# Is it a moral failing not to love your child? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 23, 2009, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565 "2009-01-23T02:21:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![overlyverbose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9dc877/32.png) [@overlyverbose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/overlyverbose)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/21 "2009-01-23T15:53:36Z")
> [@New\_Beginning](#): > > Hope I’m not hijacking. I just watched The Business of Being Born last night, where they claim that natural birth results in release of oxytocin at the right moments to create a bond between mother and child that is absent in c-section. [Here’s a randomly googled article](http://www.theage.com.au/national/natural-birth-mothers-bond-better-20080904-49ye.html). I wonder if unloving mothers are more common from c-section. > > I can’t access the article linked in the OP so I don’t know how relevant this is (if it at all). I think oxytocin is also a hormone produced in both mother and child during nursing, resulting in additional bonding. So, I’d imagine that if the c-section mom nursed afterward, she would get that rush then, too. Still, whether they nurse or not, most women form a very solid bond with their children when they’re weeks or months old. For what it’s worth, I agree that it’s not a moral failing not to love your kid; however, it is to announce it to the world. As a parent, I feel that it is my job to make my child feel loved unconditionally and secure (regardless of my personal feelings) and to provide him with food, clothing, shelter and an environment where he can thrive. Telling your kid you never loved him or her is not providing the kid with an environment in which they can thrive. Depending on how you state it, telling your kid you don’t love him or her could be considered emotionally abusive. It took me a few weeks to warm up to my child. I had a very difficult, very long labor and I resented the hell out of him at first. But, like the MD quoted said, you fake it 'til you make it. Which is what I did and, by 3 weeks, I was in love with shorter spats of resentment; by 4 weeks, the resentment was almost gone; by 6 weeks, it was just a memory. When you’re a parent, that kind of stuff is just what you do. ---
**Author:** ![Palo\_Verde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Palo\_Verde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palo_Verde)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/22 "2009-01-23T18:37:18Z")
I had a hard time bonding with one of my children. I just didn’t feel affection for him. The advice I got from my midwife was to treat ‘love’ as an action, not a feeling. I didn’t have the feeling of love for that baby, but I could act loving towards him. So I did. I faked it. I didn’t feel affectionate towards him, but I cooed at him and held him and nursed him and made sure he was warm and comfortable. It was hard, but I but thinking of the advice to ‘act’ loving even if I couldn’t ‘feel’ loving. Slowly, over time, it got less hard, until one day I realized the feeling went along with the action. I love that boy! I think 'fake it ‘til you make it’ is good advice. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/23 "2009-01-23T19:28:44Z")
> [@autz](#): > > I had a hard time bonding with one of my children. I just didn’t feel affection for him. The advice I got from my midwife was to treat ‘love’ as an action, not a feeling. > > I didn’t have the feeling of love for that baby, but I could act loving towards him. So I did. I faked it. I didn’t feel affectionate towards him, but I cooed at him and held him and nursed him and made sure he was warm and comfortable. > > It was hard, but I but thinking of the advice to ‘act’ loving even if I couldn’t ‘feel’ loving. > > Slowly, over time, it got less hard, until one day I realized the feeling went along with the action. I love that boy! > > I think 'fake it ‘til you make it’ is good advice. I think your post makes one hell of a lot of sense. It seems to me that in many cases when an adoptive parent makes the decision to take on a child, they must realize with confidence that they will be attempting to forge a loving bond from both directions. ---
**Author:** ![1stFusilier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/58956e/32.png) [@1stFusilier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/1stFusilier)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/24 "2009-01-23T20:30:30Z")
I can’t access the original link but what does ‘not loving’ the child actually mean? Aren’t we in danger of romanticising ‘Love’ ? I can’t help suspect that if this woman were unfortunate enough to lose her daughter, she would all too quickly come to realise exactly how much she did love her after all. But to answer - no, I don’t think it’s a moral failing not to love your child. I just think it’s sad. I, too, think faking it is the best way forward. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/25 "2009-01-23T21:07:08Z")
