Sans comprendre un mot de français, la mère de Diogo a passé plus que 4 heures dan la salle, en assistant la soutenance de la thèse de sa fils.
On Friday, 2 December 2005, I had the pleasure of being part of the doctoral defense of Mr. Diogo. Present in the room was his mother who did not understand a word of French. For you see, Diogo and his family are Portuguese; but he had pursued his doctorate in France, writing (in French) a masterful thesis on Foucault. And his mother had traveled to France for the occasion of her son’s doctoral defense. Mr. Diogo is an only son whose father had passed away. I do not think that there is anything on the face on the face of this earth, short of death itself, that would have prevented Mrs. Diogo from being present for the occasion.
Though she did not understand a word, one would have thought from her comportment that she was weighing every sentenced that was being uttered. For a person could not have appeared more attentive than she did. However, I shall never forget the expression of joy on her face, when the room broke out in applause upon the committee’s announcement that Diogo’s thesis had been passed. That moment was all the reward that she needed for the 4 hours of conversation that took place in a language that she simply did not understand. The fact that she could not understand a word was but a mere detail.
There is little doubt in my mind that everyone whom Diogo’s mother knows in Portugal will hear from her lips that he was absolutely brilliant at his doctoral defense.
Poetic license has a special category. It is called a mother’s love. I should like, in what follows, to offer some remarks regarding the psychology of a mother’s love.
Suppose we have a mother’s love at its best and a father’s love at its best. Will we still have a difference between a mother’s love and a father’s love? And if the answer to that question is affirmative, should we want to dissipate that difference by way of socialization? I am going to explore the matter indirectly at first, though what I am up to shall certainly be transparent enough. Yet, there is a rather interesting twist in the argument.
So imagine that Sebastian and Laurena are married. Laurena decides to make a bookshelf for the living room; and indeed her carpentry skills are such that she produces an absolutely marvelous piece of work. Sebastian loves it; and whenever anyone compliments him on the bookshelf, as is often the case, he proudly points out that his wife, Laurena, made it for the living room.
Now, as it happens Laurena loves the bookshelf, too. It is without a doubt her best piece of carpentry work. So in view of the fact that they have both love the work equally, as it turns out, do they both have exactly the same relationship to the bookshelf? Well, surely there is a pride that comes with having built the bookshelf that only Laurena can have, however true it may be that Sebasian loves it as much as Laurena does. And if she did not feel that pride we would find that odd. This would strike us as indicative of some sort of psychological disassociation.
Moving on: suppose that someone were to damage the bookshelf beyond repair. Clearly, both would be hurt, as they both have lost something that they adored. But would they be hurt in exactly the same way? I do not think so.
Notwithstanding the fact that both loved the bookshelf equally nothing will change the fact that Laurena made it. From this simple truth it will inexorably follow that she experiences a loss over the irreparably damaged bookshelf that Sebastian cannot possibly experience; though, to be sure, we would not expect Laurena to throw this truth in her husband’s face.
Suppose, however, that Laurena did not feel a special loss over the bookshelf having been irreparably damaged. Surely that would surprise us. We would wonder how anyone could put so much time into building something so beautiful and not feel a special pain over its destruction. This, too, would strike most of us as a kind of psychological disassociation.
Finally, I cannot imagine anyone thinking that we should want to correct for this.
The parallel to parenting, among human beings and, in particular, the difference between a mother and a father to which I am alluding is too obvious for words. Of course, a mother does not make a child in the way that a carpenter makes a piece of woodwork. But this difference does not undercut the parallel; for during pregnancy, a mother’s relationship to her child has no equal in the life of her husband or, at any rate, the child’s father. For those who do not see the parallel, there is not much that I should like to say here, which brings me to the twist in the argument.
Recall the point about psychological disassociation when a person fails to take any pride in a magnificent piece of work that she or he has produced or fails to feel a sense of pain when that work has been irreparably damaged. How much more so, then, would this be true if a woman did not feel a special bond to the child that she carried and gave birth to? And while we could through socialization no doubt rid women of this sort of feeling, the question that immediately arises is whether or not this would be a good thing from the standpoint of a woman’s psychological health.
It is a fact about the world that men have abandoned their children. This is, of course, is utterly inexcusable. It may be thought creating a social environment in which women behave increasingly like men in this regard constitutes social progress. The point to which I am drawing attention is that this may be social progress that comes with a hefty price, namely the psychological well-being of women.
This question is a poignant one even if, as some of the graduate students who served as my teaching assistant hold, the fetus is of nugatory value at the outset. For the fetus certainly does not remain that way; and it is owing to this being’s development in a woman’s body that this transformation to human status, on the view of graduate students in question, comes about. And the force of the question that I have raised is consistent with Robert L. Trivers’ seminal and much discussed essay “Parental Investment and Sexual Selection” that first appeared in Readings in Sociobiology, edited by T. H. Clutton-Brock and Paul H. Harvey (University of California Press, 1972).
Mrs. Diogo, of course, is utterly indifferent to Trivers’ eloquent theory. But surely the following is true: when one has put one’s life on the line to bring a person into the world, sitting four hours in a room in order to witness that person’s success is nothing at all even if one is not able to understand a single word. For in the great scheme of things the actual words were but a detail.
_____ _____ ______
Madame Diogo, je veux que vous sachiez que mon âme a été élevée par votre présence dans la salle. En étant là pour votre fils, vous étiez là pour nous aussi. Voire, par votre présence, Madame Diogo, vous étiez une exemplification parfaite de l’amour d’une mère.
