Parental Love for Each Other

01 June, 2026

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EduFamilia

Voices

05 September, 2025

6 min

Parental Love for Each Other

How Parental Love for Each Other Creates Balanced and Secure Children

The first and most fundamental thing a child needs to be educated is that his or her parents love each other: the love of parents for each other.

The first, but only apparently

“We make sure he lacks nothing, we are attentive to even his smallest whims, and yet…”

We hear expressions like this often, uttered by so many parents who are apparently devoted to their children:

educational centers of proven quality;
Various complements to institutionalized education: private tutors, languages, music, sports, trips abroad;
healthy and selected foods, restoratives and vitamins;
more and more sophisticated games, toys and plans;
latest model mobile phones, computers and consoles, with all the imaginable advances;
dresses and other brand name clothing;
Holidays by the sea or in the snow in the most exotic places, entertainment without limits of quantity, time or price;
problem-solving and easy management, which should be carried out by the children themselves;
door-to-door car transport, when it would be preferable to take the bus or walk;
domestic staff at your disposal to assist you even with the smallest details, etc.

The first real thing

That is, parents who apparently devote themselves to their children, but who perhaps without realizing it forget the most important thing that children need:

that parents themselves love and are united: the love of parents for each other.

It is not difficult to intuit, if only from what experience dictates:

that every human being learns how to treat other people in his or her home, in the first years of life;
and that he assimilates it, first, by observing the way his parents treat each other (even more than the way they treat him).

Therefore, the most fundamental and most radical educational factor in every family is the reciprocal love of the spouses: the love of the parents for each other.

Let us not forget the only thing that is radically important
for the education and development of our children:
our mutual love as spouses.

The same fundamental love

Procreative love (the love of parents for each other)

The love of parents for each other is what brought children into the world.

But it is not enough.

The same reciprocal love and affection must complete the task begun, helping the child to achieve the fulfillment and happiness to which he is called by his very condition as a person.

Procreation, which is unique and exclusive to human beings, continues naturally and indispensably in the task of education, which also characterizes human life and coexistence.

Educative love (parents’ love for each other)

In other words: education, a natural complement to procreation, must be motivated by the same causes that gave rise to the child: the love of parents for each other.

It has been said for many centuries that, upon leaving the maternal womb, where the amniotic fluid protected and nourished it, the child needs another womb and another fluid —metaphorical, but no less real—without which it could not grow and develop as a human person.

Namely, those that a father and mother arouse when they truly love each other: the love of parents for each other.

Education must be motivated
by the same causes that gave rise to the child:
the love of parents for each other.

A love that children perceive

Natural consequence of the love they have for each other

Therefore, as a natural fruit of their mutual love, each spouse must:

a) Gently show, also so that the children notice it, the affection towards your husband or wife (probably nothing is more gratifying and educational for a child than noticing the love that his parents have for each other: there, even more than in the affection that they have for him or her, the son or daughter learns what love is and how a person should be treated).

b) In addition, and as a consequence, enhance the image of the other person before the children and avoid anything that could diminish their affection for their spouse.

That children perceive from a very early age

From the time children are very young, their parents must prudently but clearly express their reciprocal parental love with their actions, gestures and words:

“I can never thank my parents enough for kissing each other so lovingly in front of me,” a girl in her twenties told me not long ago.

And love that does not enter through the senses is as if it did not exist.

From the time children are very young,
their parents must
prudently but clearly express the affection that unites them.

Also, attentive to the details related to their parental love

Heartbreak from spouses, heartbreak from parents… and viceversa

If love for their children is to prolong the love of spouses for each other, it is logical that the lack of love as parents reflects the disagreements as spouses and harms them in both ways: as parents-educators and as spouses.

Therefore, for the benefit of their children’s education, their parents must pay attention:

Do not reproach, disqualify, or make ironic comments in front of them.
Not allowing one to do what the other prohibits, especially when present (the disqualification is then much more explicit and serious, as is the harm caused to the children).
Therefore, when faced with any question from a son or daughter, the question should almost instinctively come up: “What did Mom or Dad tell you?”
Although later, if they have a different opinion, they should talk privately to reach an agreement, and tell their children if they have changed their minds.
To completely avoid certain aberrant recommendations to the child, which would lead him to distrust the other spouse: “don’t tell this to dad or mom”, “you know that dad (or mom) has his quirks”, “don’t pay too much attention to him, it’s dad’s (or mom’s) thing”.
And many details like that, all of them out of place.

Parental love, espouses love… and viceversa!

The inverse or symmetrical is also true: the love they profess as educators reflects the love they profess as spouses and strengthens it (or weakens it, if it is lacking).

Furthermore, since the love of parents for each other is the origin of the emergence and development of children, every time we are with one of them we must do everything possible to understand them, love them, and treat them with the intelligence, heart, and character of our spouse: for it is both of them, loving each other, that they need.

Every time we are with one of our children,
we must try to understand them, love them, and treat them
with the intelligence and heart of our spouse.

Indeed, the love of parents for each other constitutes the main and unavoidable driving force for the correct development of each child.

Parents’ love for each other
is the main driving force behind their children’s education.

(To be continued)

Tomás Melendo,
President of Edufamilia
http://www.edufamilia.com
[email protected]

EduFamilia

Edufamilia es una asociación sin ánimo de lucro, nacida en el año 2005. Su fundador, Tomás Melendo, advirtió que una mejora en la calidad de las familias facilitaría la resolución de bastantes de los problemas que aquejan a la sociedad de hoy. Y, apoyado siempre por su mujer, decidió lanzarse a esta aventura que cuenta con casi veinte años de vida y con múltiples ediciones de los distintos cursos formativos: Másteres y Maestrías, Expertos, cursos más breves, conferencias, ciclos culturales, seminarios y otros programas educativos. Aunque las primeras ediciones tuvieron carácter presencial, actualmente se ha hecho un gran esfuerzo por promover la infraestructura virtual para adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos y que la formación en torno a la familia alcance al mundo entero.