What we talk about when we talk about parental love

by Emma Wilkins

“Family isn’t a word, it’s a sentence” - The Royal Tenenbaums

If it’s true, as advertisements for Wes Anderson’s 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums proclaimed, “Family isn’t a word, it’s a sentence,” there’s a sense in which the sentence is for life. Even when a family member is estranged, or dead, the impressions that they made on us—the lessons that they taught us, the memories they left with us—remain.

 This is particularly the case with our parents. Our relationship with the people who conceived or adopted and then raised us—who are “supposed” to love us more than anyone else could—can’t help but shape our psyches and our lives.

 Ideally, their influence will be more positive than negative: In adulthood, we’ll continue to benefit from what they taught us directly, and from what we learned from their example. Thanks to their love, we’ll have an enduring sense of value and self-worth. And when we do well, even if they’re not around to see, we’ll sense how proud they would have been.

 Of course, that’s not every child’s experience. In some cases, the challenge is to avoid following a parent’s example, repeating their mistakes, “turning out” like them. Some people parent in a way that leaves their children feeling neglected or stifled, disappointed, or worse: like they’re disappointments: unlovable, unloved. These children then try not to live the way that parent lived, and they try not to channel their voice when they’re gone—to imagine what they’d say would hurt too much.

 In most cases, while our parents won’t always love us well, they will want to, and they will try to. Their love will be imperfect, but reliable and undeniable. We’ll grow up safe in the knowledge it will weather any storm, even storms of our making.

 As for children’s love for parents, psychologist Jonice Webb says that while humans are wired to need “unconditional love”, it belongs “in only one specific kind of relationship and going in only one direction”. Unlike the love we might experience with siblings, peers, and lovers, there’s a sense in which a healthy parent-child relationship will always be a lopsided one.

 This is especially true early on. A parent can know and love their child, and take responsibility for their wellbeing, before their child can know and love them. Some profess love while the child’s still in the womb, others “at first sight”, and for most it precedes speech. I can’t know everything about my kids, but I’ve known each of them—and so far, lived with each of them—for their whole lives. I can look at each one and see stages and selves they can’t remember, but they can’t do the same for me. They can’t remember the way I was before I was a parent; that strange other person in that strange other place—a world that preceded the one they know and didn’t contain them. And while I trust my children love me, I don’t expect them to love me, or their father, in the same way.

It’s worth noting that loving unconditionally, or aspiring to, doesn’t preclude placing “if, then” conditions on a child—“Ifyou finish your homework, then I’ll drive you to the party”—for their sake; or blackmailing them—“If you visit me weekly, then I might still help you with your rent”—to their detriment. A parent might prefer to die than to watch their child die; that doesn’t mean they’ll always treat them well, always put them first, never drive them up the wall or do them harm. 

Even when children leave home, even in cultures where they are duty-bound to become their parents’ carers, and in families where parents demand it regardless of their child or children’s wishes, a parent’s love might remain unconditional. An adult child might disappoint or shame their parents by failing to adhere to certain “conditions” or expectations, their parents might disapprove of their child’s behaviour and, if they feel “owed” care in return for care they gave, feel cheated; that doesn’t mean they will stop loving them.

It’s common to expect unconditional love from our parents and, once we’re parents, to expect it from ourselves; some will expect it from their children, too. But others, in thinking about what “unconditional love” is, end up doubting it exists.

Can love really be “unconditional”?

Philosopher Christopher Cordner traces the notion of “unconditional” or “agape” love back to the Judaeo-Christian God. The unfailing way in which this God loves us is likened to the way we love our children. But in the case of mere mortals, Cordner wonders whether such a love might lie “beyond the scope of our capacity”.

He suggests there’s hubris in a parent claiming their love for their child could withstand any and every possible challenge. A parent’s love might feel unconditional now, but their child might change in unpredictable, unimaginable ways; the parent themself might too. What if a child changes to the point their parent can barely recognise them, let alone love them? No matter how close they are now—emotionally, relationally, practically—how can a parent possibly be sure their love will, no matter what the future brings, no matter who their child becomes, withstand any challenge, any load?

It doesn’t “quite” follow that a parent’s love won’t ever be unconditional, Cordner says, but it also doesn’t follow that the possibility of such love is a “realistic” one. In any case, we can’t know this is the nature of our love. Perhaps the closest a parent can come to loving their child unconditionally is intending to—“undertaking to remain answerable, whatever happens, to the requirement”, Cordner says. Therapist Charlie Huntington makes a similar argument when he saysunconditional love is “aspirational”—it’s “not something we can continuously and always feel toward others”, but it is “real in the sense that we can try again and again” to manifest it in our lives.

