Mother's Love For Her Child - Is It Selfless

My take on mother’s love

Here, I am reproducing something I wrote a long time back, in fact around sixteen years back, while I was pursuing my Masters in Business Administration.  For a long time, what I wrote then made me feel guilty, I mean who questions the motive behind a mother’s love…surely not any right thinking person! Since then, I have become a mother, that too one who gave up a promising career to make sure at least one of the parents could be there for the child. Obviously, judging a mother and becoming a mother are two different things so when years later, I revisited the pages of my personal diary and found the below entry, I decided to put my thoughts on paper again, on the same topic but this time with greater knowledge and experience and the credibility lent by the fact that I had become a mother myself!

21^st May, 1998

I realize that what I am saying will be considered sacrilege by many, however, after thinking about it deeply, it would be dishonest not to admit my views on the so called ultimate in selfless love: a mother’s love for her child.

A mother’s love for her child is not selfless in the very fact that it is the result of a very justifiable belief that the child is her - belonging to her, indeed a part of her. And humans have a tendency of loving, caring, nourishing, and cherishing all they can call their own. Which is why, I dare say that such a love is at best, the most respect worthy of all selfish loves, pardon the term selfish loves as no language is rich enough to perfectly describe emotions!

But then, what do I consider selfless love? I have always felt that for love to be selfless, the person has to be unrelated or detached from the recipient of that love. Again, I may seem to be using contradictory terms…how can you love and be detached at the same time? Well, I think love is selfless only when the emotion doesn’t have any personal connotation. So, if you are prepared to take any risk, leave all comforts and go through any kind of hardship for a child, you really are ultimately saving yourself from the hurt and guilt that any parent goes through when the child suffers. How is it selfless then?

20^th Apr, 2010

While reading what I wrote almost twelve years back about selfless love and motherhood, I am moved to adding my thoughts on the matter, now that I am a mother myself. Do I love my daughter only because she is mine? Do I fear only for her safety….and not of the thousand others who are dying of hunger, diseases, bullets, and even plain old carelessness on the part of their wards?

While these questions are difficult, but truth be told, I am no beauty queen facing the judges at the pageant and the answer to these is as clear as day to me. However selfish I may sound, I fear the most for my daughter because she is mine. Yes, I care about the others too, the morning newspaper with its many reports on child abuse, accidental deaths, etc. do bring tears to my eyes, but I must admit that till I actually go out and do something about it, these tears don’t matter!

So, yes, I guess I still stand by what I wrote back the – A mother’s love for her child is not selfless – rather it is the most connected with self because it’s born out of it.