This American Life: Unconditional Love

Title: This American Life: Unconditional Love

Date: 6 February 2011
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class

This radio recording (aired on November 15^th 2006) of the program “This American Life” featured two stories with the theme of Unconditional Love.

In the past, psychologists (with the government’s support) have declared that it is dangerous for the parents to show love towards their children. At the time, doctors and scientists were in accord of this argument stating “trust us we’re scientists” (using the appeal to authority, an informal fallacy) and “don’t pick up your child” as they are more prone to bacteria this way.

Set to prove this idea wrong, was a unique psychologist, psychologist Harry Harlow. He conducted an experiment with the use of baby monkeys and dolls (one ugly and made out of wire holding the baby’s food, another made out of soft cotton). The baby monkeys showed that they only went to the wired mother when they needed food and the cotton mother for the remaining time. This showed that the monkeys felt the need for comfort, affection and security. Another experiment he did was with “evil mother monkeys”. These mothers would abuse the baby monkeys for a period of time and stop. Although the babies feared the mothers when they would attack, they always came back to their mothers once the abuse stopped, portraying the unconditional love between parents and their children and the significance of love in the family.

The first story showed how important it is for the children to receive love and affection from their parents and the second showed how the love was unconditional in the family. The first story described life for a family who adopted a boy from Romania who had never experienced love. He didn’t know what love was, he didn’t know what a family was and therefore didn’t know if he wanted all of this. However, the adopting family shared with him so much of their love, enough to heal him of his anger and draw him close. At one point, the interviewer asked, “How do you love a person that is homicidal?” where the mom replied, “I mean… because he’s my son!” This love that he had received from them, had transformed him, from an angry homicidal, to a helpful loving son. They never gave up on him because of their unconditional love; even though he wasn’t their biological son, they felt this unconditional love for him.

The second story dealt with a family who had an autistic son. It mentioned the pressure the parents felt, they didn’t know whether they needed to keep him, or send him away to a residential program. At first, even with the physical harm that he was, the mother felt that “I [She] can’t do that to him” in which she referred to sending him away. Although the father felt that he would feel much better if they did, he didn’t bring up the subject because he, in a way felt guilty for even thinking this way. After feeling this way, they were both “determined to get through this” together because he was a baby in a boy’s body that kept growing and growing and they loved him. They couldn’t let strangers take care of him. However, as they tried to deal with this at home with the help of psychiatrists and psychologists, the situation seemed to be getting worse. He was being a harm to his family. At this point, they decided to take him to the residential program. Although it broke their heart, they knew it was for the better, not only for themselves, but for their son too. They visited him, and he sometimes visited them, and they could see the progress. Their unconditional love for their son is shown as they make the best decisions reflecting on what’s best for their son, even if it may break their heart.

This recording is relevant to emotion as a Way of Knowing because it shows how this unconditional love determines the connection we feel towards our families. If we feel this unconditional love (the ability to accept the people, and doing whatever will make the other happy even for the sake of our misery), then we can say that we have a strong connection to them, an unbreakable bond. We can use this emotion of love and attachment to determine what our relation is to that other person. This emotion can help identify ourselves in relation to the surrounding people. We can also determine other emotions that may arouse from this emotion of love; for example hatred if this emotion does not exist, or happiness from being around this person if we do love them etc. This allows us to know how we feel about this person, and the extent of how we think of this person in terms of positive or negative. Nevertheless, this idea is subjective as we cannot state that everyone feels the same level of love whenever they feel it. For example, the unconditional love towards a sibling may be different to the unconditional love towards one’s life partner. The knowledge issue I find is this: if this level of love or type of love is different, can one make the same conclusions about how they feel, or what they think of this person?  

These real-world stories complicate the concept of emotion as a way of knowing because well, does the particular emotion have the same effect on everyone? In the first story, the unconditional love showed that they will be there for their child no matter who he is and what he’s been through. However, the second story showed an unconditional love that caused them to make the choices that would benefit the child the most from their perspective. From this, it seems as though people make different approaches to how they view their emotion. From this, we can also predict that from one emotion, there can be many ways of knowing because there can be many ways to interpret that emotion.

The experiment run by psychologist Harry Harlow stated that the babies feel secure from the touch of the mothers. However, the knowledge issue I find is this: How does one know that the babies feel secure? (For me, it seems that the experiment is making a hasty generalization in which the psychologist assumes that the babies feel secure because they keep coming back to the mothers). Could it be that the babies come back to their mothers because they feel like they have nowhere else to go?  Another knowledge issue is this, does being and feeling secure mean the same thing to everyone?

The second story made me think of the book I just read a couple days ago Dear John by Nicholas Sparks. In this novel, a character’s brother, and the main character’s father are also faced with autism (like the child of the second story). In parts of the novel, it showed how the other main character (Savannah) dealt with her friend’s brother (Alan) who had autism. “…and I could hear the cupboard doors being opened and slammed while he continued to wail, almost as if were dying… ‘Alan! I’m coming!’ she shouted, her voice frantic. ‘It’s going to be okay!’ Alan continued to wail, and the cupboards continued to slam shut” (Sparks, 261). In this quote, it shows some of the behaviors autism is responsible for. This kind of behavior was also stated in the recording. The father described his son as a “toddler in a child’s body”. He was said to “open car doors when we [the parents] were driving, walk in traffic…” behaviors similar to a baby, like Alan in the novel. Although Alan’s parents were killed in a car accident, Tim (his older brother) and Savannah (his sister-in-law) gave him the same unconditional love his parents would have. “‘I love him.’ She kissed the top of his head. ‘He loves you, too, Alan. And so do I…’” (Sparks, 262). This shows how they love and care for him even though he has autism, and can be dangerous sometimes. This also portrays the idea that unconditional love is not only present in parents and the child but also within other family members too.