sits on the nest while she goes off to hunt or enjoy time away from the business of egg-sitting.
Once the eaglets hatch, the male eagle primarily hunts to feed them in the earliest stages. However, growing eaglets demand more and more food, so soon, both parents have to hunt to keep the little darlings fed. Eagles are protective of their young, and biologists have observed that when both parents are hunting, they seem to trade off who will stay close to the nest if there is trouble.
Those are all fascinating facts about eagles, but what does it have to do with my lessons about parenting? It is what happens when the time draws closer for the juvenile eagles to leave the nest. The mom feeds them less. They squawk and complain, but she is trying to entice them to leave…