The conditions of mothers’ unconditional love – 09/30/2024 – Vera Iaconelli
After all, what kind of mother am I when I feel angry at my children or regret having them? Culture has found three answers to this question: a crazy, sad, or bad mother. In medical jargon: psychotic, depressive or perverse.
And as we regularly feel anger and regret, the popular saying “a mother is born, a guilt is born” has become completely naturalized. Guilt for not accomplishing the impossible is a mark of our omnipotence, not our failure. From this guilt comes the lack of authorization in the role of mothers and the need to compensate for the supposed lack of love.
We believe that we are not up to our role, because we do not love as we should. It makes us suppose that we would need the guidance of someone who would have an affection free of ambivalence.
There is no love free from ambivalence, as part of loving is the fact that the person we love has the power to make us suffer in the exact proportion that makes us happy. Just think about the pain that the loss of a loved one causes us. In the case of children, because they are such narcissistically invested relationships, they tend to be among the most devastating.
We love, we suffer and we keep an underground account of the effects that others have on us. How does a couple who loved each other so much turn to hate during a separation? The question embodies the answer.
For some time now, more precisely since the beginning of the 20th century, the idea that there would be an exception to the rule of loving ambivalence has taken over heads and hearts — including in psychoanalysis.
In order to shove the endless obligations of women in the role of mother down our throats, the myth of “pure” maternal love came in handy, saving the face of other responsible people.
It turns out that the repression of loving ambivalence, like every attempt to hide our human condition, fails spectacularly, leading to violence against oneself and one’s children. The fantasy of being an unnatural mother and the perennial feeling of inadequacy lead to self-accusations, crying and gnashing of teeth.
To disguise the supposed love failure, forms of compensation emerge, such as seeking to seduce the child, in other words, spoiling him. This is an attempt to disguise repressed hatred. This also leads to the difficulty of trusting one’s own judgment and imposing limits. Pampering and not setting limits are among the ills of current parenting, explored by the mirage of performance that neoliberalism sells.
Repressed anger returns when we least expect it, in a raw state, in the form of the violence we witness daily within our homes. The guilt for violence increases, leading to new forms of compensation, characterizing relationships that, in the end, in the name of unconditional love, can be called abusive for both.
Resentment is the final bill for this whole deception. Children exasperate their parents by showing love without filters, that is, with appropriate anger. Seeing them being ambivalent, mothers and fathers feel betrayed by them and by themselves.
Love continues to be that quicksand on which we build castles that never tire of falling on our heads. When it comes to children, I suggest that we focus on mutual respect, consideration of generational differences and ethics of care.
Unconditional love, this unicorn of modernity, is a terrible advisor.
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