Technicalities aside, I’m proceeding with the assumption the term remains useful; and that a parent’s love for their child is as close to “unconditional” as human love can be.

Are our “generous” acts as generous as we think?

While parental love tends to foster care, compassion, and sacrificial acts, this doesn’t mean such acts are selfless. The ease with which I love my children and make sacrifices for them makes me question the extent to which the sacrifices I make for them are truly generous.

It’s relevant that, in a profound and sometimes literal sense, our children are a part of us. Each of my children started their lives in my body, each inhabited my womb for the best part of a year. During that time they were physically part of me. They’re not inside my body now, but the fact they used to be, the fact they came from me in a literal sense, that half of the genetic “stuff” that made them did as well, remains.

Nature connects and compels us in one way, nurture in another. As we raise our children, amassing shared experiences and a shared history, influencing them and being influenced by them, we can expect to see ourselves reflected back: when they adopt the same interests, or habits, or values and beliefs, and, in the case of biological children, in characteristics that seem inbuilt. In my experience, there’s equal wonder and delight in noticing the strengths our children share with us parents—that one or both of us might “take credit for”—as there is in those that are utterly unexpected. Meanwhile their weaknesses prompt sympathy. Such is a parent’s bias for their child.

My physical and relational connection to my partner and my children, my love for them and the family we comprise, makes me wonder: how much is my longing to see them happy, a longing to be happy myself? The desire I have for their flourishing makes it easier, even easy, to sacrificially invest in their welfare in ways that would otherwise feel demanding. When my children are well, I’m more likely to feel well, when they’re hurting, I might hurt just as much on their behalf. Our bond makes it uniquely difficult to know where selfish desire ends and selfless desire begins. Perhaps it’s less a case of beginning and ending than running parallel.

According to researchers Tae-Ho Lee, Yang Qu and Eva Telzer, an important aspect of empathy is “the phenomenon by which one blurs the line between self and other” when perceiving others’ emotions. In a 2017 study that compares the extent to which mothers feel empathy for their children and themselves, neural patterns saw the mothers demonstrating “high self-child overlap”, while their adolescent children showed significantly less “self-mother overlap”. Further, adolescents experienced more overlap when they had a better relationship with their mother, while mothers experienced it regardless of relationship quality.

The researchers showed participants scenarios where individuals were expressing emotional distress in negative contexts, such as at a funeral or while being bullied, with instructions to perceive the target face as either their family member or themselves. Later, they compared their neural patterns in relation to who they were imagining, and in relation to a “relationship quality” score they arrived at using three previously established measures.

According to their results, “mothers have unconditional empathic responses to their child’s emotional distress based on higher self–child overlap in their mental representation, whereas adolescents’ empathy is more conditional”. I’m reminded of the saying “a parent is only ever as happy as their saddest child”.

If my happiness is so interconnected with my child’s that knowing they’re unhappy affects me, there’s a sense in which the sacrifices I make for them are for my benefit as much as theirs.

The first-century Jew who claimed the God of love as his father, and told people to love not just their friends and families but their enemies, recognised the unextraordinary nature of generosity to kin. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus asks the crowds, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” The point is not how bad sinners are, it’s how good God is. But the underlying assumption about parental devotion hints at a universal truth.

Elsewhere Jesus asks the question, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” and tells people to resist showing hospitality to friends, relatives and rich neighbors, lest they reciprocate. He isn’t saying that we shouldn’t love our kin, he is saying that showing kindness and generosity to people we love, and who love us, doesn’t merit praise; it’s standard practice.

Philosopher Christian Miller suggests true generosity isn’t just about generous acts, but the degree to which the giver: is sacrificing something they value, has other-centred motives, and is going beyond the call of duty. If that’s the case, perhaps I’m less generous to my own children than to anyone else I know. My sense of responsibility makes it uniquely difficult to know whether I’m ever going beyond the call of duty as opposed to satisfying it; and the sense in which they are not only “other”, but a part of my “self”, makes it uniquely difficult to know if my sacrifices are altruistic. One might also argue that if what I’m giving “stays in the family” of which I am a part, or benefits it, I’m not exactly giving it away.

Why bias isn’t always bad

Philosopher Mary Midgley has noted that the particular bias parents have towards their biological children serves “the essential function” of making “strenuous and devoted provision for the young” possible. If each parent “cared as much for every passing infant as they did for their own”, she says a “casual, impartial regime” would likely result, where few warm-blooded infants would survive.

