My daughter was six weeks old, lying on the changing table, and when I leaned over her, she smiled for the first time.
The wave of love that washed over me was literally overwhelming, it was the strongest emotion I had ever felt in my life. In that instant I knew I would do anything for this little creature in front of me, even give my own life.
It sounds melodramatic, but it was a momentous moment: a love that truly conquered all.
I’m sure many mothers have experienced the same tsunami of love.
It’s what gets you through sleepless nights, colicky cries, and that moment when, in the face of the endless tedium of motherhood, you realize you’re actually having a meaningful conversation with your washing machine.
Daisy Goodwin, aged 6, with her mother Jocasta Innes and half-sister Tabitha in 1967
Daisy with her youngest daughter Lydia, who is now 24 years old
It’s the evolutionary safety net that somehow makes it all worthwhile. There is now “scientific proof” that parental feelings run deeper than any other emotion.
A university in Finland recruited 55 people aged 28 to 53 who had at least one child and were in a “loving couple relationship.” Twenty-seven had pets. They underwent brain MRIs while recordings of actors reading scenarios designed to elicit feelings of love were played, including: “Your child runs toward you joyfully in a sunny meadow. You smile together, and the sun’s rays flicker on your child’s face. You feel love for your child.”
Parttyli Rinne, a researcher at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland, who led the study, said: “In parental love, there was a profound activation in the brain’s reward system, in the striatum area, while imagining love and this was not seen in any other type of love.”
The other types of love analyzed were romantic love, friendship, love of strangers, and love of pets and nature. Some pet owners may be skeptical about the results, but for me this is true. Children come first.
Of course, not all women are drawn to that thunder of maternal love that means nothing will come between them and their child. Many suffer from postpartum depression that interferes with bonding, which must make the stress of early motherhood a thousand times worse. But in the end, most of these women find that connection so important.
However, as I know, there are some women who, although they love their children, do not put them first. My mother, the writer Jocasta Innes, was one of them.
She was married with two children under the age of five and living in a Georgian house in south London when she went to a party in Islington and met a man with whom she fell passionately in love.
At 26, he was six years younger and lived in a one-bedroom flat. They belonged to different worlds. She had studied at Cambridge, was married to a film producer and had a busy social life.
Joe Potts, who became my stepfather, was an angry young man from Newcastle (it was the 1960s) who had published two black-humour novels. But the attraction between them was intense and they began a relationship.
My mother felt she had found the love of her life and decided to leave my father and move in with Joe. So far, so understandable. Many marriages end when one partner falls in love with someone else, and it is still common for men to abandon their wives and children for a new woman.
It is much less common for a woman to abandon her husband and children, but that is what my mother did. She later claimed that she had “no choice”, that she did not have the money to take me (then five years old) and my brother, two, with her.
She was bitter about the divorce, saying that the courts had discriminated against her because she was the one who had left and that my father had been able to afford better lawyers.
Daisy with her mother Jocasta who was married and had two children under the age of five when she went to a party and met a man with whom she fell passionately in love.
Jocasta (pictured with Daisy) left her husband and children for another man. She later claimed she did not have the money to take Daisy and her brother with her.
Daisy’s father was granted custody of her two children, and after that they never lived with their mother again, except for visits every other weekend and half of the holidays.
When Jocasta abandoned her husband, it was at a time when unfaithful wives were portrayed as scarlet women, while wayward husbands were simply obeying their natural instincts.
I’m sure all of this was true. This was before no-fault divorces existed and unfaithful wives were portrayed as scarlet women while wayward husbands simply obeyed their natural instincts.
My father was granted custody of my brother and me, and after that we never lived with my mother again, except for visits every other weekend and half of the holidays.
I accepted without question my mother’s story: “I did everything I could to get custody, but the courts were against me,” until the day I experienced that extraordinary moment of maternal love with my own daughter. It was a moment of intense joy, but it was also underpinned by anger.
When I realized that nothing was more important to me than my baby, I couldn’t understand why my mother had decided to leave her five-year-old son and toddler behind. I know she loved us – I have pictures of her beaming with my brother as a baby and me as a toddler – but the love she felt for us just wasn’t as strong as the passionate love she felt for her lover.
I remember holding my own baby and wondering why she didn’t take us with her. But my mother was in love with a younger man who lived in an apartment.
Having two young children was incompatible with their passionate relationship. Either my mother was overcome by a physical passion so intense that there was no room for anything else, or she did not feel the same kind of overwhelming love for her children that I had felt for my daughter.
It was extremely painful to realize that the mother I loved so much did not love us enough to keep us. She made a decision that did not include her children.
For years I wondered if my baby behavior had prevented her from feeling the same way I felt about my own baby. But, with the help of a lot of therapy, I realized that she was the adult in the situation and I was just a baby. She was the one who decided to leave and I had nothing to do with it.
There’s a part of me, a feminist part, that feels that women have a right not to be maternal, that they shouldn’t have to define themselves as mothers first and everything else second.
Men abandon their children and start second families all the time. That’s why I don’t want to stigmatize women like my mother. It takes courage to start over like that.
There is a French saying that “the children of lovers are orphans.” A couple in an intense relationship may find it difficult to prioritize their children.
And it’s hard to be a mother. It must be almost impossible if you don’t feel that rush of love for your children when they’re little. It’s that extraordinary sense of joy and purpose that makes motherhood so rewarding. I know it made me realize that I wanted my son’s happiness more than my own.
Of course, non-parents can experience it just as intensely, but I think it’s hard to be a parent if you don’t feel it at all.
I no longer feel angry at my mother, I just feel sad that she never had the chance to feel the lasting happiness I found in my children.
His second marriage lasted about 12 years and then he married someone else, but this time he took his children (my half-sisters) with him. Maybe he had learned something. Romantic love can end as suddenly as it begins, but the feelings you have for your children last a lifetime.
- Daisy Goodwin’s new novel, Diva, is out in paperback September 13th Posted by Head of Zeus
