When asked about the meaning of love, most people associate the word with two sentiments:
A desire to be with the loved one, considered as a source of powerful attraction;
Feelings of concern, care and protection towards the loved one.
Theoretical definitions of love, found in books, emphasize the second feeling, that is, the benevolent, generous side of love. In my 20-year experience as a psychotherapist working with couples and families, I have heard thousands of complaints from persons who feel they are insufficiently loved, who wish to be conferred more love. On the other hand, I have met very few people discontented because they are unable to love more or to dedicate themselves more to their loved ones.
While in ideal terms loving is giving, in reality loving means receiving: we desire that our partners empathize with us, care about us and put our welfare before their own. We are a naturally egotistical species, at least most of the time but not always.
Throughout centuries maternal love has been sang as the most universal emotion, a feeling that is both carnal and spiritual, perhaps the strongest and most deeply-rooted emotional tie developed by humankind. Many scholars, Freud and Jung included, have written about the mother-child bond as the quintessence of all loving relationships. This bond has a basically giving, altruistic side - that of the caring mother - and an essentially receptive, incorporative side - that of the clinging child.
Motherly love is the breath of life that makes a child human and shapes its identity, making it unique, a subject who experiences an "I am loved, therefore I am" situation long before "I think, therefore I am" arises. Throughout one's life love retains the function of revealing one's identity as a human being, because the existence of each one is impossible without the concrete and symbolic reality of the other.
The British psychoanalyst John Bowlby defines the first form of human love as "attachment." That is the most important form of love, because it constitutes the foundation of the others that succeed it. It binds an infant to its mother and involves:
The wish for closeness, especially when the child is in distress; The joy to be near the mother, to see and touch her; The need of the mother to dispel anxiety, fear and discomfort; Extreme anxiety at separation.
Does it seem similar to an adult's passion?
No wonder, since romantic love, with sexual connotations, shares several traits with a baby's attachment to its mother figure. A newborn child doesn't love anyone yet. However, it has an archetypal predisposition to link itself to a mother figure who will care for it in an altruistic way, tuned to its needs. Affective interaction during the first months gives rise to attachment, made obvious when the infant is about seven months old through behavior patterns such as the quest for closeness, joy of contact and resistance to separation. Even though attachment as an affective phenomenon involves the infant, it also reflects the sensitiveness of the one who cares for it.
Children cared for by stable mother figures who are sensitive, receptive and open to their natural demands of proximity and affection tend to develop a secure attachment. This bind presupposes a subliminal belief in the possibility of loving and being loved; the baby unconsciously perceives itself as lovable and its attachment figures as reliable. This makes the infant more trusting, confident and tranquil, as well as less whining and possessive easier to calm down when alarmed. Most important of all, it also provides the infant with a solid foundation to develop lasting, gratifying love relationships later in life. Studies have shown that some 65 percent of all children develop this pattern.
Unfortunately attachment relationships can deviate from the desirable and the healthy. Approximately 20 percent of children develop a pattern of insecure, avoidant attachment, which involves an unconscious perception of themselves as undeserving of love and of their attachment figures as rejecting and inaccessible. This pattern is preceded by situations of neglect, severe lack of consonance, and attachment to persons who shun physical contact or experience chronic difficulty in providing motherly care. Children with this affective style tend to be apparently cold, to avoid bodily caresses or emotional proximity and to experience difficulty in trusting and interacting in a loving way with other children and authority figures. In the absence of corrective experiences during their development, they tend to become adults with chronic problems of commitment and giving; they are cool and aloof, mistrustful and disposed towards poor, unstable love relationships. In the most severe cases, this pattern constitutes a predisposition to antisocial behavior and delinquency.
Another insecurity pattern, known as ambivalent, anxious attachment, is developed by 15 percent of children. It is marked by an unconscious belief that attachment figures are unstable, unpredictable and unreliable therefore they must be constantly watched and controlled to provide the closeness and attention levels deemed adequate. The children who show this pattern are possessive and demanding, with little tolerance of frustration (they always expect to be frustrated, therefore they can't stand any setbacks). On the other hand, they react with ambivalence to closeness, rejecting the mother figure when it is accessible; they are difficult to satisfy and tend to tire out the adults who care for them. This pattern usually is linked to parents or caretakers with unstable, unpredictable behavior, who are now receptive, now aloof or rejecting. It can also be fostered by separation, perhaps caused by long trips taken by the parents during the child's infancy or by threats of abandonment used as a means of discipline. Adults who maintain this style of affective bond tend to fall in love easily but to be disappointed quickly; they constantly worry about abandonment or insufficient proximity. They tend to establish possessive, unsatisfactory relationships.
All this makes clear that it is preferable for a child to have more than one attachment figure from whom he or she may derive security rather than depending exclusively on its mother who, being human, is subject to ups and downs and stumbling blocks. An infant attached to its father and grandparents, for instance, has more people to depend on. That is a natural condition in nonliterate and agrarian societies, but it is less frequent in industrial societies, in which the mother often is the child's sole attachment figure, rendering things difficult for both partics.
A reassuring fact is that human nature is quite plastic in infancy. Children who show attachment deviance can revert to a healthy development when their parents or caretakers comprehend their plight and manage to behave in a more accessible, receptive way in situations of anxiety and search for closeness. Changes of attitude on the part of attachment figures can modify a child's unconscious hypotheses on the workings of human relations and the possibility of loving and being loved.
It's no use trying to discipline children who show attachment disturbances. It is useless to punish children who are possessive and excessively clinging or aloof and ostensibly indifferent. Ignoring these attitudes won't bring results either. Being patient and investing in the child's affective security are the only methods that work; they are rewarding in the medium and long run, even if in the short term they seem tedious and time-consuming. Sometimes as little as 15 minutes of tender individualized attention in the morning and at night are sufficient to revert a situation of infantile affective insecurity. By the way, the same often is true in marital relations.
No parents are able to raise perfect, completely secure and reliant children. Maternity and paternity usually are the areas where we invest must and where we have the keenest sense of failure. However, it is always worthwhile to try and try again. This effort makes humankind better. Further, to each of us love, especially love for our children, is one of the sources - perhaps the principal one - of meaning in our lives. It's well worth the effort.
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