Motherless children

When my children were growing up my greatest fear was that I would die. I wasn't afraid of dying in itself (or per se, as some might say) but the fear which haunted me was because if I died, then who would look after my children? No, that's not exactly the right question.  It was a question though, and I decided that the person/s I would like to look after my children would be my brother and his wife. I asked them if they would do that and they said yes. A relief, undoubtedly, but it didn't satisfy satisfy me.

My brother and his wife have four children between them and three foster children, all of whom they look after very well. I didn't doubt that my children would have love directed their way, but, and this is the real insurmountable difficulty, they would not have a mother's love.

There is nothing unusual about my sense that if I died, nobody, not anybody, including their father and their grand-parents, would love them like I do. And, arrogant though this thought may be, it's true.

Though I have no statistics, I believe that mother are hard-wired to love their children more than anyone else, a claim which contains two meanings. First  - mothers love their children more than they      love any other person and second, that mothers love their children more than anyone else would love their children.

These two claims are not universal, just as any other generalisation about human behaviour and feelings are not universal. I have a friend who would have sold her children to the slave trade if the man she was in love with would have asked her to live with him. Some mothers find life too difficult and put drugs and alcohol, for all sorts of reasons, before their children, often resulting in those children going into foster care.

My fear of dying before my children grew up was to do with the intensity a mother feels regarding her children. Mothers know their children, usually, more than anyone else knows them. Children deserve to know that there will be, always, someone who will love them no matter what. This does not mean that a child should not be reprimanded for wrongdoing - of course they should. Most children know when they have done wrong and take the punishment. To love a child no matter what means that hey will not be let down at important times, or indeed any time, any time at all, important or trivial.

When my youngest child reached the age of twenty-one, a huge weight fell off my shoulders. Much as it was far from what I wanted, if I did die, at least my children were old enough to see their way through life and to remember that they were very much loved - very much.