No such thing as 'too much love'.

Debunking the ol' 'tough love' bullshit.

From Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting (typing this in painstakingly from a Google books excerpt, so there may be some errors in transcription. Also, any bolds are mine.):

Many years ago [Hah - not *so* many!] it was believed that holding back love would help develop a child's character. [My dad's way of putting it was, 'Suffering builds character.'] Perhaps there is someone in your life now who believes in the "old school" of raising children, who has cautioned you against being too loving toward your child.

That old school of thought has turned out to be wrong. In literally thousands of studies, psychologists have looked at the connection between how much love parents show their children and their children's adjustment. If it were possible to spoil children by loving them too much - if the old school were correct - you would expect these studies to find that the best-adjusted children come from homes where parenst are somewhat distant or hold back a bit on their expression of love.[...]In study after study of parent-child relationships, the best-adjusted children always report the highest levels of parental love.

Lots of questions arise here - define 'well adjusted', as in, 'It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted in a sick society,' (Krishnamurti). Also, 'parental love' - who gets to define, quantify and qualify *this* variable? All of it seems subject to a lot of fuzzy thinking (and I'm *not* talkin' 'bout 'fuzzy logic' here :-), subject to the worst kind of cherry-picking and layperson BS you can imagine.

However, grains of truth and all that - take what you need and leave the rest.

Slogging on:

There are still some parents who believe in the old school of child rearing. Some think that children need to be toughened [grasshopper raises hand], and that too much love will make a child fragile. (This is the "school of hard knocks" approach to parenting.) Some think that children who get a lot of parental affection will grow up to be weak. (You hear this sometimes from fathers who worry that too much love will interfere with their son's masculinity.) Other parents believe that parental affection, praise or concern will somehow make their child needy and that their child will have abnormally high requirements for attention or care when they get older. They are convinced that by withholding love, they somehow will raise a child whose need for being loved is lower.

I am at a loss to understand why 'raising a child whose needs for love are low' is necessary. Is it just laziness on the part of the parents? Why would a person *want* a relationship in which there is 'low love'? How fucked up is *that*? 'As you sow, so shall ye reap,' that's *my* take on it. And no, I'm *not* a bible-thumper - just a completely shameless gatherer of 'folk wisdom' wherever I can find it, including billboards, if need be...

In fact, just the opposite is true. When children feel genuinely loved, they develop such a strong sense of security that they almost always are less needy.

I'd *love* to see some data backing this up - it sure *sounds* good, but is it *true*? Ach, well. Carrying on.

As a result, the emotionally neediest [the 'needy' language is beginning to get on my nerves] adults are typically those who did receive sufficient parental love while growing up

Again, what is 'sufficient'? Define 'sufficient'. Sufficient to requirements? *Whose* requirements? the parents'? which is usually the case - the kid usually doesn't get much say in how much love she receives - her ability to be the 'squeaky wheel' and to 'persuade' her parents to tend to her needs properly is dependent on a whole *raft* of variables, *none* of which are in the control of the infant or child. Ok, going with the plant metaphor again here - some kids are 'cactuses', and seem to get by, or even possibly prefer? little attention; while *other* kids may need a whole heckuva lot *more* from their parents, to *survive*, let alone *thrive*.

or whose parents' love was either inconsistent or less than genuine. The healthiest adults, the ones who themselves are able to express their love to others, are invariably those who grew up feeling unequivocally and unconditionally loved by their parents

Now tell me, *honestly* - how many people do you think *really* grew up feeling 'unequivocally and unconditionally' loved by their parents???? Is that just so much *bullshit*, or what? Tell me *another* oneSnow White are all fine in their *place*, but they're fairy tales, for fuck's sake. What the HELL is this pure, utter and unadulterated bullshite doing in a so-called 'shrink' publication? *grasshopper shakes her green head in dismay and perplexity.* To *me* its yet another case of setting us up for unrealistic expectations that are *certain* to be dashed by the cold, hostile waters of cruel reality.

"Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it."
~Lily Tomlin

Carrying on:

not those who were forced to scrape by on something less than complete affection.

I think I have to stop here - my gag reflex is activiating almost *constantly*.

Yes, I *get* that part of that (the gag reflex) is conditioning - in other words, I can't 'gag it down' because *I* was raised in the 'tough love' school. So to me, at a very *basic* level, all this stuff is so much bullshit. Which programming I'm duly trying to over-write.

But.

Reality? *Most* of the people I encounter on a daily basis are *full* of these 'tough love' behaviors - it's *not* a 'rarity', it's the fuckin' NORM, for fuck's sake.

So talking about it as if it were the *exception* to the rule is - forgive me - mind-fucking BULLshit.

There, I feel better :-)

Ok, now I'm going to select some stuff I actually *agree* with and type them in:

A famous study of whether parents should respond to their baby's cries during the middle of the night made [the following point very nicely:] Contrary to those who belive that comforting a baby who cries out will only reward the baby's behavior and lead to more crying, the researchers found that the opposite is true. Babies who are comforted when they cry out during the night tend to cry less, not more, over time. The reason is simple enough: Babies cry out when they wake during the night because they are scared and disoriented. Being comforted makes them feel more secure, and this enables them to sleep better.

The surest way to keep a baby crying out every night is to ignore the baby's emotional needs. [This is true for adults as well.] And the surest way to raise an emotionally needy child is to withhold your love and affection.
[...]
[T]he brilliant child psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner [?], once said that

every child needs at least one adult who is "irrationally committed" to the child. It's this emotional bond that allows children to grow up to be psychologically healthy.

Going to leave it there, for now - seems like a good place to stop.

The book's author is Laurence Steinberg, publisher is Simon and Schuster. No link for this one - Google books links tend to be insanely long, cumbersome and, on top of all that, subject to change without notice - unstable, in other words. Just like some *people* I might mention... :-)