Reclaiming Love as the Heart of Our Work

In a 2021 New Zealand study about professional love, the educators who responded "emphasized that a professional approach to love is important despite many responses indicating love is still viewed as unprofessional by early childhood education." In her recent Exchange magazine article on "Professional Love," Carol Garboden Murray responds, "A far greater danger exists in our field than the threat of appearing unprofessional by talking about love. The threat of not naming and valuing love may pose severe consequences to the secure relationships that are essential for our youngest citizens."

With much of the original research on the importance of love focusing on children who lost parental care, the literature frequently seems to link professional love to children’s need for at least one caring adult in their lives, as if it were an insurance policy against the lack or loss of parental love. Among the first to name professional love, Jools Page draws deeply on Nel Nodding’s ‘ethics of care’ and on attachment theory to suggest an alternative, supportive ‘triangle of love,’ involving child, parent, and practitioner. Garboden Murray takes up this charge and declares it’s time to reclaim love as the center of professional practice and to begin by deepening our shared understanding of what we mean by professional love.

If you’d like to grapple with these questions, join author Carol Garboden Murray tomorrow, March 8, as she explores professional love in conversation with Exchange magazine Editor-in-Chief Sara Gilliam and Kirsten Haugen of Exchange Press and Dimensions Educational Research Foundation. In Garboden Murray’s own words, "We who work with babies, toddlers, and our youngest children, have a spectacular front-row seat at the beginning of life. The nucleus of care offers us a unique opportunity to ponder love as the serious sturdy foundation for nurturing a flourishing life."

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