Motherless Sons: The Impact of Loss
Image: Homesick for Naples (1895) by Berthe Worms (1868-1937) Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo / Public Domain
I recently heard a story about the life of the Buddha that raises questions about the impact of mother loss on sons.
On her way to her father’s kingdom, Queen Mayadevi, the Buddha’s mother, gave birth to a son and died shortly after. The child, Prince Siddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha, was raised by an aunt in his father’s palace, sheltered from the realities of pain, old age, and death. At the age of fifteen, he married his arranged bride but later abandoned her and his son for the spiritual life, wandering as an ascetic monk until he reached enlightenment under a bodhi tree. He never returned to his family.
A core teaching in Buddhism is that life is suffering, dukkha, and one of the causes of suffering is attachment or clinging to people, ideas, all things. When we cling to what is impermanent, we suffer. Considering the Buddha’s tragic and early loss of his mother, we might wonder if his insight about attachment and impermanence emerged from a painful personal experience.
Boys who lose a mother at an early age experience disrupted attachment styles and are vulnerable to separation anxiety, fears of abandonment, and difficulty with cognitive functions such as organizing skills.[1] Later in life, motherless sons may have difficulty with intimacy, especially with women.[2] This can also apply to boys who have been adopted, separated from their biological mothers, however loving the adopted parents and early the adoption, as psychologist Nancy Verrier writes in The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child.[3]
What are the cultural models for children dealing with loss? Of special interest are teaching stories that influence development and identity before children become immersed in the digital world. Fairy tales continue to fascinate young people, and while there are many fairy tales of motherless daughters, often left in the clutches of evil stepmothers as in Snow White and Cinderella, fairy tales and teaching stories about motherless sons are less common.
But the mother wound, as it is sometimes called, is present in the trials and tribulations of the young male heroes of popular literature. Charles Dickens had a special affection for his orphaned boys. Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Pip in Great Expectations have been abandoned by one or both parents. All three of these characters find maternal love and care in sympathetic women: Pip in Mrs. Joe, and Oliver in Nancy. Huckleberry Finn and Peter Pan live in our collective imaginations as boys who have rejected the rules of society and survive by their cleverness and wits. They, too, are motherless boys, though Wendy Darling soon takes up the matronly tasks of housekeeping and caring for Peter and the lost boys. The seven dwarfs in the fairy tale Snow White are another type of lost boys, living in the woods outside the bounds of civilization. They agree to let Snow White stay with them if she does the housekeeping, mends their clothes, and prepares their food—in short, becomes a mother substitute.
These stories remain popular from generation to generation. They tell us something about ourselves, our secret wishes, fears, and desires hidden from conscious awareness. As children, the terror of being abandoned by a mother is too frightening to acknowledge, but even in our postmodern era, we recognize the anguish of fictional motherless sons. We cheer their cunning and bravado and ability to survive, often by finding a mother substitute.
The loss of a mother or the lack of maternal care profoundly affects all children. Whether the loss is the result of a death, divorce, or emotional abandonment, children need their loss acknowledged and explained in language they understand and reassured that they are not to blame. They need guidance and support in handling their grief and help being made to feel secure again after this abandonment (whatever the circumstances). But despite the many sources of information about normalizing the expression of sadness and grief in boys, socialized gender roles continue to exert pressure on boys to live up to a stoic masculine ideal and to suppress their emotions.[4]
In adult men, the grieving process often looks different than in women. Men are less likely to cry or show a depressed mood and are more likely to engage in action-distracting activities. Men are more likely to express anger after a loss, display irritability, become easily annoyed and overreactive, or withdraw entirely from social contact. Boys raised without a mother or maternal care may struggle with social skills. Without a maternally caring role model, boys may have difficulty developing empathy and a capacity to nurture. They may adhere to traditionally strict gender roles.[5]
Losing a parent at an early age is a pivotal event in any child’s life, but learning to integrate grief can be a source of empowerment and resilience. Attentive and supportive male caretakers, as well as loving family connections and friendships, can help. Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, and Edgar Allen Poe all lost their mothers during childhood.
Helen Keller, the renowned blind author and speaker, wrote: “What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us.”[6]
[1] Liu, H; Lin, Z; Umberson, D., “Parental Death and Cognitive Impairment: An Examination by Gender and Race-Ethnicity,” The Journal of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 2021 July 7.
[2] Hoeg, B.L., et al., “Early parental loss and intimate relationships in adulthood: A nationwide study,” Developmental Psychology, 2018 May.
[3] Verrier, Nancy, The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child (1993) Gateway Press.
[4] Bockerman, P., Haapanen, M., Jepsen, C., “Early parental death and its association with children’s mental and economic well-being in adulthood: a nationwide population-based register study,’ Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 2023 September 08.
[5] Norman, Nick, “The Problem of Male Grief,” Psychology Today 2022 November 14
[6] Keller, Helen, We Bereaved (1929) Leslie Fulenwider, Inc.
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