Kevin Baldeosingh
Only parents experience absolute love. Well, okay, let me not be absolutist: there are probably childless people who know absolute love. But they are surely few and far between. That is because we choose our relationships with other adults and work to maintain them. But our children are an absolute: we are attached to them at the most fundamental biological level and from that is forged hoops of primal steel. Love as an emotion waxes and wanes; love as a relationship is constant, and no relationship is more powerful than the parent-child bond.
However, a misconception many parents embrace is in thinking that absolute love is the same as unconditional love. Yet it is possible–indeed, it is common–for parents who love their children absolutely to still act as though their love is conditional.
In my column last week about self-esteem and why promoting it is bad for children, I ended with the point that unconditional love is the crucial component for raising a confident child. Some weeks ago my three-year-old daughter Jinaki told me, "Even when you are upset with me, you still love me." This led to a five-minute conversation in which she was basically saying that Daddy and Mommy loved her no matter what. In other words, she believed that there were no conditions attached to our love for her, and when we bouffed her that was Daddy and Mommy expressing an emotion, not a relationship. For me, this was the first real sign that I might be doing something right in how I'm parenting my children.
However, the majority of parents in T&T apparently do not think their love for their child should be unconditional. Two separate studies, one conducted by the World Values Survey and the other by UWI's Family Development Centre, found that, of all the traits most parents wanted their children to have, "respect and obedience" topped the list. But, as educator Alfie Kohn argues in his book Unconditional Parenting, "Obedience itself isn't always desirable...if we place a premium on obedience at home, we may end up producing kids who go along with what they're told to do by people outside the home, too."
Parents who place a high premium on obedience are, almost inevitably, going to express their love conditionally–ie they will withhold or give affection in order to get their child to behave in what they consider a desirable manner. It would never occur to them that this is a kind of child abuse, but emotional child abuse is defined, first of all, as continual criticism, sarcasm, hostility or blaming and, secondly, when a parent treats the child as though love is conditional on the child's good behaviour or obedience to commands.
Studies in other countries suggest that people who have been brought up in this way have less than stellar relationships with their parents, and are liable to have their confidence wax or wane according to their situations. In other words, if they have a setback in their personal or professional lives, they don't see this as an obstacle to be overcome, but as a reflection of who they are.
I doubt that most parents want their children to become this kind of adult. If not, then their first task as parents is to convey to their child that their love comes with no strings attached.
Such a foundation is the best basis to raise self-disciplined and empathic human beings.