This Kind of Love Begins in the Home



The idea that you develop the capacity for truly intimate relationships once you reach adulthood fits most people’s commonsense ideas as well as psychological theory. After all, it’s not until you’ve reached a certain level of maturity that you’re able to share true mutuality as you give over part of your self into the hands and hearts of another adult.

However, dig deeper into the idea of intimacy and love, and you’ll see that there are many reasons to trace the origins of these feelings back to an individual’s early life. Not only, according to the theory of Erik Erikson, does intimacy build on a childhood sense of trust, but attachment theory also emphasizes early feelings of infant-caregiver bonding.

One of the issues in these seemingly contrasting views involves the definition of love. There is the type of love that adults have for each other, typically revolving around the expression of sexuality. Love can also incorporate the quieter, more constant form of affection known as compassionate love. Where and when does this emerge?

Compassionate Love Begins in the Home

According to Beverley Fehr of the University of Winnipeg (2024), compassionate love is the “giving of oneself for the good of another.” Prior research supports its importance as a predictor of relationship satisfaction, particularly when translated into acts of tenderness and caring. Studies on older couples, including those in which one partner engaged in caregiving for the other, show particularly compelling support for the role of this form of love. Not only was relationship satisfaction higher in those with high levels of compassionate love, but so were positive perceptions of caregiving and lower perceptions of caregiver burden.

As an other-focused, selfless love, though, Fehr maintains that compassionate love could be a major component of family dynamics as expressed in the love parents have for their children. In the words of Mother Teresa, Fehr notes, “Love begins by taking care of the closest ones—the ones at home.” With these early origins, compassionate love could evolve into a consistent theme as those children grow up and maintain their relationships with their parents. Perhaps, Fehr maintains, the compassionate love that characterizes familial relationships could also extend to nonfamilial realms as well.

Testing Compassionate Love’s Early Roots

Not everyone in the home, Fehr maintains, would show the equal impact of compassionate love. Parents may feel compassionate toward their children, but this need not be reciprocal. Not all children in the home would be treated equally, either. The idea behind Fehr’s study was that both aspects of compassionate love require investigation in relation to what she regards as the key outcome of beneficence. Defined as the motivation to enhance someone else’s well-being, beneficence should emerge when people believe that others feel compassion toward them.

Across a series of seven studies, Fehr tested the overall hypothesis that compassionate love would be related to beneficence, with samples ranging from parents/young children to parents/adult children. The first two studies sought to find out whether, for parents, high levels of compassionate love would be predictive of a better ability to see the world from the eyes of their children (perspective-taking), greater willingness to sacrifice, more selfless levels of caregiving, and the offering of more support. The remaining five studies shifted the focus to the role of compassionate love in predicting greater levels of beneficence from children toward mothers (fathers were not included).

Sample items of compassionate love toward a child (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree) are: “One of the activities that provides me with the most meaning in my life is helping my child” and “I often have tender feelings toward my child when they seem to be in need.” The beneficence scale included: “I am willing to do things for my child that I don’t enjoy doing even if they do not thank me” and “I am willing to take on a burden to please my child.”

The first six studies supported the prediction that higher levels of compassionate love and beneficence would be correlated, both from parents to children and vice versa. In the final study, the authors adapted an experimental method used in research on romantic relationships to see how mothers would react to seeing their college-age daughters undergo the stressful situation of completing a difficult math task. At the end of the task, mothers and daughters exchanged brief notes which, in turn, were rated by participants in terms of level of supportiveness. As an example of a supportive note, one mother wrote: “Hey sweetie! I’m so proud of you! I know doing math in front of me would not be so easy. I was just trying to breathe, hoping you weren’t feeling too anxious. You are so great. Keeping calm under pressure.” In contrast, notes rated as not supportive made light of the situation, such as saying that it was “funny” to see the daughter under stress.

Relationships Essential Reads

The data from this last, behavioral, study clinched the theoretical predictions that the more compassionate the parent, the greater the levels of beneficence shown toward the child. As Fehr concluded, “compassionate love translated into beneficent actions,” and that, furthermore, “the relation between compassionate love and beneficence that has been found in past research on romantic relationships extends to familial relationships and may well extend to all close relationships.” Importantly, given the range of ages in the study, the findings also suggest that “parents’ levels of compassionate love were uncorrelated with the age of their children.” The same was also true of children toward their mothers. Once a compassionate love is established, it appears, little can shake it.

The Importance of Compassionate Love

Fehr concluded her comprehensive investigation with the observation that children “on the receiving end” of compassionate love should very well be the ones who, through modeling, extend this kind of love toward their own children, promoting positive connections down through the generations.

You may be able to relate to this idea yourself as you ponder your own family history of relationships and your continued history in your own relationships now. Perhaps you have never stopped to think about what leads you to jump to an instant desire to help someone you’re close to, whether a child, parent, or romantic partner. Maybe you didn’t realize that it all stems from being raised in a household where you received strong, almost unconditional support. There may also be times that you, as an adult child, quickly jump on the flaws of one of your parents who still, despite your age now, manages to “embarrass” you. But, when it comes right down to it, this is likely the very parent that you would stand up for, no matter what.

To sum up, tracing adult relationships back to the home may not always follow a direct line. However, knowing where you came from can provide important insight to understanding where you are now, and how much your care and concern for others stems from these early origins.


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