Love as a lens in infant pedagogy

Love has been positioned as a contested emotion in early childhood education, but there are strong arguments for exploring this in early childhood practice, particularly in Aotearoa New Zealand where Te Whāriki states that ‘infants are learning … they are worthy of love’. In this webinar, Dr Andrea Delaune explored the moral concept of love, and discussed whether there is a pedagogical imperative for teachers to consider their role in teaching infants that they are worthy of love.

The key ideas explored were:

Love is a multi-faceted term and really tricky to define. The concept of love incorporates many dimensions: it has affective, relational, and experiential aspects, as well as a more conscious definition. Love can be seen as a value, as a moral concept, and as an emotive expression.

Love is a critical dimension of wellbeing. There are two different dimensions of wellbeing, hedonic wellbeing and eudaimonic wellbeing, and love is related to both. Hedonic wellbeing refers to the in-the-moment rush and immediate feeling of pleasure and joy (that bite into a long-awaited favourite doughnut!), and eudaimonic wellbeing is a more sustained sense of wellbeing related to living a happy, fulfilled, and ‘good’ life.

Love is essential for self-esteem. To be loved by others is not only comforting and reassuring, but can be reflected in understanding oneself as worthwhile. Feeling loved is not only about feeling seen, but feeling seen in a positive light, which clearly influences self-esteem. Viewing all children as born with mana, as Te Whāriki encourages, means that teachers should act and interact with children in a way that confirms their mana, and that recognises it, draws from it, and enlarges it.

Love is a crucial aspect of early experience that can support the shaping of a life well lived. The Harvard longitudinal study, which tracked a group of people (now in their 80s) across their life span, found that love was the most important recurrent aspect of an individual’s perspective of a life well lived, and that early experiences of love were crucial. Similarly, in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Dunedin longitudinal study concluded that early experiences are foundational for self-esteem, while internationally, neuroscience continually demonstrates the influence and impact of early experiences both in childhood and across later life. Feeling loved is an aspect of the Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the right for children to experience love is described within the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child [UNCROC].

The phrasing ‘Infants are learning… they are worthy of love’ in Te Whāriki can be problematic. Is it something children have to learn, is it something that is in the power of teacher to teach, or is it something that children are naturally born with? If children are born with mana, does that mean they are born loved, rather than learning that they are worthy of love? One of the participants in the study described here argued ‘worthy according to whom?’, questioning the power dynamics of this statement. Love can be seen as something all children deserve, and not something to learn or earn.

There is often uncertainty in the overt use of the term ‘love’ within early education due to the tensions involved in establishing the professional nature of the role of teacher as distinguished from babysitters or mothers (who love their infants). In addition, an emotionally-focused definition of love might be ethically questionable, because this is demanding an expanded emotional labour from teachers. It may lead to teachers just ‘faking it’ emotionally, which would also be unethical.

Emotional connections with infants are important. Teachers must be emotionally responsive to infants. To assert teachers’ professional status, it has (perhaps mistakenly) seemed important to value objectivity and rationality over emotional engagement. However, emotions offer rational and evaluative responses to situations within our lives that have meaning. For example, they help us know what to seek out and what to stay away from.

Love has a practical application in the context of human relationships. When you love someone, or something, you are in a space of heightened awareness about what it is you love, and you value and treasure it more. Love is an energy through which to try and see the child more clearly, through the practice of attention, which is described as a just and loving gaze. It is a morally imaginative undertaking that uses the lens of love to reach beyond our selves to try to see things from another person’s perspective.

Time is a critical dimension when you want to show an infant that they are worthy of love. The often busy and fast-based infant room can mean that there is the potential for attention to be divided or rushed. One of the most important things you can do to show an infant that they are worthy of love is to spend time with them, to protect and preserve the moments when shared mutual engagement can be enjoyed, and to be available to respond in a timely manner when sought out for attention or comfort by an infant. Jayne White describes the importance of teachers ‘lingering lovingly’ with infants.

Attention is a deliberate, reflective placing of consciousness to see others’ actions for their best possibilities. In the practice of attention, we reassess what we ‘see’ by looking again at the situation with more loving eyes. We cannot ever truly know what is going on in the mind of another person, and this is especially so for infants and toddlers. What we see is important in the concept of attention, because love opens us up to our best imaginative possibilities – when we see someone with love, we are really trying to see them for their best selves. Loving attention is a strategy for seeing the child for their strengths. It is a way to understand them and their actions more fully, more generously, and according to Iris Murdoch, more accurately than by simply looking objectively.

Love is a moral concept. While morals are principles that define what is commonly appreciated and understood to be right and wrong, moral concepts are sometimes called values, and can be things like respect, generosity, kindness, humility, grace, and love. Moral concepts are important because they frame the thinking that shapes action: moral actions are built from moral concepts. It is important to remember that moral concepts are also taken internally, and developed personally according to our thoughts, feelings, and experiences in the world. Seeing love as a moral concept or key value for practice invites teachers and leaders to engage in more substantive debate about what love looks like in practice.

Teaching is an incredibly imaginative undertaking; it is a craft rather than a technical endeavour in which a moral imagination can be very important. Teachers have everyday dilemmas about what is the ‘right’ action to take in their teaching, and loving attention is a critically reflective practice that can help teachers develop the creative dimensions of their pedagogical response. When teachers look at pedagogical situations from a position of trying to understand the other person through a lens of love, they are expanding and changing their approach to how to act in that moment, strengthening and expanding their moral imagination. A focus on love as a moral concept, and on moral imagination, can expand teachers’ pedagogical responses and their ethical capacities as a teacher and as a human being.  

Further reading

Delaune, A., & Surtees, N. (2023). Wellbeing in early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand and beyond: Intimacy, physicality and love. In Wellbeing: Global Policies and Perspectives.  Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. 

Quinones, G., & Delaune, A. (2025) Well-being for infants and toddlers in education and care. Routledge.