What is the origin of instictive behavior to care for our kin?

It is common knowledge that there is an instinct which drives parents to care for their young. From evolutionary standpoint it is explained by the fact that parents are trying to make sure that their genes survive in their offspring. This same reasoning can be used to explain why people care about their brothers and sisters and the rest of their kin.Of course, if we were to ask a parent why they care for their child they would not say "because I am protecting my genes", rather they would say something along the lines of "What do you mean "why"? Its my baby and I love it!"So in this case, we are not motivated to behave in a certain way by evolutionary implications of our behavior, rather we are governed by an immediate instinct. From what I know that such a behavior would have to be genetic in nature, as opposed to being learned, much like eating when hungry. After all, a mother doesn't need to learn that caring for her child is the thing to do, she simply acts according to her instinct.My question is how did this instinct come to be? Was there a time in evolution, when organisms didn't have this instinct? Would an organism X number of years ago not have an instinct to protect its offspring? Was it that at one point a mutation occurred which made organisms care for their offspring and this behavior made the organism so overwhelmingly more successful at making sure its genes survive that it quickly muscled out all other organisms that didn't have this instinct? Or was this instinct present from the very beginning. Did the very first cell ever to reproduce have an instinct to protect its offspring?

How is that?

Hi RAZD,That makes sense. Its like, the time that organs complete their development after birth decrease the time that has to be spent in the womb, which allows offspring to be born sooner. And its allowed by the fact that parents takes care of their children for some time after birth. Sound about right?

It seems that animals that don't have the luxury (or rather the capacity) to lay thousands of eggs over their lifetime and hope for some of the them to survive due to luck, need to make sure that most of their eggs survive to become self supporting organisms. Because larger animals usually don't produce as many fertilized eggs they have to make as many of the count as they can. They have all their eggs in one basket so to speak. Which is why they care for their young.Not to say that there are no counter-examples to this principle. (which there probably are)

Alright. That makes sense so far.So now to extand this behavior to include all kin. How does it exactely occur? Is it that organisms that use r-stratagy care for all their kin or just their offspring?Why do we care for our kin without realizing that the reason for it is actually to protect our genes? I understand that this behavior has been evolutionarily ingrained in us, therefor no realization of the underlying reason is neccesssery. But how did this behavior first arise? Why did the organisms which first started to exhibit this kind of behavior all of the sudden felt the need to protect their kin. I just can't wrap my head around how genes can make an organism aware that protecting another organism is necessary in order to help save copies of the genes belonging to that organism.