When there is no mother

GironaIt is love, protection, and welcome; but it does not give it. It is care, attention, and dedication; but it is absent. This is the mother who is physically present, but does not show the values that are implicit with her. Not having her because she has died is an intense and painful absence; knowing she is here and feeling her far away is also grief. The mother, who can be everything, when she does not provide shelter – when, deep down, there is no mother – causes a void in the child, who will realize it over the years. Dysfunctions that will manifest in very diverse ways, such as insecurities and emotional friction: by looking at them, fortunately, they can be transformed.

“More than not having had a good mother, we will say that you have not had a good attachment with her. This negligence by the mother towards you will determine how you relate to other people,” specifies clinical psychologist Anna Romeu, an expert in emotional education. But why? The infant's first bond is with the mother; and through her, the child learns basic aspects such as showing and receiving love. “In the first years of life, the infant will understand that if they cry and are attended to, the world is a safe place. But, if they are not attended to or are punished, they will learn that the world is unsafe, that they have no power to care for themselves, and that there is no need to ask because they will not receive,” she states.

The mother is everything. “Yes, because the infant clings to the mother and is totally dedicated to her,” clarifies psychologist and specialist in child development from 0 to 7 years Sònia Kliass. It is instinctive. “Human beings are born with the innate impulse to cling to someone, at least to one person.” It is also a biological issue. “It has to do with the need for survival,” she clarifies. “When attachment occurs optimally, the infant feels protected, safe, seen, and comforted. A pattern that is built significantly in the first years of life, basically the first one,” she argues. When this, on the other hand, does not happen – for whatever reason (single mothers, overwhelmed mothers, without emotional support, or situations in which they have no direct control) – then there will be a lack of this first experience of protection and support. “I like what Canadian doctor Gabor Maté says: ‘There are traumas from things that happen and traumas from things that do not happen.’ And, when a trauma is from something that has not happened – Kliass admits – it is very difficult to identify.” The reason is this: “There is a void, a pain... but it is from something that has not happened; and it is more complex to transcend something that has not occurred.”

The imprint that this absence leaves on the child is not instantaneous – they will not feel anger or frustration immediately – but will manifest some time later. “If you have never received something, you trivialize it as normal. That's why children realize it when they grow up,” describes Romeu. “They are not aware that there is another type of intervention and bonding. However, when they go to friends' houses, they see that there are different family relationships and other family models,” assures this expert.

Apart from very serious experiences, in which the child's needs are not only not met but the facts go against their own integrity – cases of abandonment, abuse, violence, among others (in which specialists agree they leave very deep marks) – there is, however, a whole range of grays that, according to Kliass, “do not leave you entirely well and generate a lot of insecurity.” A mother can love a child madly, but not provide what they need, such as protection, security, visibility, and comfort. “Human beings need this for mental and emotional well-being,” emphasizes this specialist.

A lack that goes back a long way

If the mother, in the child's eyes, does not act as a mother, the first thing to do is to ask oneself how her childhood was, really, when she was a girl. “Many mothers have not had a good bond with theirs and these patterns are repeated,” explains Romeu. For the trainer and creator of Maternitat Sistèmica Manuela Silva González, mothers are also the result of what they lived through as daughters. “She may have had emotional deficiencies and not felt supported as a child. According to her consciousness, then, and what she lived as a daughter, she gives you as much as she is capable of offering you at each moment and, probably, she cannot give you more,” she asserts. An example: if she makes differences between two children (a boy and a girl) and gives them different food, this, in the end, is a form of self-confession. “The mother, possibly, in her childhood felt differences in value, being a boy or a girl, before her family system. On the other hand, the interpretation that the daughter may make in relation to the food, in reality, is more a concept of the creature who experiences it and associates the mother's affection with a certain product and not the other”.

