At the end of the line, a silence hovers. The question we just asked Isabelle Nadeau deserves a moment of reflection. It is indeed not easy to put into words the love we have for our children.
“It’s a bit colorful, but it’s like my heart explodes every time I see them,” replies, after a moment, the mother of 4-year-old triplets and a 5-year-old boy.
“There is nothing really that comes close to this love,” continues the one who shows snippets of her family life on the Instagram page My tribe of little guys.
Mother of a 3-month-old baby, Lysandre Nadeau also finds it difficult to describe maternal love. “I think I already loved as much as I love my boy. For example, I once felt a boost of love towards my brother, my father, my boyfriend… But there, with my son, it’s constant, ”explains the influencer and former participant of season 1 of Big Brother Celebritieswhere she met the father of her baby, the singer Claude Bégin.
PHOTO CLAUDE BÉGIN, PROVIDED BY LYSANDRE NADEAU
Lysandre Nadeau and her boy
As soon as her son was born, she felt an “unconditional and instantaneous” surge of love for this little being. However, not all new mothers experience such a connection, underlines Laurence Charton, sociologist and professor at the National Institute for Scientific Research (INRS). According to her, the context in which pregnancy, childbirth and the first weeks of an infant’s life take place has an impact on the feeling of “fullness and well-being” that some women may experience when they discover motherhood.
Isabelle Nadeau can attest to this. If during her first childbirth she experienced a “love at first sight” for her son, with her triplets, born by emergency cesarean section at 26 weeks, the experience was quite different.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, THE PRESS
It was strange to make the link between the babies who were in my womb then those I saw in neonatology, explains the mother. But whether it’s love at first sight or it takes longer, it doesn’t take away from the love you have for your children.
Isabelle Nadeau
In his heart, this love is growing day by day. “As you get older, the relationship you build with them makes you love them more. »
Even if her boy is still only a baby, Lysandre Nadeau also lives “an exponential love”. “It just keeps getting stronger and stronger. I get to know him. »
These reflections echo those of the French writer and lecturer Blanche de Richemont, who, in an interview with The Pressaffirms that “love is a daily construction”.
The quest for unconditional love
Mother of two young people aged 8 and 11, the one who studied philosophy asked herself a lot of questions about the bond that united her to her boys. “No matter what the children have done during the day, even if they have been unbearable, when you watch them sleep at night, you are always dazzled. There is always this love that keeps coming back. It’s rare to see a human being and that, each time you look at him, you are dazzled by love. In fact, it’s a miracle for me. So I thought to myself, “Is this what unconditional love is?” »
Her quest led her to publish, in 2021, unconditional loves, an essay in which it is a question of motherhood, but also of the couple and of faith, in particular. Because, in the course of her research, she found that unconditional love is not the prerogative of mothers.
Unconditional love is loving without expecting a return. It is to love without questions. It is to love despite.
Blanche de Richemont, writer and lecturer
She adds that it is also “the love that elevates, the love that gives wings”. “It’s saying, ‘I love you.’ But also: “Go ahead! Go go your own way. I’m not holding you back,’” she explains.
socialized to love
Unconditional or not, maternal love shapes society… Or does society shape the way mothers love?
“I think we can say, without passing judgment, that almost all human societies, including ours, socialize women more than men to love their child,” says Annie Cloutier, doctor in family sociology, who published in 2014 the essay To love, to mother, to celebrateinspired in part by her own experience as a stay-at-home mom.
However, the professor at Cégep Garneau deplores that with the role of mother often come “expectations of self-sacrifice, sacrifices, self-forgetfulness”.
“To love your child and to have the possibility of living this passion that we have for him […]I think it’s very healthy, but it’s not because you are jubilant with your child that you necessarily want to always be with him, ”she summarizes.