In a television interview on June 12, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor talked about her passion for Hong Kong and explained her insistence on amending Hong Kong’s extradition law . I still remember what Lam said: “I’m a mother too, I have two sons … if I indulge his wayward behaviour, he might regret it when he grows up. He will then ask me: ‘Mum, why didn’t you call me up on that back then?’” Lam was suggesting that she was like a mother to the protesters and needed to do what’s right. Therefore, she had no intention of backing down and withdrawing the extradition bill. I could not help but immediately think of the psychological theory of attachment of John Bowlby, a psychoanalyst who looked at the effects of separation between infants and their parents. All human infants are biologically programmed to attach. This is critical for development. A child is motivated to elicit as much care as possible from the caregiver and will therefore learn to adopt strategies to do so. Between six and nine months of age, infants develop a range of attachment behaviours with the purpose of keeping a parent close, so as to feel secure, especially in times of stress. Bowlby hypothesised that the extreme behaviours that infants engage in to avoid separation from a parent or when reconnecting with a parent – such as crying, screaming and clinging – are evolutionary mechanisms. Research on Bowlby’s theory of attachment showed that infants placed in an unfamiliar situation and separated from their parents generally react in one of three ways upon reunion: 1. Secure attachment: these infants showed distress upon separation but sought comfort and were easily comforted when the parents returned. 2. Anxious-resistant attachment: a smaller portion of infants experienced greater levels of distress and upon reunion, seemed both to seek comfort and attempt to “punish” the parents for leaving. 3. Avoidant attachment: infants in the third category showed no stress or minimal stress upon separation, and either ignored the parents upon reunion or actively avoided them. Carrie Lam, what kind of mother punishes with tear gas? Anxious-resistant attachment tends to be a response to parents who are inconsistent. Children of these parents learn to maximise their attachment behaviour to elicit care, appearing more distressed then they feel. They might display demanding and clingy behaviour and resist being soothed, or appear comforted for fear that the parent will become unavailable again, or try to control the parent by using aggression and anger alternated with appeasement and helplessness. How mum became the word in extradition protests At the moment, in Hong Kong, the mother is avoiding her children and their needs are not being met. Is it all your mother’s fault? No matter what the “it” refers to, Sigmund Freud would probably have said yes. Kwun Hei, Tin Hau