When Heloise was born, we bought (or were given) all the classic children’s books. We have Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny; Each Peach Pear Plum and Ferdinand. We read what we were read; I can’t wait to recite Charlotte’s Web to my daughter in the next few years, as I loved it so. (My brother and I grew up listening to the LP’s of E.B. White reading his famous book aloud.)
I’ve learned that children’s books can divide parents; everyone has one they love or loathe. But I was surprised to read this commentary at Daddy Dialectic about one of my daughter’s favorites (and one I also treasure), Sam McBratney’s Guess How Much I Love You. Jeff writes:
In it, two rabbits – an adult and a child – engage in a game of one-upmanship in their quest to say how much they love each other. The game begins with the little rabbit telling the big rabbit “Guess how much I love you.” The little rabbit then stretches his arms out wide and says “This much.” The big rabbit smiles, and, doing the same thing with his arms, says “Well I love you this much.” They then proceed in back and forth fashion through raised arms, extended legs, jumps, etc. until the little rabbit begins to fall asleep. At this point, the little rabbit presents his final claim: “I love you all the way up to the moon.” The big rabbit ultimately concludes the book by replying: “I love you all the way up to the moon – and back.”
According to the publisher this book has sold over 15 million copies and is published in 37 languages. The children’s book review publication Booklist gave it a starred review and said about the book, “There’s not a wrong note in this tender tale.”
Am I the only one who thinks the adult rabbit… is a bit of an asshole? Aren’t the adult rabbit’s constant moves to up the ante on the little rabbit evidence of an ego that’s out of whack? Even when channeled through professions of love, this kind of behavior doesn’t feel particularly tender to me. In fact, it seems to me that the adult rabbit’s answer to the question of how much love it has for the little rabbit should be, “Not enough to restrain myself from besting your every move.”
Gosh, that’s not how I read it at all. And since I’ve never written about children’s books before, I’m happy that my defense of McBratney’s charming tale will be my first.
One of the great truisms in contemporary therapeutic Western culture is that parent-child love is always uneven, or should be. Unlike the love between spouses, where equal affection and passion is the ideal, a parent should always love a child more than the child loves the parent. I know perfectly well that this is not a universal cultural ideal, though I frankly wish it were. It’s not a two-way street: we give to our children unconditionally not to receive the same level of devotion in return, but to equip them for their lives.
I love my mama very much. I was heartbroken when my father died. But I love my daughter more, as I am sure my mother loves me more than she loved her own mama and papa. If — chas v’shalom and heavens forfend — I could only save one person from a burning building, my mom or my daughter, there wouldn’t be a question. Not for a second. And I know my mother would enthusiastically endorse the rescue of her granddaughter. Frankly, it’s obscene to imagine making a different decision.
What McBratney’s Daddy Rabbit is doing is teaching his baby bunny — and reminding us all — of this truth. Children ought to rest in the certainty of their parents’ love and devotion; they ought to learn that they are under no obligation to reciprocate that love with the same intensity. Right now, there’s no one in the world my Heloise loves more than me and her mother. This is because she’s two. But if that’s still the case four decades for now, I’ll be sad — not because I require my daughter to reproduce, but because the greatest and deepest passions of our lives shouldn’t be for our parents. They should be for those whom we choose and those whom we nurture, not those who chose or made or us.
I love my mama. I loved my papa. And they loved me more than I loved and love them. I only fully understood the depth of their love for me when I became a father, and it made me weep with gratitude and empathy. I will pass that on to my daughter, reminding her that filial adoration can never match parental devotion. In a loving and sweet way, that’s McBratney’s message. And I’m grateful for it.
It is very refreshing to see a parent say this! I am not yet a parent, and my parents have never required affection of me. But I have watched several friends’ parents behave as though my friends (their children) owed them affection, often huge amounts of affection on a par with their own. And I’ve found that somewhat sickening — not to mention damaging to the parent-child relationship. So thanks for this.
