A dozen lessons in love: Part 4

I feel love

This was a song by the American singer Donna Summer. It was released in July 1977 and made it to No.1 in the UK charts and No.6 in the US. It is seen by many as kickstarting disco. I am very proud that it’s the first record I can remember buying. (I was a very uncool kid, but I reckon I’ve always had impeccable music taste.) The song is an absolute tune, but it doesn’t have the most profound lyrics. The upside of this is that it gives me licence to talk about pretty much any context within which people feel love, and I reckon it’s about time I spoke about parent-child relationships. We may not all be parents, but we have all had relationships as children with our parents or guardians and felt love of some kind from and towards them.

Attachment Theory developed by John Bowlby posits that parent–child interaction can also influence your subsequent romantic relationships. According to Bowlby, we belong to one of three attachment styles that we display as children: secure, preoccupied and avoidant. These were categorised according to how two-year-old children reacted in ‘Strange situation’ conducted by Mary Ainsworth, when their mother leaves the room and then returns. Securely attached infants typically experience distress when their mothers leave the room but seek them out on their return and are easily comforted. Children with a preoccupied attachment style experience distress following their parent’s departure but approach them on their return with some initial resistance. Avoidant children display no signs of distress when left by their parent and show little interest in their return. (A fourth attachment style – ‘disorganised’ – has been added more recently. This is characterised by behaviour such as approaching the mother with back turned upon her return.)

These early developing attachment styles are associated with adult intimacy. So those who develop secure attachment styles in early life tend to be more comfortable, secure and trusting in subsequent relationships. Those who develop preoccupied early attachment styles tend to worry about whether their partners love them and want to stay with them. Finally, those that develop avoidant early attachment styles tend to experience nervousness when forming new relationships and find that others tend to expect a higher level of closeness than they feel comfortable offering. But, as others have noted before me, we must be careful not to over-infer the extent of this impact; while attachment appears to have some effect, it is but one piece of a much larger jigsaw that determines our adult behaviour – and how we feel love.

Just as people shouldn’t feel pressured into having children they don’t really want, children shouldn’t feel pressured into staying in contact with parents who cause them misery. Yet we must really swim against a tidal wave of social narratives if we are to remove ourselves from family that really harms us. There are some awful parents out there, but their kids tolerate an enormous amount of suffering because “he’s still my dad” – and “I still love him”. We need to free ourselves from the narrative that we should put up with family treating us in ways we would not tolerate from partners or friends. Parents might think twice before behaving badly if they thought they might lose their child as a result. To some large extent, we treat other people as they allow us to treat them. So, if a parent knows that contact – and love – are not unconditional, then they have an incentive to modify their behaviour.

A parent’s love for their child is often taken to be unconditional when, in fact, the child often endures a parent’s bad behaviour towards them. It is true that a parent will often continue to love a child even if that child behaves appallingly: witness the number of mothers who will go and visit their sons who are in prison for rape, murder and other serious crimes. But a parent will often withdraw their emotional support from a child who is perceived to be treating them badly or who rejects their love. While a parent may forgive an adult child for causing other people great pain, they will be much less forgiving of even the slightest pain to them personally caused by that same child. None of us should feel under any obligation to maintain harmful relationships, be that with partners or parents.

I hadn’t expected to write what has turned out to be quite downbeat piece about the love between parent and child. For many, this dyad will be a splendored thing. Perhaps there isn’t so much that’s interesting to write about healthy and truly loving relationships between parents and children. They are just as they should be. The unconditional nature of the relationship is more interesting because whilst it can be comforting and a source of great joy for many, it can be coercive and a source of great misery for some. Unconditionality will surely have merits in some contexts, and not only those relating to love. But on balance, I reckon the world would be a better place if the costs and benefits of actions – and feelings of love – were properly accounted for in our judgements of the goodness of those actions and feelings.