Joiner Flourishing Pathway Blog Seven - Love

In this blog we explore JFP Principle 7 – Love is both the fire that ignites a parent’s will to care, and the essential ingredient for infants to feel and know, throughout their infancy period. In previous blogs the discussions around autonomy have left us in a vexed place, which locates infants and parents in a conflict of need. Yet while the subject of autonomy is at the heart of our dilemma, logically, if it were the most necessary thing for us to have, we would not choose to have children at all. By choosing to have children, our lives necessarily change as we automatically become responsible for providing all the care needs to another human being during their greatest period of vulnerability. What ties us, and then keeps us together with our children is first generated by an overwhelming rush of hormones and the positive feelings that are generated at the birth of our child. Nothing else in our lives is so powerful.

And while any parent will automatically use the word love to express the way they feel about their child, the word itself is infrequently used by philosophers, neuroscientists, and attachment theorists in reference to parenting. Researchers and theorists will acknowledge that loving care is profoundly important to the infant and parent relationship, yet the word love is rarely used in their discussions; possibly because it is a word that is more readily associated with romantic love and ephemeral states.

While philosopher Blustein (1982) for instance, acknowledges that children should understand and experience intimate relationships with their parents, because they ‘afford us a uniquely significant pleasure’, and ‘allow us to communicate with and share elements of ourselves that would otherwise remain hidden’ (p. 219), he does not use the word love.

One philosopher who does acknowledge love is Solheim (1999), rightly arguing that love is a central component of the parent/child relationship. She says ‘that parental love is crucial for children’, and that it not only provides a ‘heartfelt warmth from parent to child’, but supports the child to feel valued, and provides ‘a sense of solidarity with the child’ (p. 2). Emotional warmth and connectedness are conferred upon children when their parents respond to them sensitively, when they are held lovingly, when they are caressed, and when parents engage in reciprocal dialogic interactions in unrushed, warm environments. This approach toward children is not just needed for a month or two, but during the whole of their development; however, it is most necessary during infancy when the brain is experiencing its most sensitive and rapid period of growth. And moreover, the exclusive parent/child relationship becomes the child’s intimate relationship ‘prototype’.

Such an environment, offers the child sanctuary, provides the feeling of love, and thus a sense of belonging and acceptance. Solheim (1999) describes further benefits of gaining this deep positive inner feeling of being loved

… children who are loved need not worry about whether or not their parents’ relationship with them is something on which they can rely. Children who are free of these kinds of worries can flourish in ways that children who are not as sure of their parents’ love cannot. Secure children are more likely to try out new experiences and not be as afraid of making mistakes; after all, their parents’ love for them is not conditional on their performance (p. 3).

I agree with Solheim, that an uncritical approach to the child enables them to be accepted for who they are. However, Solheim also argues that we should not accept that parents love their children when they repeatedly abuse, neglect or provide inadequate care (1999). She says that:

Parents who have a pattern of ignoring their children do not, in general, act with their children’s interests at heart. A workaholic parent, or a parent whose combined work and outside interests regularly squeeze out a child to the point of neglect, displays attitudes and behaviours that are incompatible with love (p. 14).

Solheim may be correct in saying that such behaviour is incompatible with love. However, it is not right to assert that parents who behave in such ways do not love their children. Parents almost always do feel the emotion of love for their children and want to raise them well; the problem lies not with an absence of the emotion of love but, with two issues. Firstly, the parent may not have experienced unconditional love in their family of origin and, although they feel the emotion of love for their children, they may not know how to express love successfully to the child so that it is felt. Such parents then have an inability to convey their love. Secondly, they may be overly punitive, angry, or emotionally destructive, thus undermining any love they may have previously imparted to the child. In my limited and anecdotal experience working with families as a social worker, I have found that the most neglectful and abusive parents say they do love their children, and I believe they do. However, the love the parent feels, may be expressed in clumsy and inappropriate ways, which is not felt as love by the child. Therefore, the two aspects of love – feeling and conveying - do not necessarily accompany each other. And parents are usually unaware that they are failing to deliver the kinds of internal feeling to the child which makes them feel loved. Looking to a synthesis of the ideas and evidence outlined previously, we can see that without the ability to effectively communicate love to our infants, they will not feel loved and thus fail to gain security of attachment and all the benefits that are associated with it.

Yet we know that love is what is communicated every time a parent responds sensitively, responsively, and dependably toward their infant. It is conveyed during the repair phase of dysregulation. It is conveyed during loving eye contact. It is conveyed during the playful to and fro interactions between parent and infant. It is conveyed during unrushed suckling at the breast. It is conveyed when we speak softly and affectionately. These are the factors which if experienced consistently over time enable the infant to gain a sense of security. Conversely, actions which cause fear, despite the presence of some of the markers of love, will negate love - and the perception of the child will be of a lack of love.

Fromm (1961) asserts that when there is an absence of love, people experience separateness and anxiety (p. 8). 

Being separate means being cut off, without any capacity to use my human powers. Hence to be separate means to be helpless, unable to grasp the world - things and people – actively: it means that the world can invade me without my ability to react. Thus, separateness is the source of intense anxiety. Beyond that, it arouses shame and the feeling of guilt (p. 8).

When a lack of love is felt, as Fromm articulates, we can begin to see why there are so many deficits that emanate from this. Fromm (1961) goes on to claim that ‘the deepest need of man here is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness’ (p. 9). If we review Fromm’s statements in tandem with the neuroscientific data discussed in previous blogs, the research tells us that infants are hardwired to connect, and to be separated from the one we love can cause intense anxiety. And this is precisely what is measured in many infants in childcare centres – high levels of stress.

What’s more, it is too much to expect others to love our children as we do (perhaps except for family members and some other close interpersonal relationships). Such others have not undergone the physiological processes or familial bonds that drive our love for our child – the kind of love that causes us to go ‘above and beyond’; therefore, the most we can expect from childcarers is that they care for our child with respect, safety, and sensitivity when indeed they have time to attend or to deliver care in a very perfunctory manner. I have shown that babies require more than care. Straight forward care may well be enough once the foundational neural networks have been established toward the end of the infancy period; however, until that time, infants need to be cared for by someone with the volition that love generates in order that they receive responsive, enduring, warm and constant nurturing and thus develop a sense of emotional security. As discussed in previous blogs, abuse and neglect are often passed intergenerationally, thus, I also suggest that some educational system is needed to support parents to gain the skills they need to successfully convey the love they already hold for their children, to circumvent their lifelong negative aspect of developing insecure attachment.

Join me in the next JFP Blog 8 on flourishing, where we explore the idea that if what we really want is that our infants to develop into flourishing adults, then it is important to look at the research which investigates the markers of flourishing individuals and examine how they match up with the delivery of nurturance to our infants.

Bibliography

Blustein, J 1982, Parents and children: The ethics of the family, Oxford University Press New York.

Fromm, E 1961, The art of loving, World perspectives: v. 8, London : Allen and Unwin, 1961.

Solheim, BP 1999, 'The Possibility of a Duty to Love', Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 1-17.