The rise of reproductive technology that allows individuals to conceive without sex, let alone a partner—that allows one person to carry a baby and another to parent the child, that foresees increasing use of artificial wombs—has some theorists “reimagining” family apart from fundamental biological and relational realities. 

This reimagining, while not necessarily extending to the “casual, impartial regime” Midgley envisions, while still invoking words like “care” and “love”, includes scenarios where groups of adults parent a child. Collective parenting might give individuals more time to maintain and develop their career while also ticking the “parent” box—also more money, and more sleep; on paper it might give children more hours of less divided attention, more material comfort, more opportunities afforded by more money—but surely the “more” will be tempered by the fact each will know the child, will understand them, even love them, less. The child ends up with more caregivers, but each might be less devoted. There will be less closeness, less investment, less intimacy, less connection, less responsibility. Webb says we are wired to need unconditional love, and parents are wired to give it, but if children are treated as commodities that can be “earned” rather than gifts, miraculous and undeserved—and if biology is treated as irrelevant—that need might be met less and less, with devastating results.

More than a decade ago, Anca Gheaus, writing in the The Journal of Political Philosophy, claimed the parental right to keep one’s birth baby “obviously” depends on the way in which babies come into the world. “If human procreation were to change radically, such that babies would no longer gestate and be born out of other human bodies, then a case for allocating babies to future parents via lotteries would become significantly stronger. Not only would the meaning of ‘biological parent’ become less substantial, and signify a genetic connection only, but such change would pose a radical challenge to parents’ right to keep their biological babies.”

Biological bonds aren’t a prerequisite for close, loving familial relationships, but however a baby comes into the world, our genetic origins matter. Many children don’t grow up with a biological mother and/or father, but still have devoted parents. That doesn’t mean they won’t want to know about, if not know, the people from whom they came, whose unique genes they share. 

There’s already a lottery component to starting a family. Some can conceive by “making love”, others “make” a baby with assistance many cannot access or afford, others adopt. The fact some long for a child in vain is a devastating fact of life. More devastating still is the suggestion that a loving couple’s ability to keep their biological child might cease to be a norm; that they might have to argue for “the right” to channel their love into conceiving and raising children that are uniquely, particularly, theirs, that they are uniquely wired to love. 

The more we understand the natural world, how particular species interact, and why, the more we marvel at its genius. We see why certain “norms” make sense, or are of vital importance. Few would dispute the claim there’s something precious and profound about a couple bearing—or lovingly adopting—and raising a child; that there is something precious and profound about sibling relationships, about family as we know it. To disregard and redesign that which we don’t fully understand isn’t enlightened and progressive, it’s ignorant and dangerous.

A key reason to resist meddling, even if we can, is this peculiar, particular, “unconditional” love parents feel for their offspring; a love that we expect and take for granted, a love that enables us to give of ourselves in ways that would otherwise be counter-intuitive, but come naturally. There are terrible exceptions, there are parents who abuse or are indifferent to their children. But where this love isn’t lacking, when it functions normally and healthily, sacrifices of time, money, energy and attention made to raise a child might not be counted as—or constitute—loss. If our desire is for what’s best for our children, such sacrifices might satisfy that desire. It may be that a parent’s most selfless acts don’t involve giving to, but denying their child; not because they want to, but because they think a “no” will do their loved one more good than a “yes”.

The fact a sacrifice isn’t purely altruistic doesn’t mean it’s purely egoistic, nor is the opposite the case. “Mixed motives” are a phenomenon most of us relate to. My generous or kind act toward another might be prompted by love and compassion—and duty, and pride and a desire for approval and for praise—all at once. No matter how great my efforts, I know my love for my children will always fall short in one way or another, and that my motives will always be mixed to some degree. Even if I sacrificed my life for theirs, it wouldn’t be entirely for their sake—it would spare me the pain of the grief of losing them.

Our understanding of parent-child love as being unconditional—or the closest humans might come to such love—leads us to understand the loss of a child as the greatest loss a person can experience. Australian writer and musician Nick Cave, when telling journalist Sean O’Hagan about a song that describes his wife sitting at the kitchen table, listening to the radio, says the scene is “unremarkable”. But because it is the last memory he has of her before the phone rang with news their son had died, for him, it’s deeply significant: “the last unbroken memory of my wife”. After the life-altering loss, Cave’s wife “entered a circle of hell that is reserved solely for mothers who lose their children”, a “whole other level of loss and suffering”. The moment that preceded it was one “of peace, of calm, of simplicity”, then “everything shattered”. She could never be the same person again.

