When mothers do not feel love for their children, a real possibility

There are children who do not love their parents, parents who treat their children with contempt and there are also mothers who do not love their children. It seems impossible, doesn’t it? It is like an attack on that natural law that makes us believe that there is no love as pure and selfless as that of parents, like that of those people who once gave us life. And yet it happens; is a reality.

Now, within this sphere of disaffection, there is a curious piece of evidence: the figure of the emotionally cold mother, the absent mother who deviates from her expected script, always tends to draw our attention more. Somehow, We associate motherhood with that exquisite tenderness that covers and welcomes, to that unconditional love that validates affection and that gives everything for its children. The fact that the latter does not happen breaks those scripts so deeply rooted in our society.

However, the evidence is there.. There are many people who navigate their lives with the emptiness of that wound. The whys accumulate in their minds (“Why did he behave like that?” “Did I do something bad to make him not love me?” In their hearts they also carry feelings of guilt to a certain anger towards the maternal figure.

However, what the majority accumulate are problems, insecurities and serious shortcomings. Let’s delve a little deeper into this topic.

Why are there mothers who don’t love their children?

There are those who point out that mothers who do not love their children have a lack of maternal instinct. However… What really is the maternal instinct? Does this natural and unconscious impulse really exist, capable of provoking a response as determined as that of loving and caring for a child just because nature orchestrates it? The truth is that science has not yet found evidence for the latter.

In reality, there are elements with greater significance that go beyond the controversial genetic hypothesis. For a start, There are mothers who do love their children, but they love them badly or even more so, they love them in their own way.. Because everyone understands love in a different way and there are people who practice cold affection, who prioritize ensuring that their children are always clean, obedient, go to good schools and learn early to obey and say “thank you and please.” .

However, consoling, alleviating fears, looking with affection, listening, answering questions, encouraging dreams and nurturing security remain along the way. If this is missing, everything fails. And no, it doesn’t matter that a mother “loves us her way.” If these emotional aspects are not attended to, children grow up with the clear conviction that they are not worthy of love. of their mothers.

Let us therefore analyze what factors can explain it.

1. Regretful of their motherhood

Sometimes it happens. There are couples who have children just because they have to, because according to them, it is time to take another step in their relationship.. Without even considering whether they truly want and desire to be parents. Other times, the unexpected pregnancy arises, the one that is not expected, but with which we move forward.

Sometimes something perhaps more complex also happens: someone wants to have children, but once they are aware of what this entails, anguish, stress and even unhappiness arise.

2. The depressed mother, the woman who has not resolved her own traumas

One of the reasons why mothers do not love their children may be some unaddressed psychological problem. Post-traumatic stress as a cause of an event experienced in childhood or youth, undetected depression, anxiety disorders and also mental illnesses that are not treated, completely interfere with raising children.

3. Why are there mothers who don’t love their children? The long shadow of narcissism

There are narcissistic fathers and mothers. There are those who have only a few traits of this type of personality and there are those who show a narcissistic personality disorder, a clinical condition with serious implications and consequences.

These profiles cause serious effects on the upbringing and education of children, dynamics that in many cases involve the need for control and emotional manipulation.

They are mothers who underestimate and who prey on their sons and daughters to try to meet their needs.to project their desires onto them and always have them under their strings of absolute domination.

4. The preferential child and the love for “one” only

One of the reasons why there are mothers who do not love their children is preferential love. We refer to those situations in which their affection has a limited and nominal quota, focused only on one of the children and not in the others. He is the golden child, that figure who, for whatever reasons, will accumulate all the recognition and reinforcements without leaving anything for the rest or others.

These situations triangulate the brothers in a scenario in which, end up competing for that select love capable of generating conflicts and lifelong wounds in those children.

5. Many mothers have a negative image of themselves that they transmit to their children.

If you cannot love yourself or have developed a negative conception of yourself and your bodies, and you extend this shame and negativity to your productions, you cannot convey love and tenderness to this remarkable creation of yours.

6. Unworked emotions

Providing affection or establishing a bond is the result of time, but above all it involves a lot of work on a behavioral and emotional level, that is, energy. This means that when a woman is not feeling very well in other areas, it is difficult to be in contact with others or in charge of a small being.

7. Having children reminds parents that time passes

This can cause tension and even resentment in mothers and a defensive and self-protective withdrawal from the anguish of death. This results in something directly or indirectly harmful to your children.

8. Parents tend to use their children as immortality projects

As a mechanism to defend themselves from the anguish of death, mothers seek to continue living through their offspring. To fulfill this purpose, children must replicate the attitudes and choices that she makes. If they differ, their actions are misinterpreted as defiant. Children in this situation are not loved, but used as a simple existential project.

To conclude, as we see, these are situations of a dimensionality that is as immense as it is complicated. So much so that There are many people who reach adulthood with a backpack of poorly resolved experiences. and with a whole factory of suffering that limits life, dreams and even human potential. Psychological care in these situations is a priority.

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