I missed this. Had my head in the sand. It's not clear from what I wrote which direction the manipulation was going when the epiphany occurred.

Here was this small, completely helpless animal that would have died if I hadn't cared for it. As he got older, he began to exhibit a behavior that is commonly referred to as 'flirting' -- starts with smiling. The response in the mother's body is a release of oxytocin. Children don't just flirt with their parents; they also do it with strangers. To be short, the more people a small, helpless human can charm into caring for it, the more likely it is to survive. It's hard to believe that a child's first smile at around one month of age is a learned behavior. This leads me to believe that we're naturally wired to try to control each other to our advantage.

Sure, there's a line where that stops being moral, but those borders are cultural.