I agree with you, Hugo. In a healthy Western relationship, parents always love their kids more. In fact, when parents start demanding greater love, they usually fuck up their kids.
I totally didn’t read the book the way Daddy Dialectic did. His example with the basketball is not analogous at all. It’s not about the older rabbit one-upping the little one; it’s about accepting the idea that parents love children unconditionally and beyond.
Gosh, I totally read that book the way Jeff did – and I say that agreeing completely that parents should love their children more than children should love us back. I get that’s the message McBratney wanted to convey. But the way it’s conveyed is through a series of one-upsmanships by Daddy Rabbit.
I don’t think the one-upmanship around love is like anything else — it’s a unique claim, not like besting or humiliating a child in anything else. But this is a YMMV moment, isn’t it?
I’m a bit double on this one.
My child is three and I have, more than once, felt close to what you tell us about your daughter but this time I’m not sure what to think.
I do am a bit at a loss as a parent and your blogpost reminds this to me.
My daughter is three & a half and is in one of those phases where “No” is the word she uses the most, where she pushes everyone’s buttons, where she is creating her character, testing her personal boundaries and those of others.
We are standing our ground, trying to be consequent in our firm but loving respect towards her but have turned into these psychologically exhausted couple and have had a huge discussion about how to maintain our love towards her when there is no apparent return from her.
The apparent lack of respect or recognition towards her is something I have problems with and which makes me wonder what the nature of her love towards me is. It makes me question my attitude as a child toward my parents. My love for them is very deep but was not always such. My love for my daughter is immense but… there is a but and that bothers me.
As a person who has been, sadly as many others, abused and raped, I am very big on people respecting me and maintaining (as much as possible) relationship based on reciprocity in respect, gratitude, give & take,… whatever. So when I give my daughter all the love and opportunities and freedom of discovery and encouragement but receive nothing more than tantrums, “no”s and sulking… then the old French adage of “there is no love, only proofs of love”, which I so much hate, comes to my mind and makes me wonder which one of the bunnies I am.
This is temporary and due to utter exhaustion. I do know that I would run out of the burning building with my child in my arms, crying over my mama still being in there but the lack of reciprocity as gnawing at me. Being a parent requires a level of selflessness I had vowed never to go back to after dealing with my multiple abuse but which I now see myself chosing again for the sake of parenthood.
Ramblings of the mom ^^
But, in fact, the papa bunny lets the baby bunny get the last word because he whispers, “I love you right up to the moon – AND BACK” after the baby bunny has fallen asleep. It is not one upmanship at all at the end.
Parent/child relationships are not equal. A parent chooses to have/create a child; a child is born into circumstances not of his/her creation. And then there’s the power aspect. A child is dependent, an adult should not be.
Thanks for this post, Hugo. It’s an interesting and insightful take on the book, and it makes sense.
It also makes me think of LOVE YOU FOREVER, which seems like it’s in a similar vein, but I find absolutely creepy. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to seek it out and post about it — I’d be interested to see if you read it in the same way as “Guess How Much I Love You.”
You don’t? Plenty of adults play one-upsmanship in love, and use “I love you more than you love me” as a basis for all kinds of unhealthy stuff.
Ilse, repeat the parent mantra: It gets better and this, too, shall pass. She will not spend the rest of her life acting like a three-year-old.
I’m one of those wired up so differently it is uncertain whether I can fully know what love is, between people anyway. It’s a word I’m not that comfortable using, though I do [think I]know about loyalty, solidarity, and friendship.
But still I’m a bit twitchy over who “should” love who more. Apart from the question of whether all those shoulds are something we need in the first place, I wonder if some of us might want to quite trying to measure love, let alone decreeing it and concentrate on just acting right. One can control one’s actions more than one’s feelings. How do you measure love, anyway? How do you be sure that what you think is a proof of it might not be proof of who knows what else?
