Storge- Is it Love or Obligation?
Storge Love is a familiar (la familia) love. It is supposed to be a naturally occurring love rooted in parents and children. Naturally occurring….Let that phrase sink into your brain 🧠 for a moment. Am I to understand that parents have an innate love for the children they give birth to? Or that the children they bear will have an inherent love for them? I think we have all heard of enough child abuse cases to know that this is not true.
Let me pose a question that I would love to get your feedback on:
If a child is well taken care of, provided for and has all their physical needs met, does that mean that child is loved? ❤️Conversely, can we say that a child who has been deprived of material things and has not had their needs met (food, clothes, etc.) is unloved? 💔
I grew up in a middle-class home. Because both of my parents worked, they could afford to send my sister and I to a Parochial school. My father was an excellent provider. My mother cooked some of the best meals-especially on Sundays while my dad serenaded us with Count Basie tunes he played on the piano. If you dropped by our house on one of theses Sundays, your senses would delight in the sounds 🎹and smells 👃🏽wafting through the air! I loved those Sundays. Unfortunately, every Sunday was not like that. If my parents fought on Saturday night, there would be no collard greens and corn bread the next day.
I was 32 before my mother ever told me she loved me as she laid dying in a hospital bed. God must have told her “If you want to enter through these gates, you need to take care of some unfinished business.” Never having heard “I love you” from her before her dying days did not prevent me from taking care of her in the months prior to her demise. I often wonder if it was done out of love or obligation: maybe a bit of both.
So, to be clear, I believe my mother loved us even though she never verbalized it. But I also believe that it’s possible for a parent not to love a child they gave birth to. I have seen this within my own family and I never understood how a woman especially, can walk away from their own child after giving birth to him.
Children on the other hand, have a tendency more often than not to show unconditional love towards a parent , even if that parent is not present, has emotionally checked out or is abusive.
So, what do you think? Tell me in the comments below.⬇️