Given how crucial it is to be properly loved by one's parents in order to live an emotionally healthy adult life, one would ask why the process can go so wrong in circumstances ranging from the regrettable to the terribly catastrophic. Why do some parents, who may be good and conscientious in other areas, struggle so miserably to love the children they have brought into the world?
Two options stand out among the various alternatives. The first derives from one of early childhood's most evident and inevitable features: an infant emerges on this planet completely and almost shockingly vulnerable. It is unable to move its head, is completely reliant on others, has no understanding of any of its organs, and exists in a state of chaos and mystery. It must look up to people and beg for mercy in such vulnerable circumstances: it must ask others to bring it nutrition, stroke its head, bathe its limbs, console it after a feed, and make sense of its rage and misery.
To the majority of people, this is all really lovely. However, in order to care for a very small person, an adult is forced to engage in a very specific type of emotional manoeuvre, one that most of us do so instinctively and quickly that we don't even notice it happening: we are required to access our own memories of ourselves at whatever age our young and tender child happens to be, in order to more precisely deliver to it the calibre of care that we would want for ourselves.
The majority of adults have no trouble connecting with our inner child. However, this talent is not natural or spontaneous: it is a result of good health and a certain level of emotional luxury. The task of care via identification is enormously difficult for a more disadvantaged type of parent, even if they are unaware of it. Between their infant and adult selves, a wall many metres thick and topped with razor wire has been created within them.
Something in their childhoods was so painful for them that they do not - and cannot - return to their imaginative states. Perhaps a parent died, or a parent touched them in an inappropriate way, or left them devastated and humiliated. Things in their childhoods were so unpleasant that their entire adult identities have been built on a complete refusal to relive the helplessness and vulnerability of their childhoods. They won't be able to bear their child's clumsiness and confusion; they won't want to play with teddies; they'll find it pathetic how tearful their child has become because a four-leaf clover has crumpled or a favourite book has a tear in it; they may, despite themselves, end up telling their child, "Don't be so silly," or even "Stop being so childish."
Unresolved envy can be a second feature and connected fault in a parent. A parent may envy their own child for the chance of having a better upbringing than they did - and may unconsciously ensure that this does not happen. Despite their ostensible commitment to the child's care, the parent will fight the need to inflict on it some of the same hurdles that they encountered, such as neglect, an uncaring school, and a lack of developmental assistance. Although the external aspects may have altered, the emotional impact will remain the same, and a new generation will be affected.
Not only do we need to be able to access our memories of our own childhoods in order to parent well, but we also need to be able to come to terms with our own deprivations in order to avoid feeling envious of those who may not have had to face similar ones. However, in their perceptions, a particular type of traumatised parent is still characterised as a needy, disappointed child who would find it excruciating if another child had more than they had. They're like a tormented and torturing sibling in a poor family who takes out their frustrations on someone more defenceless, meticulously ensuring that the other child is just as sad and lacking as they are.
We can't blame ourselves for having had the childhoods we did. However, if we choose to have a kid, we must guarantee that we have a healthy connection with our own pasts: that we are able to tap them for reserves of tenderness and empathy, and that we do not feel envy of people who do not have to suffer. When we are able to give our children the childhood they deserve rather than the childhood we experienced, we will have reached adulthood.