*We need to talk about Kevin

'We Need to Talk About Kevin' was an interesting movie about parent-child dynamics and its effects on personal development and adolescence. Particularly, it was about mother-son relationships. The movie deliberately stays away from any depictions of parenting styles, but represented the detached nature of this mother with her son since the time he is born. She sits in the bed staring blankly, while the father comforts the baby. This contrasts with the typical scene of the mother holding the child after birth. This theme of detachment is furthered by the scenes of early child-rearing where she is exhausted because her son cries all the time and she spaces it out while she is standing next to noisy construction work. As the child grows older and the mother attempts to play with the boy, the child does not reciprocate and resists the attempts of his mother trying to play with him or build a bond. She is, or at least seems, clueless as to why the child is of a disgruntled disposition. This fuels the dynamic and tension between the mother and son.

Throughout the film, I kept returning to the themes of attachment styles that was prevalent during the late 70's with Mary Ainsworth. I also kept going to the theme of attention-seeking behavior and how, for the child, negative attention is better than no attention at all. What underlies all of this is the way our interactions with our mothers influence our emotions and how we deal with them. 

In 1978, Mary Ainsworth in her work with Bowlby conducted a few experiments or scenarios by which she could test her hypothesis of distressed babies and parenting styles, which culminated in her categorization of "attachment styles." She devised a sequence of scenarios, which she called the "Strange Situation" and focused on the reactions of the child. This was a way of applying the studies that Harlow did with capuchin monkeys and their tendency to cling to artificial surrogate mothers with fur, rather than the one without fur.

Here I will quote from Haidt's book ('The Happiness Hypothesis'): "in the first scene, the mother and her child enter a comfortable room, full of toys. Most children in the experiment soon crawl or toddle off to explore. In scene two, a friendly woman enters, talks with the mother for a few minutes, and then joins the child in play. In scene three, the mother gets up and leaves the child alone for a few minutes with the stranger. In scene four, she returns and the stranger leaves. In scene five, the mother leaves again, and the child is all alone in the room. In scene six, the stranger returns; and in scene seven, the mother returns for good. The play is designed to ratchet up the child's stress level in order to see how the child's attachment system manages the scene changes. Ainsworth found three common patterns of managing." Secure, Avoidant, and Resistant. 

Secure attachment children would "reduce or stop their play when their mothers leave, and then show anxiety, which the stranger cannot fully relieve. In the two scenes where mom returns, these children show delight, often moving toward her or touching her to reestablish contact with their secure base; but then they quickly settle down and return to play."

Avoidant attachment children did not seem to care very much whether the mother came or went, although they did show some signs of distress. Ainsworth drew the conclusion that these children suppressed their distress by "trying to manage it on their own instead of relying upon their mother's for comfort.

Resistant attachment children were "anxious and clingy throughout the study. They become extremely upset when separated from mom, they sometimes resist her efforts to comfort them when she returns, and they never fully settle down to play in the unfamiliar room."

Ainsworth went on to observe mothers at home and the way they dealt with their children there. She observed that mothers who were warm and highly responsive were most likely to have secure attachment children. "These children had learned that they could count on their mothers, and were therefore the most bold and confident. Mothers who were aloof and unresponsive were more likely to have avoidant children, who had learned not to expect much help and comfort from mom. Mothers whose responses were erratic and unpredictable were more likely to have resistant children, who had learned that their efforts to elicit comfort sometimes paid off, but sometimes not."

The conclusions about mothers that Ainsworth draws are somewhat problematic as subsequent studies about parenting styles and attachment styles in children from other countries vary. For example, I believe that it was in Germany that they found most children had an "avoidant" attachment style. And I'm not sure whether the parenting style and attachment style translates competely. What it does indicate is that there is a positive correlation between parenting style and the child's method of dealing with stress. In later studies, psychologists found that these attachment styles related to relationship styles. Consider the following:

1. "I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don't often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me."

2. "I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often love partners want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being."

3. "I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me or won't want to stay with me. I want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away."

These are respectively in the order of Secure, Avoidant, and Resistant. Note that these are not necessarily the case but generalizations and correlations. There are always exceptions, outliers, and other factors involved. And I'm not sure about the sample or the methodology so there are some things to consider before making a direct causal relation between parenting style, attachment, and relationship styles. But this detracts from the initial topic: mother-son relationships and their outcomes.

It is obvious throughout the movie that Kevin is an angry child and wants his mother's attention. His "style' can be classified as "avoidant." And he exemplifies the extreme of this category fueled and motivated by his mother's inability to pick up on any cues or really learn her child's language and "body language." Kevin goes on a rampage - even going so far as to killing his father and his sister. He goes into the pits of nihilism and continues deeper without a point of rebounding where existentialists talk about the empowerment of self-creation, the "will to power" or the popular philosophy of you are free to create whoever you want to be, or you are your own self-creation. The self-affirming process of individual authenticity and meaning-making.

Instead Kevin does not get out of nihilism's grasp: "the point is that there is no point." Many would consider existentialism a philosophy of despair but Sartre really spoke of it as a philosophy of humanism, hope, and optimism. That you are free to create without the boundaries, constraints, and restrictions of prior structures. 

Now this is somewhat questionable as much more genetic research and identical twin studies begin to come out with fascinating case studies and anecdotal evidence as well as trends, correlations, genetic triggers, and studies of this nature. Genetics has re-vitalized the nature-nurture debate and the extent of nature via nurture.

Nonetheless, it would seem obvious to say that parenting and how we parent is a critical and important dimension of cultivating our children's emotions and habits. Being a parent is no joke and it is definitely not filled with simply happy moments. There is shit, piss, diapers, crying, waking up at all kinds of ungodly hours, back-talk, disrespect, pushing boundaries, hitting, crying, more shit, more piss and dealing with all sorts of unexpected stresses. The joys are there no doubt. But we must be conscientious and attentive to the way we raise our children. Our relations with our children are important and so are our relations to our mothers and fathers. Having a child is, truly, like getting a "tattoo on your face." You can't take it back.