We often discuss the symptoms of a troubled society—the headlines filled with violence, the undercurrent of aggression, the dangerous figures who walk among us. In seeking to understand this, we might look to prisons, to politics, or to poverty. Yet a quieter, more profound place might hold a key: the earliest bond between a mother and her child. There is a difficult but necessary conversation to be had about how the fractures in this foundational relationship can echo decades later, shaping the men who move through our world.
The phrase “mommy issues” is often used flippantly, but its psychological weight is immense. A boy’s first understanding of love, trust, security, and his own worth typically comes from his mother. When that connection is absent, inconsistent, or deeply wounding, it can create a void. That void doesn’t simply remain an emotional emptiness; it can harden into something else. A man who never received secure, nurturing love may spend a lifetime either desperately seeking its imitation or raging against its absence. This can manifest as a deep-seated resentment toward women, an inability to form healthy relationships, or a drive to exert power and control to compensate for a foundational powerlessness. The dangerous man is not born; he is often made, stitch by stitch, in the fabric of a broken early bond.
This leads us to a societal mirror we must look into with courage and compassion. If the mother-child bond is so critical, then we must honor motherhood by acknowledging it is not a path for every woman at every time. The cultural pressure to have children is immense, but it must be met with an equally strong culture of deliberate choice. A woman in the pivotal stages of building a career, dedicating herself to a demanding profession, is not simply making a lifestyle choice. She is often making a necessary investment in her own stability and future capacity to provide—not just financially, but with presence. Similarly, a woman trapped in the grinding cycle of poverty is facing a brutal reality. Bringing a child into relentless economic stress can stretch her emotional and physical resources beyond their limits, not out of a lack of love, but because survival itself becomes the full-time occupation.
In these realities, some suggest adoption as a blanket solution. However, we must tread carefully here with unvarnished honesty. The adopted child, no matter how loved, often grapples with a primal question: “Why was I given up?” This is not a commentary on adoptive families, who perform an act of profound love, but on the innate human psyche. That foundational rejection, however rational the circumstance, can be a ghost that lingers, shaping self-esteem and identity in complex ways. It is not a simple fix, but a path that comes with its own profound psychological weight for the child.
This is not an indictment of individual women, who do the best they can within their circumstances. It is, rather, a call for a broader societal shift. We need to move beyond romanticized notions of motherhood and into a space of sober, respectful realism. Let us support women in making truly informed choices—choices that consider not just the immediate desire for a child, but the decades-long responsibility of forging a human being’s core understanding of the world. Let us dismantle the stigma around choosing not to have children, and instead build structures that support those who do—affordable childcare, mental health resources, and community networks.
The dangerous men roaming our society are a stark symptom. To truly address it, we must look earlier, to the sacred and daunting task of nurturing the first bond. By empowering women to choose motherhood only when they are truly ready—emotionally, financially, and psychologically—we aren’t just making life better for women. We are potentially nurturing a generation of boys who receive the secure foundation they need to become whole, safe, and contributing men. The well-being of our society might just depend on the quality of our very first hello.