Why letting go might be a parent’s most altruistic act

While children expect to outlive their parents, parents pray they won’t outlive their kids. Most of us won’t live to see our children die, but we will live to see them leave. They will reach a certain age, they will start separating themselves from us, their selves from ours. They will become more independent from, less influenced by, less invested in, the parental relationship.

The researchers who studied self-child overlap in mothers and teens noted that the adolescent period is “marked by a social reorientation away from parents and towards peers”. Parents will attest this happens both gradually, and overnight. Part of our job is to not only teach our children independence, but to let them exercise it more and more and then—to let them go. To let them live their own lives, learn their own lessons, make their own mistakes.

In a conversation about the end goal of parenting, cognitive scientist Maya Shanka and writer Kelly Corrigan (who has called parent-child relationships “the most loaded relationships” humans can experience,) note the “devastation” involved when the project goes to plan—when a parent has raised a child in such a way that the child can now live without them. The child has needed and depended on them for years, now the parent must accept their role has changed; they’re no longer needed in the same way, or to the same extent.

Love can make this, rather than all a parent gave along the way, their greatest sacrifice. Many can’t seem to let go, some can’t seem to try. I recently heard a woman bemoan her inability to convince her adult daughter to have children. She said her daughter grew up saying she’d love to have children but, at the age of 36, was still childless. “Every time I raise it, Erin goes: Mum, shut up, you’re putting pressure on me,” the mother said. Instead of asking for advice on letting go, this woman was asking how she could “influence” her daughter “without putting pressure on her”. She seemed unable to accept that her child no longer wanted or needed her input.

Even in cultures where parents are expected to love their children “no matter what”, expecting nothing in return, many parents still end up feeling “owed” or unable to let go. Corrigan was determined to step back graciously when her girls left home, and, with tears that marked the end of an era, she did. She told Shanka that while she’ll always be their mother, always love them, always be there for them, there’s a sense in which she’s not their parent anymore—at least not in the way she’s always defined it. She’s no longer responsible for them in the way she once was; their lives, which she was once an integral part of, are now none of her business.

“I shouldn’t have an opinion about everything: what you wear, who you date, how your hair is, what your major is, what job you take,” she says of her role now. “I’m just a person who’s crazy about you. That’s who I am. But I am not a parent in the way that I have always defined that word.” Corrigan is still prepared to care for her children, she’ll drop everything if they need her, but they don’t owe her a thing. This kind of love is not easy. But, she says, it’s “the only way for it to be beautiful”. 

I can’t imagine any scenario where I’d stop loving my children, anything they could do or not do, to change my “wiring”. What I can imagine, what all parents must imagine, and prepare for, is to let their children, knowing they’re still—always—loved, leave. Most kids will stay in touch, or at least answer our calls, some might even care for us in our old age, but ideally they will do so because they want to. In some cultures there is an obligation, but Corrigan wants none of it. “If there’s any obligation from their end to me, then it can’t be beautiful,” she says. “It can just be the meeting of an obligation.” If there are no conditions, if no obligations or expectations are imposed, and the child does continue to value the relationship, it’s all the more rewarding.

“Somehow, you have to learn to relish giving it away,” Corrigan says. We start preparing ourselves, and one another, from the moment we become parents. We remind ourselves and each other of how quickly they’ll grow up; we know they’ll stop depending on us and start craving independence, we know that while they’ll probably keep loving us, they’ll probably stop needing us. We know this because even if we’ve never been parents, we have been children, we have been parented, and we have left.

Nick Cave, reflecting on another loss—that of his mother—says he is deeply grateful for the unconditional support she gave him while she was alive. It was a love that “permitted me to experience the world fully, the dark stuff, too—addiction, grief, break-ups, disappointments, all that stuff—without fully falling”, he says. “I really think that my mother’s love was the undercarriage of my life. It didn’t prevent me from falling, but it probably stopped me from falling all the way.” Even when she wasn’t present physically, “like a safety net”, he knew she was there. 

Psychotherapist Tim Hoffman says raising a child “may be the single most important job you have, but it’s not the only one”. A child’s success and failure, joy and despair, can impact a parent without defining them. “You can,” Hoffman asserts, “be happier than your saddest child”. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about them or feel for them, but you don’t have to suffer to the extent they do, you don’t have to make your life revolve around theirs. And because the alternative may burden that child, some separation could benefit them too.

We don’t have to stop loving our children when they’re no longer children, we do have to let them leave. If they don’t love us in the ways we might have hoped, that doesn’t mean we’ll stop loving them—or that they’ve stopped loving us. Whatever happens, however the relationship might change, we’ll still think of our children as “children”, and they’ll still think of us as their “parents”. If “family” is a sentence, the sentence is for life.