An Exploration of Love - Parental Love

In the last post we discussed self-love. In this post we will explore parental love and see how it can impact one’s ability for self-love.

I have worked with several clients who have lost their child. Talking to those who have been through such an experience, truly makes you appreciate the incredibly strong and unconditional bond most parents have to their children. The love for your child is a unique, unbreakable emotion. However, there are gender difference, demonstrated through emerging research, in parental love. These differences seem linked to our ability to manifest both types of self-love detailed in the previous post. The research in this area does not apply to all parents, but certainly most.

Firstly, motherly love. A mother forms a strong bond to her child, even before the child is born. To a child, a mother’s love communicates comfort, warmth and safety. A mother’s love is unconditional; it is not bound to anything other than your being. In this way, mother’s can experience a strong sense of meaning through their children, which is possibly why, on the whole, mothers struggle more than fathers when their children leave home. Experiencing this unconditional love, allows one to absorb and imitate it towards oneself; love of oneself today.

A father’s love, though also unconditional, is not always communicated as such. Fathers, more than mothers, demonstrate challenging parenting behaviour (CPB). This is when a father pushes their child to do something currently just out of their ability, to take risks in the aid of development and to rough-and-tumble play. Through CPB, fathers communicate a stronger love for a child’s potential. Through absorption of this fatherly love, one learns love for themselves tomorrow (as discussed in the previous post). Fatherly love has also been closely associated with security in emergency: during emergency situational, children will track their fathers’ eyes and imitate his behaviour.

We can see how the combination of these two types of parental love are so complimentary. A child who experiences both, will feel comfortable, safe, secure, and will care for themselves across time. Similarly, a child who does not experience one of these types of parental love, may be less likely to have absorbed such love and demonstrate it to themselves.

Fortunately, such love demonstrated by another trusted adult – grandparents, aunties and uncles, group leaders, teachers etc, can all play a role in mitigated the disadvantage one would experience from a lack of one of these parental types.

Unfortunately, in our withering communities and distanced families, it is much less common today to have a number of people regularly involved in a child’s life who can communicate such forms of love to them.