According to Silva, being a mother is an initially biological concept, “although the mother is not present or does so dysfunctionally, from the creature's internal vision and also at a family systemic level; just as the father always is and will be their father. The creature will constitute its own identity based on its experience with one and the other. And, whether through its success or its suffering, unconsciously –and, at times, not so much–, the child (the adolescent and the adult) will always continue to seek this love and bond with the mother and/or father as well as in other relationships,” highlights this expert. A bond, by the way, that will be maintained “more than space and time through genetics and family consciousness,” unlike the day-to-day relationship, which can be better or worse.

Single, feminist and demanding

Nowadays, the reduction of family units is a factor that causes the child to perceive their own mother as distant. There are many mothers who experience motherhood in solitude. They are overwhelmed. Sara Tarrés, a psychologist specializing in child and adolescent psychopathology, recalls that “to be a mother, you need a whole support network to help you perform the functions assigned to you.” She also emphasizes that it is vital to have “emotional support, a network, and community” so that the woman does not experience the “guilt” she feels when difficulties arise in synchronizing with her child for various reasons. “This mother does not need judgment,” indicates Tarrés.

Another factor is the incorporation of women into the world of work without them being effectively replaced within the family. This is explained by Miguel Doñate Sastre, professor and researcher in anthropology at the University of Girona (UdG) and the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). “In our culture, for centuries, the role of women had been essentially restricted to that of mother and sole responsible for childcare and domestic care. In recent decades, however, a series of changes have been occurring in this role, and today there is no longer a single way to be a woman: she can be a mother or not, a caregiver or not, a worker or not... As a society, we have formally resolved the equal treatment of women, but a real deployment has not been made, for example, when it comes to sharing domestic care. This often means less time at home and less time for children on the part of parents, despite there being the same needs. Then, we want grandparents or school to be the ones looking after the children. It is a social concern,” admits Doñate. The challenge is that the incorporation of women into the labor market also translates into the real incorporation of the partner in domestic tasks.

In this regard, Silva, a therapist and trainer specializing in family systems regarding reproduction, motherhood, and childcare, specifies that “shortly after childbirth, the mother is absent because she has to go to work, while in all mammals, the mechanism that awakens in her is to protect and care for the offspring. Sometimes I doubt if we are really evolving…”, she wonders. However, “the role of a mother does not depend only on the time we spend with our children but on the quality of our presence when we are with them,” admits Tarrés, who specifies that some children will experience this absence with great anxiety and anguish, and others, with difficulties in relating to friends and future partners.

The challenge of transforming

Kliass advises to put words to what is happening. For example, that someone can say to the child, if they manifest it with some attitude: “You miss your mother, don't you?” The child must be heard, the ways in which they express their discomfort must be read, what they feel must be accepted and validated, so that they can share and create a narrative that orders their experience. In this way, the experience, even if painful, will not become traumatic.” Later, the adult can undertake a process of “integrating and being able to forgive” the mother, who, surely, had her own difficulties. “Not a purely intellectual process, but one that must integrate the emotional experience. Therapeutic processes that work with the body help because we store negative experiences – emotions – in the body.”

Silva adds that, often, the child who has felt lacks and absences in the face of an ideal project of a mother that is confronted with what she has actually been, as an adult will not know where to “place this love of needing a mother that they had as a child and since they don't know how to do it, they put it into a struggle against themselves as a form of unconscious loyalty.” Then, it is when they reject the mother and, deep down, themselves. Despite this, understanding that she did “everything possible at her level of consciousness” allows it to be transformed: “You gain something invaluable, the opportunity to return a benevolent gaze towards the mother and self-love. To feel loved, valued, and liberated because you understand that she gave you her all.” If despite this work, the mother (or family) “invalidates, criticizes, invades, and hurts in subtle ways,” then Romeu has the answer: “Setting boundaries with family is difficult, sometimes it involves taking distance or changing the way you relate, and in some cases, even breaking the bond, which in the social sphere generates a lot of criticism because it is not well seen... But this is also taking care of yourself.”