Maternal Eroticism

The bond between a mother and her infant, commonly known as the maternal bond, is believed to be the earliest and strongest of the bonds that humans develop. It is formed during pregnancy and strengthened in infancy and early childhood. The maternal bond often has an erotic component, as mothers experience erotic feelings toward their children and vice versa.

These feelings occur most often between mothers and sons and form the impetus behind renowned Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud's Oedipal theory that male children wish to symbolically kill their fathers and marry their mothers. This theory forms the basis for modern psychoanalysis. The act of breastfeeding can displace these feelings in infancy, but mothers are expected to repress erotic feelings as their children develop, since these feelings are taboo in most Western cultures.

The act of breastfeeding is one of the first expressions of the erotic bond between mother and infant as well as an act of nourishment. Breastfeeding can strengthen the maternal bond through physical touch, smell, mutual gazes, and vocal communication. At the same time, it can awaken feelings of maternal eroticism. The female breast serves as both a maternal object of nourishment and a feminine object of eroticism and sexuality. Freud noted that breastfeeding satisfies both impulses of nutrition and eroticism for the child and places the mother in the role of her child's first and most powerful love interest, a model for his future intimate relationships. Many scholars feel that during early infancy, breastfeeding allows both mother and child to satisfy maternal erotic feelings through a culturally acceptable physical outlet.

As male infants become young children, their erotic attachment to their mothers continues. According to psychoanalytical theory, the mother's body is the first object of a child's sexual drives. Freud based his theory of the Oedipal complex on the erotic component of the mother-son bond. Based on the Ancient Greek myth of Oedipus, who unknowingly murders his father, marries his mother Queen Jocasta and bears children with her, the Oedipal complex theorizes that all young males wish to symbolically kill their father and possess their mother for themselves. A child may express his intense attachment to his mother through touch, expressions of love, and talk of marrying her and raising children just as he tries to deflect her expressions of love toward his father.

Maternal erotic feelings are taboo in most Western cultures and as a consequence most mothers do not discuss such feelings with others. Mothers are expected to suppress their erotic feelings while redirecting a son's erotic feelings as a necessary step in his formation of gender identity. These taboos help maintain the social and cultural desire for a separation between female sexuality and maternity, even though expressions of [Page 707]both involve the same physical sensations, such as touch, smell, and gazing.

Many feminist scholars theorize that this process of suppressing maternal eroticism and encouraging the male child's independence from his mother serves to reinforce the patriarchal nature of Western culture and society. Some psychologists believe that the cultural expectation that the male child must separate from his mother to achieve the socially accepted form of masculinity negatively impacts the adult male's ability to form an intimate connection with a romantic mate.

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