The natural emotional tie between mother and child should make her wish to keep it, but obviously does not always. Yet, if she can be swayed to do so even for a while, if only for external reasons, to secure the advantage of that temporary subsidy, this external relationship creates its own emotional underpinning.

XREF: Relates to the social construction of attachment and how behavior shapes emotion — connects to psychology of cognitive dissonance and self-perception theory.

Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simm…, loc. 9157