'Love You Forever': A Portrait of Parental Extremes?

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May 28, 2004

Love You Forever
Robert Munsch/Sheila McGraw(illus.)
Firefly Books, 1986
ISBN: 0920668372

Love You Forever (1986), the (in)famous picture book about the endurance of a mother's love, is now in its sixty-sixth printing. The classic Robert Munsch story with drawings by Sheila McGraw is a staple in school libraries and children's shops. It's retained its popularity through word-of-mouth and as a favourite for gift-giving; grandparents who read it to their children years ago now buy it for their grandchildren. Though response to the book is overwhelmingly positive, the book has drawn many detractors who believe the mother's ritual singing is an example of immoderation. Her song is a simple ode of unconditional love:

"I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be."

Love You Forever depicts the son's passage from being a sleeping newborn to a raucous young boy, at last as a grown-up with his own family. Throughout his life, his mother's constant refrain is 'love you forever', though he doesn't always hear or know it. In fact, as a toddler he is so mischevious that "[s] ometimes his mother would say, 'This kid is driving me CRAZY!'" Only when the sleeping two-year-old is in his bed does the mother picks him up and sing the song.

[munsch_infant.t] The line "He grew and he grew and he grew" is repeated throughout the first part of the story to show the passing of the years. The boy grows into a typical adolescent, who "never want[s] to come in for dinner". Later, he becomes a teenager with "strange friends and...strange clothes". At 1:30 in the morning, nonetheless, the mother still crawls into his room to sing the song like she did when he was a baby.

Critics who say that Love You Forever is unrealistic or disturbing fail to realise just this: children cannot truly know the extent and depth of their parents' love for them--even after they have grown up and fled the nest. Sometimes they only understand it once they have children of their own. The bittersweet joys and anxieties of parenthood are as unique as they are universal.

Years later, when her son is an adult, the mother drives across town with a ladder strapped to the roof of her car. She creeps into her son's apartment and sings the song as he sleeps. We see the grown son in pajamas, curled up in her arms like a little boy. As absurd as this may seem, this is one of the more realistic scenes in the book. I suspect that many parents can empathise with the motivation, if not the particular behaviour , of the loving mother. Love You Forever oughtn't be read too literally--even if we probably all know an overprotective parent or two--just because the characters are human. [munsch_ladder.t] If they were anthropomorphic animals (i.e. the Nutbrown hares in Sam McBratney's Guess How Much I Love You), perhaps readers would be more forgiving of the parent's perceived 'obsessiveness'.