Eudaimonia with Kaylia Davis

The Trilogy of The Mother Symbol: How a secure attachment to a mother supports children in self-actualizing.

From time immemorial hitherto, the secure attachment to a maternal figure occupies a dominant role in the self-actualizing child. Mother is the carrier of life, the container of all that is indispensable to man’s survival. She is the abundant spring of fruitfulness and life. She is glorified in art as the breastfeeding Madonna and Child, in symbolism, she represents earth and water, the fountain of life, and in astrology the moon and Venus, the root of love, in the mythological narrative she is Demeter who scorches the earth in advocating for Persephone from the underworld forces and the compensating fairy god-mother for Cinderella and in religion she is the Virgin Mary lamenting for her child. In every domain, we inevitably encounter the beloved mother. Indisputably, an affectionate and reliable mother offers a secure base through her breasts, hands, and lap which is an effective channel for supplying the child’s physiological, safety, love, and belongingness, and esteem needs critical for self-actualizing.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs

Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs provides a framework for understanding the five levels of needs that motivate and influence human behaviour and personality. Maslow stated that there are physiological needs(food, water, rest), safety needs (physical and emotional security), love and belonging needs (connection, intimacy), esteem needs (self-esteem, status, prestige), and finally self-actualization. Self-actualization is the active process of blooming into your total beauty and glory, you are all that you are created to be and you are able to access and utilize all your skills and talents for a purposeful and fulfilling life. Maslow mentioned that people sometimes fulfilled these needs but do not self-actualize because they lack Being-values. These are truth, autonomy, humor, effortlessness, totality, simplicity, justice, completion, perfection, uniqueness, aliveness, wholeness, beauty, and goodness (Feist & Feist, 2006).

It is impossible to arrive at such a pinnacle when a child is fixed at any of the four lower-level needs. Even though there are other contributing factors, it is a secure maternal tie that tremendously helps in achieving these needs.

A Secure Maternal Attachment Relationship

A child’s first tie is from the womb through attachment to the umbilical cord. The relationship between mother and child instantly develops when there is an awareness of conception and the mother’s feelings and attitude towards the fetus. This is recognized as a maternal-fetal attachment (Salehi & Kohan, 2017). However, attachment expands prenatal experience and there are various schools of thought of attachment relationships after childbirth such as John Bowlby’s and Mary Ainsworth’s attachment theory. The quality of connection with mother, her dependability, care, and responsiveness to our needs becomes a prototype for all other interactions as we develop an internalized operating model of others from this primal interaction. We either form a secure attachment, a resistant attachment, or an avoidant attachment (McLeod, 2017). A secure attachment implies the child is confidently sure he has a loving and caring mother who perceives and understands his needs, that these demands will be consistently met in a loving and wholesome way and that he is safe to be himself and explore his surroundings (McLeod, 2017). Ainsworth also opined that the mother is the first attachment and so what she refers to as ‘maternal sensitivity is paramount to the formation of a secure attachment (The Wave Clinic, 2021).

Providing Secure Attachment Through The Trio Symbols.

Circles of Flesh

Mother’s breast is a symbol of nourishment and solace. Object Relations theorist, Melanie Klein, believed in the vital importance of the mother-child relationship in shaping personality and the crucial role of the breast. Mother’s breast is the blessed cup that abundantly supplies the strengthening supply of milk for the child’s hungry petition as he suckles on one and gains relief in the other. In Christianity, milk is epitomized as one of the highest foods because of the nutritional and immunological benefits that it carries. Yet, this vessel of fortified milk transcends the physical and serves as a symbol of maternal love that is psychologically nourishing. Many children are incapable of anthesis for they are deprived of unconditional maternal love. Research proposes that breastfeeding largely nurtures a secure attachment as it intensifies maternal sensitivity to the child’s needs (Gibbs, Forste & Lybbert, 2018). Nevertheless, it’s not so much the fluid milk that forms this solid tie though scientifically it supposedly contains love hormones. The child is in the ideal position to accurately measure the mother’s nonverbal language which powerfully conveys the level of alertness and care in responding to his need (Cori, n.d.). Children possess a natural instinct for a hearty meal, shelter, and rest for the endurance of their physical body, equally important, they ordinarily have a natural desire for the sustaining and nurturing milk of a mother’s love. Children crave their mother’s unconditional non-verbal and verbal expression of love to self-actualize.

When the child is steadily attached to the mother’s breast, he collects fullness for displaying incredible potential. If he is insecurely attached to the breast, there is a fundamental lack and he is angry rioting for what he should naturally obtain. We observe maladaptive behaviours of children because they are anxiously positioned and deprived of maternal love. Children demand love, genuine warmth, and comfort, a reliable breasted figure upon which they can suckle upon.

