“All You Need is Love, Love Is All You Need”…It’s a Beatles song, from the Magical Mystery Tour album and was first broadcast as a single on “Our World” which was the first live global television link, broadcast via satellite and watched by over 400 million people live in 25 different countries, in June of 1967, just weeks after their release of the wildly popular Sergeant Pepper album…

But truer words were never spoken….When all is said and done, and we all shuffle off this mortal coil into the next stage of our existence, we will all only be remembered by the love of others for us, and in our memory in their minds we can all gain a measure of immortality…What would the world be like without love? A cold, dark and dreary place to be sure, yet love is one of the most misunderstood emotions of all…

I guess the primary love, the first love and perhaps the most long lasting and influential impression on our psyches is that of a mother’s love for her child…..According to my Google sources: “Mother love shapes cultures and individuals. While most mothers know that their love and emotional availability are vital to their children’s well-being, many of us do not understand the profound and long-lasting impact we have in developing our young children’s brains, teaching them first lessons of love, shaping their consciences” …

If a mother does not love her own child, if she rejects it or harms it or abuses it in any way, including simply systematically ignoring it’s basic needs, chances are almost 100% that the child will grow up to be a social misfit, a mentally and emotionally stunted individual and most likely either end up crazy or in jail…

The mother’s love actually is physiologically necessary for the normal growth and development of the child, and numerous studies have shown that “….without devoted, repeated acts of love, a child’s brain doesn’t make the growth hormone needed for proper mental and physical development, and numerous other imbalances are also created.”

The child also needs to be removed if at all possible from a home were there is an abusive pattern of neglect, not just the stereotypical yelling, slapping and beating by the mother or father who resents them so much and acts out their resentment, but even passive abuse which includes not being held, cuddled and loved, because it is just as bad and harmful to the long range emotional development of the child……This includes patterns of alcohol fueled abuse by the parents as well….

These children will usually respond well, and recover to become normal human adults, when placed in a foster home or somewhere, ideally with relatives, where they can receive the love they need…Scientific studies have demonstrated without a doubt that love is more than just a word, it is essential for the proper development and growth pattern of a child…

There is also the love of the father to be considered …Again, according to my Google sources: “Fatherly love is critical to a person’s development…..The importance of a father’s love should help motivate many men to become more involved in nurturing child care”…Widespread recognition of the influence of a father’s love on their children’s personality development is becoming more and more noticed and accepted in a child’s life in today’s modern world….

There are many types of love, for example there is also the need for the ability and capacity for the development of love between siblings, brothers and sisters, and the love of friends, and eventually the manifestation of the concept of romantic love…. The ability to feel and manifest and share these other types of love are all extremely important to developing a well rounded, well grounded individual ….

The truth though is that in our increasingly fragmented, divorce prone society, two parent families have become the minority, and the children have had to suffer because of it, because without a solid foundation of parental love, these children often grow up love starved, or love deprived…. And when they do become adults they are often, (but not always,) incapable of expressing and reciprocating any other kinds of love….

It just makes common sense that like anything else, a good foundation is essential to the development of the child into a loving, caring adult…There are always exceptions and exceptional individuals who overcome really traumatic childhoods and become stand up, positive and loving adults, sometimes in a defiant response to their own lack of love when growing up, but as noted, these are the rare and happy exceptions to the rule….

We would have a lot less crime and violence in the world if everybody realized how precious and impressionable a baby or a young child’s mind really is, and devoted at least some of their time to the proper upbringing of their children….Even the Bible talks about “bad seeds” born to no good, but I strongly suspect that these children who grow up to be bad people, evil adults, suffered from a lack of love in their own early crucial developmental years…

They say that we are all the products of our environment, but the emotional environment a child is raised up in is also becoming more and more understood to be a crucial phase of human development…If they never received love as a child, how difficult it must be to express love to others as an adult? If all you have been taught by your family growing up is to be negative and hateful, that you are worthless and you feel that you have low or no self esteem, how hard is it to flip the switch and become a loving adult? It is nearly impossible…

I started out this blog with a reference to a Beatles’s song, “ All You Need Is Love,” and so I will end it with a quote from another Beatles’s song: “The End” from the Abbey Roads album, which includes these prophetic and oh so true lyrics:

“And In The End, The Love You Take Is Equal To The Love You Make.”