Hug Database

A recent article on Huffington Post is about how babies benefit from openly affectionate parents, especially fathers.  But I would like to spend a moment to think about how being openly affectionate affects the parents as well.

Without meaning to sound too corny, I think the ability to love is like the working out; the more you work out, the more you are able to work out.  In order to truly love your child, you have to show your child that you love xir.  Not only is this what it actually means to love somebody, but if your child doesn't know that you love xir, s/he can't love you back so it makes it more difficult to go on loving xir.

On top of flexing your "love muscles," being affectionate also helps us as people by reminding us that we are not alone.  Men in particular are taught that they have to make their own way in the world, but that is a myth.  Nobody can make their own way, with the possible exception of a hermit who makes all his own weapons out of twigs and rocks.  Apart from that, we all rely on our society and their is no such thing as a self-made man.  When we are affectionate to our children, we are reminded that we are vulnerable because we rely on them emotionally, just as we realize how much our parents actually rely/relied on us.

However, the mere vulnerability is not scary enough.  Throughout our childhood, we were taught that the kind of love that parents and children feel for one another is not properly masculine.  Boys who love their parents are mama's boys, or goody goodies who are perfect targets for other boys who are trying to prove their masculinity through gratuitous displays of violence.  This violence scars men for life and leaves us afraid to show affection, even to our life partners and our children.

The author of the article (David Petrie) explains that, "when the time came to give my daughter her morning bottle, I'd pick her up, I'd look out the window to make sure that no one was driving through the corn fields to surprise me at my door, and then I'd quickly say, "I-love-you-I-love-you-I-love-you" before cradling her in my arms and plopping the bottle into her mouth."  That kind of fear doesn't just come from healthy gender roles that we all should play.  That kind of fear derives from the perpetual threat of violence that was beaten into all of us as children and continues to this day.

The good news is that his regiment of "I love yous" worked.  He worked out that "love muscle" and can now say I love you at will.  He has liberated that small part of his life from the oppression of traditional masculinity.  I can tell you from experience that it feels great to be free!