LOVE: MOTHER AND CHILD LOVE
In a sense this fragmentary approach is inevitable because love is indefinable, means different things to different people (and even to the same people at different times of their lives) and subtly affects many of the areas of life we have covered.
Mother and child love-Clearly there is a bond of vital importance between a young mammal and its mother, especially in the earliest days and weeks. This is true of human infants, though research into the subject is very difficult to carry out in an ethically acceptable way. But enough work has been done with babies who have been separated from their mothers in
non-experimental situations for us to gauge the effects.
A baby must be cared for in order to survive and, like certain other animals, human mothers are genetically programmed to respond to their new-born offspring’s behaviour. A baby continually tries to attract the mother’s (and later the father’s) attention to make sure that she is aware of his or her needs. As she cares for him or her in response to these needs, she’ll talk to him or her, smile, cuddle and play. In return the baby will stop crying, listen intently, gaze at her face (and eyes in particular), keep quite still or sometimes kick in a certain way, and smile or coo at her.
At around three months, it is clear that the baby recognises his mother. He or she has an extra special smile for her and within a few months will cry when she leaves him or her, or if a stranger approaches. The baby is said at this stage to be ‘attached’ to his mother and treats her in a special way, clearly liking her more than anyone else. He is now in love with her and responds very badly to losing her as his love object. If his mother does not look after him or her, the baby becomes attached to whoever does. Whoever brings them up, babies form an attachment to one person in particular (if given the opportunity to) by between six and twelve months. Babies brought up in institutions by many caretakers can become confused and even emotionally deprived. This is why it is always best for one particular person to be responsible for a baby for much of the time.
It is well known that a baby can become attached to people other than his mother. Babies can, in fact, form multiple attachments. This is obvious, but can be forgotten when one talks in psychological jargon. However many people a baby is attached to, there is always a favourite (usually the mother). If she is not there, someone else will do and the baby will turn to the person next on the list of his own personal hierarchy – it may be his father, sister, granny or nanny, for example. Although they are ‘second best’ in his or her attachment league they are still very important to him or her.
When babies or young children are with several people to whom they are attached, they automatically choose to be with the one they are most attached to. For instance, if a baby is tired or falls over and both his or her mother and nanny are there, he or she will want to be comforted by the mother if he or she is most attached to her. One thing is certain and that is that a stranger will not do. A baby does not become instantly attached to someone new but takes time to get to know them.
It is the emotional aspects of the baby’s attachment experience that are most important and this is true of all love-bonds. One person may take physical care of him or her – feeding, washing and keeping him or her warm, for example – but if another person is the one who mainly reacts in a loving way (even if only for a short time each day), the baby will become attached to that person. Active and responsive interaction with a baby is what counts and sensitive responsiveness to the quality most likely to further attachment. Usually of course, the person who gives a baby this also meets his or her physical needs, besides comforting him through anxiety, fear, illness and tiredness.
It is through a baby’s first love with the person to whom he or she is attached that he or she learns to love other people. The more adequately the emotional needs are met, the better able he or she will be to respond lovingly to others in turn.
A child can become attached (or remain attached) to someone even though he or she may treat him or her very inconsistently or even harshly. This explains why a baby or young child who is sometimes physically or emotionally hurt by the mother will still cling to her when in the company of others. It seems that it is better for children to have someone to be attached to, however he or she treats them, than to have no one special to call their own.
Almost all of this attachment form of love arises because young babies rely totally on their mothers (or other close people) to answer their needs and cravings. This makes it very important, in our view, that such needs are met lovingly, unconditionally and promptly by the attached adult figure, so that the baby thinks well of the world from day one of life. Although it is extremely difficult to prove what the effects of poor mother-baby love are in later life, and there is little doubt that even quite severe harm in this area can be repaired in later childhood, we feel safe in stating that a really responsive, loving relationship must be the best way of starting off life.
It is fairly obvious that babies can either grow up knowing they are loved and loving someone else or they can grow up with feelings of anger, resentment, frustration and sadness because they have not experienced such love. This is a totally dependent form of love and one which most people can easily understand. It also raises another important concept when discussing love and that is caring.
One way in which we can recognise love (even if we cannot define it) is to watch people’s behaviour. This shows that whatever they love, they care for. It matters to them what happens to it. They are prepared to make sacrifices for it. They jealously guard it in the face of threats and they want the best for it. So it is with mother-love. A mother knows all these feelings and recognises them as a part of the complex emotion, we call love. The baby cannot, of course, realise such things but knows, even before he can express himself, what love means to him.
Every love experience in life to some extent takes us back to our first childhood experience. Indeed, it is the very aspect of love that many people find so difficult. In every adult loving relationship there are seeds of child-like love, yet many adults fight them, thinking that adult love, linked as it so often is to genitality, is something apart.
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