Fatherly Love
In the book The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm, I found plenty of interesting readings about different kinds of love. Who knew, right?
I wanted to share with you what is in this book about fatherly love* and my thoughts on that topic.
This book helped me give more space and trust to my children's father. It shaped my thinking, and now I don’t feel the urge to be involved in everything around the kids. I might be wrong. I'm still just learning to chill about my renewed role. This also means that the terms good cop and bad cop have no space in a family. It means that a mother will love her child no matter what.
Guide Me, Father
Usually, the first love that a child experiences is the Motherly Love.
The relationship to the father becomes more important after the kids are more independent — around the age of eight to ten.
How is fatherly love different from motherly love?
Based on the book, fatherly love represents the world of thought, law, order, discipline, travel, and adventure, where we all need guidance.
This guide also tries to set rules about love. The fatherly love has conditions.
Its benefit is that the children feel they can do something to earn this love. They can work for it. This love is not outside of their control as motherly love.
The negative side is that it has to be deserved. If, for some reason, the child can’t find the way to their father or the child can’t meet the expectations, this love is lost.
When this happens, the child can return to their mother for support.
Fatherly love helps us cope with the world
It was eye-opening to read this book. Suddenly, I saw patterns that I hadn’t seen before. I started to think of people who got plenty of motherly love and less or none of the fatherly one.
In my head, those people with much motherly love are the ones who care and love too much but lack discipline. So they feel stuck and lost often. They are the creative ones who are not afraid to risk their reputation or their body because they have an inner peace that whatever is happening, they are going to be okay.
The one without motherly love understands the world very well. They can navigate in a busy world. But can’t tap on feelings and have a hard time understanding other perspectives. The ones who love to talk but never listen. But again, it's only my interpretation, not Fromm's.
Let’s get closer
I got snippets of motherly and fatherly love and filled the void with my observations. I have always been the fly on the wall who observes people. My parents were young and social when I was a kid. Which meant they were dragging my brother and me everywhere. As a kid, I was disappointed in my parents because of this active social life we had. As a shy child, all those events annoyed me greatly. But thanks to them, I developed the ability to listen and stay curious about the world around me. I could see places and experience things that made me who I am now. Do you think I'd go to a cool disco in Croatia at age six? Nope, I'm in my thirties and barely go to discos. Their very social life let me see how different we all are and what else I could do if I weren't a witch.
Thank you for reading!
The Witty Witch
*Of course, Fromm is talking about the ideal types in Max Weber’s sense, and no one implies that every mother and father love in that way.