This reminds me of a [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=498175)I started a few weeks ago, asking if parents just hated their kids for no reason. This parent doesn’t hate her kid, and she feels bad about it, but it sort of reminded me of it. She’s capable of loving her other kids, it seems, just not this one. And I also agree that it’s not her fault she feels that way. But talking about it in a newspaper, including names and even pictures…that’s awful. I don’t think a child can say, “Well, Mom had a lot of issues when I was born and it’s not my fault, and she’s doing the best she can.” If she read that, she’d probably come away with, “What’s wrong with me?” ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/26 "2009-01-23T23:16:09Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > This reminds me of a [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=498175)I started a few weeks ago, yeah, me too 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/27 "2009-01-23T23:21:34Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > yeah, me too 😉 D’oh! How did I not see your post? :smack: ---
**Author:** ![torie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@torie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/torie)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/28 "2009-01-23T23:59:04Z")
> [@TokyoPlayer](#): > > Is anyone here or elsewhere only offering the advice of “just pretend?” The psychologist quoted in the article saidThe “fake it till you make it” while undergoing counseling is fairly common advice for a number of problems where people are in difficult situations which cannot be easily walked away from. > > A difficult option would be to temporarily give the baby up while working on the issue, so people who able to fake it until they are capable of making it could be better served by faking it as they work through the problem. > > What is not being said here is to simply fake it without any other type of help, which is what you are claiming is happening. But an older child is very perceptive. I don’t have experience with this kind of thing. Can counseling make you feel something? Is it correctable? Is it a problem that therapists can effectively deal with? ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/29 "2009-01-24T00:14:03Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Children need Love, if that parent can’t provide it the should seek someone who can, which may include giving the child in adoption. The ‘moral’ failing is continuing to raise a child in a loveless environment once this is realized. Except now it seems a little late for that-said child is now about 9 or 10. ---
**Author:** ![CAT\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@CAT\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CAT_1)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/30 "2009-01-24T11:45:30Z")
> [@New\_Beginning](#): > > Hope I’m not hijacking. I just watched The Business of Being Born last night, where they claim that natural birth results in release of oxytocin at the right moments to create a bond between mother and child that is absent in c-section. [Here’s a randomly googled article](http://www.theage.com.au/national/natural-birth-mothers-bond-better-20080904-49ye.html). I wonder if unloving mothers are more common from c-section. > > I can’t access the article linked in the OP so I don’t know how relevant this is (if it at all). There may be something to that c-section thing. I will start by stressing that I am not an unloving mother. In fact I love my son more now than I did the day he was born. But I will admit, that after having an emergency C-section, and then having congestive heart failure, and nearly having a stroke, I didn’t bond with him for almost a week. That is when I finally started to get better myself. He left the hospital after a couple days, and I was in the ICU for a week. When I did get to see him I held him, kissed him, cooed to him etc. but I didn’t really feel that awesome love feeling right off. I have talked to a lot of women who felt the same way. I did end up with about a month or two worth of PPD too, but through that, I did feel love toward him and the feeling grew each day. I was also not able to bond through breast feeding. I was too sick to do it at first. Then when I was able to try, I never produced more than half an ounce of milk. He would have starved. And after a few weeks I was on a fist full of meds anyway, so he couldn’t have had my breast milk even if I was making it. I was very sad about not being able to breast feed him, and that took a toll as well. So my thought about this woman is that a lot of things came into play and she probably did have a bit of PPD, that went undiagnosed, and all of that has led to her never bonding with the child. Some PPD moms will actually not bond for 6 months or more. I am not sure, but I think the longer it takes, the more likely it is that it won’t happen at all. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/31 "2009-01-24T12:59:25Z")