For what it’s worth, I got the impression my parents loved each other more then they loved me. Now I am rather fond of them, at least when in a good mood, but I suspect their attachment to me might be greater or deeper than mine to them. But I’m not sure, and anyway, if this is in fact true, it is not because of any universal law but because of who I am and how at times I was treated when growing up.
Oh, and the all-time classics are anything by Dr. Seuss and his epigones, and “A Fly Went By”, “Stop That Ball” and “Put Me In The Zoo,”
I spoke to my mother about this post yesterday. She said “Of course, darling. Love, like water, should always run downhill.”
I’m with Angiportus — I’m pretty sure my parents loved each other more than they loved us kids…but they loved us kids an awful lot. And in the burning building case, they’d have saved us kids at the cost of their own lives. (I do wish I’d been able to find a relationship like that, but it just didn’t work out.)
My kids and I played the “who loves you” game (with the kid giving the names of different friends and relatives), but we never played the “who loves more” game.
I love them immensely, but they love me immensely too — although sometimes it didn’t feel like it (a sense of humor is key, here). Children’s understanding of love deepens with what we adults show them.
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If my brother or I ever shouted, “I HATE YOU!” to my mom, she’d always firmly state, “I’ll always love you more than you could ever hate me.” I love her for this reassurance, and so far, though I haven’t any kids quite yet, I think she’s right.
I don’t think the book is about the daddy rabbit intentionally one upping the baby rabbit. I think it’s about how vulnnerable kids feel knowing that their parents are so much bigger, stronger, more powerful than they are. It’s totally normal for a kid to want to be as big, strong, capable as his daddy; but the reassurance is that daddy is using his size, strength and power to love guide and protect the little rabbit. The little rabbit is actually safer and more secure because his daddy is more capable than he is, and because his daddy loves him “more”. Whatever the quality of a kids love for his parents, there will be times that he feels he hates them or doesn’t love them because of how angry he feels. Whether parents love their kids more, or just love them in a more mature way such that even when they are angry, or are feeling like the kid Is driving them nuts – they still know and can affirm that they love the kid. That’s important for kids to feel. Even if the little rabbit feels jealous of daddy or mad that daddy rabbit can do things he can’t, daddy rabbit is there to help him go to bed and lovingly watch over him. I think that’s what the book’s about.
Hugo, thanks for the thoughtful response to my Daddy Dialectic post. I agree with you about the point the book is trying to communicate. Children should feel that the adults that care for love them unconditionally. Your mother’s description of love as water captures this beautifully.
However, my post did not seek to pick apart that idea. What I wanted to highlight was how the format the adult rabbit selected undermines this unconditional message by repeatedly implying that the adult was better at this than the child. I don’t think love is exempted from the message communicated by this kind of exchange. More importantly, I don’t want my children taking this model into their other relationships thinking that it is a good way of communicating how important something or someone is to them.
And the father with the basketball could have remembered to say each time, “Someday you will be doing it like *this*!”
I don’t remember if we read this book to our son, but I do remember seeing it and my response was actually quite different, and this discussion makes me wonder how much people are projecting adult agendas and understandings onto the story itself. (And I should be clear: I mean that not as a criticism, just as an observation.) To me, the story is about the father playfully engaging the son’s imagination, teaching him how to take an abstraction like love and put it in concrete terms, and even the final “to the moon and back” seems to me more like the father helping his son deepen the “to the moon” metaphor than really playing a game of oneupsmanship. In part I see it this way because, in my experience anyway, I don’t see this kind of exchange being as playful as it is if there is not already a deep confidence on the child’s part and a deep awareness on the father’s part that love itself is not really at stake in the game. In other words, it seems to me that for a child reader to learn the lesson that the father is better at loving than the son there already needs to be some kind of deep uncertainty in the child reader. My wife and I used to play a game of finding rhyming romantic superlatives that was a similar kind of competition, and I don’t think it’s because either of us really believed we needed to prove we loved the other more; and I don’t think children–all else being equal–experience these kinds of games like that either.
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