Motherly love by its very nature is unconditional. Mother loves the newborn infant because it is her child, not because the child has fulfilled any specific condition, or lived up to any specific expectation. Unconditional love corresponds in one of the deepest longings, not only of the child, but of every human being; on the other hand, to be loved because of ones merit, because one deserves it, always leaves doubt; maybe I did not please the person whom I want to love me, maybe this or thatthere is always a fear that love could disappear. Furthermore,deserved love easily leaves a bitter feeling that one is not loved for oneself, that one is loved only because one pleases, that one is, in the last analysis, not loved at all but used. No wonder that we all cling to the longing for motherly love, as children and also as adults. The relationship to father is quite different. Mother is the home we come from, she is nature, soil, the ocean; father does not represent any such natural home. He has little connection with the child in the first years of its life, |