Motherhood Quote by Desmond Morris

Even a hardened adult, Morris suggests, carries a hidden ache for parental absolutes. The line works because it frames a religious reflex as a piece of human biology: “Holy Mother” and “Father” aren’t just titles, they’re emotional technologies that let grown people outsource uncertainty to imagined caregivers. Coming from a scientist best known for reading culture through ethology, the intent is less devotional than diagnostic. He’s pointing at the persistence of infantile attachment patterns and how easily they’re repurposed by institutions that promise safety, meaning, and moral clarity.

The subtext is quietly unsentimental. “No matter how old we become” is a shrug at modern self-mythology: we love to narrate adulthood as autonomy, but our nervous systems still respond to authority in family-shaped ways. The capitalization of “Holy Mother” and “Father” matters too; it elevates ordinary kinship language into an archetype, hinting that religion (and, by extension, any charismatic hierarchy) gains traction by borrowing the intimacy of the nursery. “Child-like trust” lands as both comfort and warning. It can be tenderness - a way to feel held in a chaotic world - but it also implies susceptibility, the ease with which that trust can be exploited.

Contextually, Morris is writing in the long shadow of Freud and attachment theory, but with a 20th-century popular-science bluntness: humans are animals with rituals, and our loftiest beliefs often ride on ancient social instincts. The quote’s sting is that it doesn’t mock faith; it explains why it’s so psychologically efficient.