Why Parental Love for a Child Should Be Unconditional

¶ … Merit: Reflection

David Brooks (2015) makes a valid point in his New York Times article "Love and Merit." His aim is to show that parental love is more important and effective than meritocratic love. The difference between the two is that the former is unconditional and gives the child the sense that he or she is loved no matter what -- even if he or she fails at everything the child attempts, the parent still loves the child. Meritocratic love, on the other hand, is based the child's success at various tasks, whether school, sports, or sociality. Meritocratic love, Brooks argues, reinforces the wrong ideas in the child -- namely, that the child is only valuable so long as he performs well. But this notion sets up a false idea within society. It props up a person's sense of self-worth by gauging the person's value according to standards that do not transcend to the higher realm of truth, beauty, goodness and love. Love, Brooks argues, especially from a parent, should be akin to charity: it should not judge or be discriminatory. It should see goodness everywhere it looks. Children, Brooks suggests, need such unconditional love so that they can grow up feeling whole and secure. If the love they receive is only meritocratic then they will always feel a pressure to perform and never really understand what real love is all about.

Thus, this article is significant in the sense that it drives home a major point about love and how it should be shown. Love should not be "a tool to exercise control," so Brooks contends. It should be something that comes out of a parent's heart without respect to what a child does. Whether a child is good or bad should make no difference on how a parent displays love. Love that is rooted in the "culture of meritocracy" is not real love -- it is a manipulation, an exploitation of love for an end that is situated within the parent's conception or within a societal conception of the way a child should be. But who says why that conception is good? What if it isn't? And why should a parent's love be conditional upon adherence to this conception? As Brooks notes, "parental love is supposed to be oblivious to achievement." What he means is that love is really most efficacious when it is blind. And when it is blind it is most like that supernatural gift which the Old World identified as grace, which comes from God and builds upon our human natures, allowing people to grow in perfection.

In this sense, there is a theological aspect to Brooks' argument: essentially, if love is akin to grace, it should mirror that love which God has for man. This could be understood in the Christian conception of love: Christ said that man has no greater love for his fellow man than this -- that he would lay down his life for his neighbor. In other words, love is self-sacrificing. It is about negating one's self and showing charity to another. It is about being the support, the assistance, the aid, the umbrella, the crutch, the helping hand, the shoulder to cry on, the comfort -- in short, the balm that people desire when they are in need. And children are very much in need from the moment they are born to the time they step out on their own into the journey of adulthood (and even then they are more than likely going to need some love from their parents still).