My friend Nancy, over on Reactive Attachment Disorder blog seems to be generating some heat with her recent postings about emancipating her less-than-attached daughter Amy.

Yesterday one commenter told her:

“I guess the difference between us is that I believe that a mother's love is unconditional.”

This sparked me to muse on “unconditional love”. Hmmm….pretty tall order for moms, I’d say. And, yes, this is a topic that I ponder often because I see and believe in the ultimate power of unconditional love, due to my faith. But hard as I try, I CAN NOT provide unconditional love to my child. I can only approximate it. And the parents I know (some of them darn near superhuman), though they be inspirations and models of what many would call “unconditional love”…they too, by nature of being human, have conditions on love.

I see no evidence that mothers offer unconditional love (that’s God’s territory). I think many try to (and some most definitely do not). I would agree that most parents practice sacrificial love, but that’s far from unconditional. Where the line is drawn on what a mother (because we’re human) can forgive and accept is different for each of us. Yet there is a line.

Can we “unconditionally” love our kids when they physically destroy our houses by tearing out the walls, urinating in the corners of the rooms, setting fires?

Can we “unconditionally” love our kids when they torture the dog, kill baby birds, threaten their little sister?

Can we “unconditionally” love a child who rejects us for decades, pushing us away, reminding us we are of no value to them, refusing any type of intimate relationship with us?

Can we “unconditionally” love our kids when they attempt to poison us, run away, and terrorize the whole family…for YEARS and YEARS?

Can we “unconditionally” love a child who puts chronic financial and emotional strain on our family unit, causing rifts between us and our other children, us and our parents, us and our friends, and ultimate between us and our spouse?

And for those of us who have said “yes” to all that…could we “unconditionally” love our child who killed another one of our children or our spouse? Just where is that line…

Yes, I know the scenarios I present are extreme. And the truth of the matter is that many parents would draw the line well before any of these behaviors. Most families (thankfully!) don’t ever have to make the choices to love through the situations I have described above.

My point is that we all have some point, some condition on which we base our “love”. So to play the trump card that a mother’s love is unconditional, is both inaccurate and unfair.

To say a mother’s love is unconditional (which I assume implies that a mother’s love SHOULD BE unconditional) seems to be saying that “unconditional love” is synonymous with “unconditional acceptance of whatever the child does”. In other words, the only way I can show “unconditional love” as a mother is to accept any and all behaviors and situations my child presents and just continue to “love ‘em anyway”. And the expectation is that this “loving ‘em anyway” is expressed by allowing them to continue whatever behaviors and to live in whatever situations they are currently involved – and loving them…unconditionally.

But is this unconditional love? More musings in my next post…