What is Professional Love?

‘Professional Love’ is the love of an Early Years Professional for a child in his/her/their care with the ‘permission’ of the parent

The concept derives in part from the importance mothers put on ‘love’ when placing their babies into daycare. When mothers are able to distinguish the mutually loving attachment between the caregiver and their child as an intellectual encounter, complementary to rather than undermining their own mother-child relationships, they are able effectively to give caregivers the permission they needed to love the children in their care.

The term ‘Professional Love’© was coined by Dr Jools Page as an original facet of her PhD (2010) which she has written about in a series of seminal publications . These included: ‘Permission to love them’ (2008/2013) in Working with Babies and Children: From Birth to Three; ‘Do mothers want professional carers to love their babies?’ (2011); and ‘Developing Professional Love in Early Childhood Settings’, in Lived spaces of infant-toddler education and care (2014).

Jools Page demonstrated that parents, particularly mothers, place great importance on professionals who demonstrate love for their children in early years settings, especially for infants and toddlers. ‘Professional Love’ is not just a useful term to talk about love in professional roles it is situated within a rights- based framework with a specific set of characteristics as set out in her 2018 publication: Characterising the principles of Professonal Love. 

What are the origins of ‘Professional Love‘

Mothers returning to work have long been understood to face a dilemma. This was heightened in the social and economic climate of the 2000s. On the one hand government rhetoric suggested that good parenting was paramount and required an omni-present parent. On the other, the social and financial pressure associated with paid employment seemed to demand early returns to work for mothers. The need for professional childcare meant parents had difficult decisions to make with concerns as to whether the child’s emotional as well as educational needs could be trusted to an outsider.

Jools Page conducted research into the ways mothers perceived care from others – custodial, surrogate or co-ordinated carers. She undertook an analysis of debate surrounding Bowlby’s ideas of attachment, and a theorisation of how ‘love’ and ‘care’ might be perceived and defined. This research informed real-life studies of parents, children and practitioners, showed the need to better understand the complex emotionality that surrounded professional caregivers’ roles both with the child and in the eyes of the parents.

 

Loving young children in professional contexts is not often discussed; instead terms which do not necessarily mean the same thing as love are used, such as respect, dignity, containment and attachment or ‘emotional well-being’

What is love in the Early Years?

Deep, sustaining, respectful and reciprocal relationships between adults and children are vital for children’s holistic development.

Sue Gerhardt in ‘Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain’ (2004/2015) recognises that love matters in relation to a child’s healthy development. Those who work professionally with early years children must be a factor in creating the important loving environment. It was Jools Page’s research that pushed for a new understanding of what love was in a professional caregiving environment.

Jools Page’s research found that mothers often recognised that close attachments help to build resilience and security which can be recalled during times of insecurity. When asked what they felt children needed from adults in the early years, closeness was a regular suggestion, also individualised care and attention, a deeper knowing of the child. Mothers showed a keen sense of how they ideally wanted a carer to be with their child.

Mothers interviewed in Jools Page’s early studies believed that a continuity of the love they felt and gave was of vital importance in the decisions over their childcare arrangements. They placed great importance on professionals who demonstrated loving interactions with their children, especially in Early Years settings. It was however difficult for them to give an actual definition of that love and the difference between love and care. The word ‘love’ was often reserved for parental care, especially where there were perceived challenges to parental love.

Professional love as reciprocity and motivational displacement

Despite the difficulty for parents in defining how their children might experience love from others, research has uncovered key ways to understand how Early Years practitioners can foster a loving environment.

Research undertaken by Jools Page demonstrates that the experience requires motivational displacement. This means demonstrating concern and engagement with another. For Early Years practitioners this is undertaken to the point that the adult is equally absorbed in what is important to the child.

Professional Love, as Jools has characterised it, does not attempt to apply a universal definition of love [or intimacy or care], into a criterialised checklist. Rather, it provides an opportunity for critical reflection through a reflective model of practice  to determine what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behaviours in terms of adult interactions with children and adaptation which takes account of these fleeting, yet crucial exchanges which occur between young children and their professional adults. Peter Elfer’s research on Work Discussion captured so thoughtfully in his recent book ‘Talking with Feeling’ ( Elfer, 2024) is offered as a very helpful model of supporting professional reflection and wellbeing.

 

In 2024, Dr Jools Page led a research project with dance artist, Liz Clark which culminated in the production of a film which shows their process of working together and highlights how the embodied form of dance can make visible the minutiae of ‘critical Professional Love moments’ (Page, 2018).

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Jools Page’s work was timely. Carmen Dalli in ‘Re-visioning love and care in early childhood’ (2006) had proposed a ‘re-visioned notion of love and care as a pedagogical tool … in which the unacknowledged part of teachers lives are recognized.’

Nel Noddings explored motivational displacement in ‘Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education’ (1984/2003) and emphasised that the intellectual aspect of caring involves ‘stepping out of one’s own personal frame of reference and into the other’s’. Sue Gerhardt (2004/2015) contends, ‘Babies need a caregiver who identifies with them so strongly that the baby’s needs feels like hers [sic].’ Noddings argues that caring is not about feelings. It is a practical means to provide expert Early Years Care. As Lisa S Goldstein (1998) puts it in ‘More than gentle smiles and warm hugs: Applying the ethic of care to early childhood’  caring is ‘not something you are, but rather something you engage in, something you do’ (p.246). Noddings’ theory underpins the development of Jools Page’s notion of Professional Love; that when the key person is able to de-centre and form an authentic, enduring and close relational attachment to a young child, with the ‘permission’ from the parent, then this model of caring can be construed as a form of professionally loving practice. Jools Page claims that when the key person in a nursery possesses both the intellectual capacity and the emotional resilience to understand the complexity of human relations in line with the thinking developed by Ainsworth & Bowlby (1991) on Attachment Theory and Noddings’ (2003) Ethic of Care then they are more likely to be better equipped to offer a suitable professional attachment relationship with children . It is this relationship which Jools Page has termed Professional Love (Page, 2011).

When mothers recognise reciprocity as an intellectual experience they are able to identify the carer-child a relationship that is fundamentally in tune with their own wants and needs for their child, rather than a feeling that is threatening to their mother–child relationship.

Dr Jools Page

 

This website is an ongoing repository of resources associated with Dr Jools Page’s research into Professional Love. It aims to be of practical value to the Early Years community of practitioners.

Early Years Education Researcher Dr Jools Page studied and worked at the University of Sheffield before taking her current research position at the University of Brighton.