Hands Are For Holding

‘To care for another person, in the most significant sense, is to help him grow and self-actualize himself’ (Mayeroff,1971.p.21). It is in mother’s caring hands that we find belongingness and security. Mother’s graceful hands gently remind us that we are from a maternal body, the womb that encircles us from the beginning. We are from mother and belong to her. It is a sacred place of genuinely loving belongingness. Children who possess a sense of belongingness are capable of self-acceptance and enjoy intimacy and social connectedness which is imperative for self-actualizing. It is in this belongingness that children experience security. They recognize their mother’s hand as a hiding place they can resort to in the face of physical threat because her hands are a shield and there is also an awareness of emotional security because she is reliable and predictable. They need both a physical and psychologically stable environment to explore so they can learn a sense of trust, and autonomy in exploring the wider world. A disordered home environment results in a hyper-aroused nervous system and a hyper-vigilant child who is constantly in survival mode even in the absence of real threat; he hides instead of exploring. These are the children who may lack predictability in their homes and feel a sense of alienation, they are eagerly searching for a womb connection where they are in a protected and wholesome space.

It is through mother’s affectionate hand that they understand they are here and that they are sincerely desired. Hence, the logical necessity of strokes such as positive eye contact, a pleasant smile, or a comforting embrace. Children require unconditional positive strokes (Newton, 2021). They need touch to survive and to strive valiantly as this is the first sense developed.

A throne and a classroom: Mother’s lap.

A child’s first throne is their mother’s lap and there he finds value, recognition, confidence in his competencies, and a sense of pride. He exercises rights and responsibilities and the freedom to exercise judgment and free will appropriately. Mother’s lap is the chief seat he sits on to observe himself through her eyes. It is the key foundation on which he establishes a particular view of himself and it is where he sits and meditates on this influential maternal voice. How mother perceives him is how he perceives himself, what she utters to him is stamped on his memory. Children who experience inferiority have been dethroned from their mother’s lap as a result of the Humpty-Dumpty phenomenon, an unsolid support system. Children must experience kingship to actualize, and the mother’s prime role is to graciously assist in developing healthy esteem.

As ascribed to the dear Virgin Mother, the mother is the seat of wisdom, a classroom, and a place of instruction for the child. From a sociological perspective, mothers are co-redemptrix for society as she is a social institution responsible for meticulously constructing and positively reinforcing the right values. Within this context, she is responsible for promoting the B-values such as an appreciation for beauty and humor or for justice and truth. It is through intimate interaction with the child and her own practice of these values that this knowledge is transferred to the child. Mother’s values should be expressed and practiced. This is a necessary act of care for the child’s need for moral development and the being-values necessary to become his best self.

Substitute Mothers: From An Educational Perspective

Mothers are not limited to biological. There are several reasons children may be unmothered, therefore, they require a maternal substitute. The principal aim of education should be self-actualization and on that account, there needs to be a space that helps in the fulfillment of the child’s physiological needs, safety needs, love, and belonging needs and esteems. Educators should serve as archetypal mothers and foster a positive teacher-student relationship where students feel loved and cared for, are able to experience positive peer relationships, feel a sense of accomplishment, and have confidence in themselves.

A secure maternal figure plays a vital role in opening the door for children to become what they naturally are. Through her breast, children receive the nurturing love needed to grow, through her caring hands they know they belong and are safe, and her lap constitutes a throne where they feel a sense of pride, autonomy, and prestige, and a place for learning the essential values for living that powerfully paves the way for self-actualizing. Unmothered Children can be re-orientated through substitute mothers, one such as a teacher that is reliable, loving, caring, and provides a protected learning environment.

References

Cori, L. J. (n.d.). The Emotionally Absent Mother: A guide to self-healing and getting the love you missed. Retrieved from https://www.pdfdrive.com.

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10.1177/1359104517716214. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net.

Feist, J., Feist, G. (2006). Theories of Personality (6th ed). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Gibbs, G. B., Forste, R., Lybbert, E. (2018). Breastfeeding, Parenting, and Infant Attachment

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Lisa M Vaughn, Stacey Naylor & Stacy White (2009) Relationship of Attachment Style and

Ethnic Identity to Self-Actualization in College Students, Journal of College and

Character, 10:6, , DOI: 10.2202/1940-1639.1454. retrieved from

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https://www.simplypsychology.org/bowlby.html

Newton, C, (2021). Transactional analysis- part II (The Games We Play). Retrieved from

http://www.clairenewton.

The Wave Clinic, 2021. What are the different attachment styles. Retrieved from

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