Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
The mother-child relationship involves a paradox where intense love must eventually help the child become independent and separate from the mother.
In plain terms
Love requires letting a child become independent.
What can you take from it?
True care supports independence and separation.

Where it applies

  • raising children
  • parent-child dynamics
  • family counseling

Putting it to work

  • encouraging child autonomy
  • balancing protection and freedom

Questions to consider

  • What does healthy independence look like for you?
  • How do you balance love and letting go?

Another view

This dynamic is difficult to execute without causing emotional distress.

More from Erich Fromm

  1. The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process whi…

    Permalink to quote #93
  2. The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.

    Permalink to quote #95
  3. The history of man is a graveyard of great cultures that came to catastrophic ends because of their incapacity for planned, rational, voluntary reaction to cha…

    Permalink to quote #92

Related quotes

  1. In erotic love, two people who were separate become one. In motherly love, two people who were one become separate. The mother must not only tolerate, she must…

    Erich FrommErich Fromm quote #41
  2. However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leavi…

    Robert BellahRobert Bellah quote #2
  3. Give your children lots of rope. Allow them to make their own mistakes. Don't give them too much advice. Each child is different; you have to respect that. It'…

    Kirk DouglasKirk Douglas quote #3