Honoring Love That Can’t Be Reciprocated

A parent’s love and a child’s love are different.

A parent’s love for a child is, and ought to be, unconditional. Despite occasionally being angered or critical of our children’s antics, we, as parents, embraced this unwavering love as part of our commitment when starting a family.

I don’t think a child’s love for their parents is necessarily unconditional, nor should it be. For example, if I abused my kids, they certainly shouldn’t love me unconditionally.

What I realized this week, as I’ve observed aging family members up close and from afar, is the concept of unreciprocated love. A child’s love for their elders may be unreciprocated—unable to be returned as those elders age and lose their mental and physical capacities. This unreciprocated love so often shown by children to their aging elders is courageous, thankless, and uncommonly special.

Sometimes, as our elders age—our parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and godparents—they might not have the capacity to love us back in the ways they once did. They may become too weak to hug, kiss, or care for us as they did when we were younger. In the most cruel of possibilities, they may not even recognize the person in front of them who is offering love and care. They may want to reciprocate the love they’re receiving, but there may come a time when our older loved ones simply can’t.

Fourteen percent of the population, equating to 37.1 million people, provide unpaid eldercare in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In our culture, and especially in the workplace, the caregiving these people do is invisible. Being a parent, on the other hand, is very visible and at least a little bit supported. Even though the US lags behind the rest of the world in workplace policies related to families, parenting is at least visible and acknowledged.

Adult caregiving is much less visible, supported, or even understood to be a reality that millions of people live with every day. It seems, sometimes, that we often forget that adult caregiving even exists.

In my writing, I often talk about parenting and its immense struggles. I’m a parent, so I unsurprisingly over-index there.

Today, I’d like to put us aside as parents and pause to be grateful for the children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews who are caring for older loved ones, even though that love and care might be unreciprocated. Even if we don’t celebrate it or value it broadly in our culture, I think we should at least acknowledge and name this very gracious sacrifice of unreciprocated love.

Let us hope and pray that we have the strength to care for someone even when they can’t reciprocate our love. And that we are good enough to our children that they are willing to love us when our love for them is unconditional, yes, but cannot be reciprocated.

Children bring out our best

I've noticed that almost everyone, myself included, behaves differently in the presence of children.

We swear less, we try harder to be nice, and we try to be more patient than when we’re around adults. It’s like children bring out the Christmas spirit in us in every season of the year. But why?

For one, they deserve it. Kids are innocent and we owe them a chance to be in a nurturing environment. We all know kids’ surroundings affect who they become. We try our hardest for them because we know it matters. Our responsibility to them matters.

But I don’t think that’s the only reason. I think we also feel safer around children than we do around adults.

When I interact with a child, I don’t expect them to be mean. I don’t expect a child to pounce on my vulnerability and kindness like an adult might. My expectation of how a child will treat me matters. This lack of expectation for cruelty from children creates a sense of safety, contrasting sharply with my guardedness around adults. And that helps me to act differently. Our expectations of how others will behave matter.

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It’s a common and worthy trope to ask, “why can’t we embody the Christmas spirit all year?” What I realized this year is that we already can. The vast majority of people I know try harder to be their best, kindest self when they’re around children. We have it in us to try a little harder all year.

The rub is, we don’t expect other adults to embody the Christmas spirit all year. I think that’s why it’s so easy to regress into being crabby in January - our expectations of how others will be have matters.

That’s the challenge isn’t it? Our challenge is to try harder so that others expect that we will be kind toward them, no matter what circumstance or season we’re in. What we can do, I think, is just to remember that it’s our choice whether we want to always act with the grace we always afford to children.

By this, I don’t mean infantilizing every adult we do. What I more mean is that we can believe that everyone deserves to be in a nurturing environment, even as adults. Imagine a world where we all extend the kindness and grace we naturally offer to children, to everyone we meet. How wonderful might that be?

It’s not just kids who deserve nurturing surroundings, we all do. Because it matters.