Empathy for kids but not adults?

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I've started to notice that I seem to have a great deal of empathy for kids and much less for adults.
I noticed this when I was watching The Siege the other day. It was the part where they terrorist took over the school and had hostages. The FBI was looking in the room with the fiber optic cable and at the end of that scene it showed a little girl crying. I suddenly felt really angry towards the terrorist. I wanted to kick his ass!

But I didn't really feel anything when anyone else died or was hurt in the movie. I started to realize that I felt that way with most movies.

I have a huge amount of empathy when I see or hear about kids getting hurt, but not very much for adults.

Anyone else feel this way?

I don't have empathy for humans at all, but lots for animals and nature. The sight of places getting grubbed and leveled for another mall nobody actually needs makes me sad and sometimes cry, but i never felt anything about starving African kids or the victims of holocaust. Can even enjoy a meal at the same time without it affecting my appetite.

That's something i should have said in the first post. I also have a lot of empathy towards animals. It's a bit of a contradiction because i'm an avid hunter. If i don't make a quick and clean kill I'll feel bad for days because the animal suffered more. BTW, I ONLY hunt an animal if i intend to eat it. I hate the idea of hunting for pure sport.

I used to be the opposite. I have empathy for adults, but not kids. Well, not anymore, really, but when I was really young, I had empathy for adults, but not kids. I honestly felt more comfortable with adults than kids when I was little, which is probably why.

I have an equal amount of empathy for both now. The amount of empathy I have for a person tends to be about:

1. How much I like them

2. The situation (situations such as hair pulling, don't trigger an empathetic reaction for me, as someone being upset because someone was mean to them does, for example)

I said in another topic:

Animals > inanimate objects > people.

I think kids would fit somewhere in the middle. Kids are more innocent than adults in general, but not always.

If someone forced me, at gunpoint, to punch a kid or an adult in the face, I'd choose the adult. I think most people would make that choice.

Yea I'm like this too, probably because I tend to understand kids far better than adults normally.

There is a reason those hunger relief ads show pictures of starving and dirty children instead of adults in the same situation. It's pretty normal for a human to empathize more with the young more than with the old. That is also why Medicare will disappear well before Medicaid ever does.

I think it's pretty common. It probably has something to do with children being more innocent and vulnerable. Children also generally can't fight or defend themselves the way adults can and adults know when someone is doing something wrong whereas children don't.

I find that if I'm watching a movie or reading a book that tells the story of someone's life it is generally easy for me to empathise with the character while they are a child and looking for things like friendship and comfort.

When that character "comes of age" and starts to develop ambition and confidence, fall in love and make their own way in the world I find it harder to empathise. I guess that this is where their lives diverge from mine. I get left behind.

Aren't we confusing Empathy for sympathy here?