> [@autz](#): > > I had a hard time bonding with one of my children. I just didn’t feel affection for him. The advice I got from my midwife was to treat ‘love’ as an action, not a feeling. > > I didn’t have the feeling of love for that baby, but I could act loving towards him. So I did. I faked it. I didn’t feel affectionate towards him, but I cooed at him and held him and nursed him and made sure he was warm and comfortable. > > It was hard, but I but thinking of the advice to ‘act’ loving even if I couldn’t ‘feel’ loving. > > Slowly, over time, it got less hard, until one day I realized the feeling went along with the action. I love that boy! > > I think 'fake it ‘til you make it’ is good advice. The link in the OP is jacked up, so I don’t completely understand the situation, but this wise lady beat me to my point. I think of parenthood in much the same way as I think of marriage. Love is not, at its core, a feeling… it’s what you do. I don’t always feel warm and gushy toward my spouse, but I continue acting loving toward him anyways because that’s what love is. Parenthood is the same way. You don’t have to feel warm and gushy to love someone. Feelings are much more unreliable and inconsistent than patterns of behavior. When you make the choice to become a parent, you commit to behaving lovingly toward your child no matter what you feel inside. THAT is the moral obligation. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/32 "2009-01-24T14:43:00Z")
> [@torie](#): > > But an older child is very perceptive. > I don’t have experience with this kind of thing. Can counseling make you feel something? Is it correctable? Is it a problem that therapists can effectively deal with? I am not a counselor, so you’re getting a layman’s view of things, but it seems like this particular case would be a good candidate for therapy. The mother in question has a second child who she does and did love from the start, so it’s not a matter of her being unable to love anyone, just the first child. If she can love someone, but not someone else, then what is the difference? Counseling can be really good for finding this out. Who knows why she didn’t naturally feel this love the first time around. Too young? Too overwhelmed? Don’t know, but a good therapist can hep someone find answers and find alternatives. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2009, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/33 "2009-01-25T18:33:39Z")
My mother admitted to my sister a couple years ago that she never loved me. I consider it a huge moral failure on her part, particularly because she never made any attempt to overcome it or even to “protect” me from it. In other words, she never just buckled down, as it were, and accepted her responsibility to me; she allowed herself to be selfishly ruled solely by her emotional impulses. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2009, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/34 "2009-01-25T21:42:26Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > … you commit to behaving lovingly toward your child no matter what you feel inside. THAT is the moral obligation. autz & olivesmarch4th have nailed it. Our feelings are not ours to command - but our actions are. “Assume a virtue if you have it not.” ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2009, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/35 "2009-01-25T21:58:17Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Except now it seems a little late for that-said child is now about 9 or 10. It may be too late to put up the child as a infant for adoption but this does not negate adoption. Nor does it negate finding a friend of the family that can and does Love that child and is willing to pseudo-raise the child. ---
**Author:** ![Stainz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecd19e/32.png) [@Stainz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stainz)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2009, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/36 "2009-01-25T22:37:11Z")
I work for a Social Services Agency and unfortunately see many parents who don’t love their children - they just did not form an attachment to their offspring - I wouldn’t say it’s a moral failure - they are just so damaged themselves, whether from FASD or drug use or parental abuse or mental disorders or you name it - that they cannot truly love. It’s sad. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2009, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/37 "2009-01-26T11:37:34Z")
In the present case, I came away from reading it with the feeling that she was mistaking what seemed to be an uneasy relationship with lack of love. Parents have different relationships with each of their children, certainly a diffficult one is not uncommon. The fact that she seems so guilty and is trying to do something, dose not show a lack of matrenal care. Putiing pictures up and displaying in a national newspaper (even the daily mail) OTH… ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2009, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565/38 "2009-01-26T18:39:47Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > Love is not, at its core, a feeling… it’s what you do. I don’t always feel warm and gushy toward my spouse, but I continue acting loving toward him anyways because that’s what love is. Parenthood is the same way. You don’t have to feel warm and gushy to love someone. Feelings are much more unreliable and inconsistent than patterns of behavior. When you make the choice to become a parent, you commit to behaving lovingly toward your child no matter what you feel inside. THAT is the moral obligation. I agree. The definition of “love” for me is wanting good for the person, wanting what God wants for them. That doesn’t require a warm feeling at all. As a side note, it seems like people break up because they don’t feel the warm feelings anymore, while love is something deeper than that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-a-moral-failing-not-to-love-your-child/482565.md?page=1)