Children are made for love. From the moment they are born, they rely on their caregivers for everything they need, and they need a great deal: warmth, nourishment, grooming, contact. Their lives depend on it. Caring for children often comes at the expense of a caregiver’s personal comfort, which is a trade-off best done out of love.
For a time, newborn children do not realize that they are distinct from their parents, which is reasonable, given that they have not been for very long. But as they grow, they come to recognize that they are individual people, and they begin to consider exploring the world beyond the safety of a caregiver’s arms. Such ventures are exciting, but also somewhat intimidating. Children need a way of transporting their caregivers’ love with them as they move about. For this, they rely on what childhood-development specialists call transitional objects, which allow children to move from oneness with their parents to nascent independence. These objects can include blankets as well as stuffed animals and other toys. In the case of the toddler daughter of Representative Max Miller, this love and comfort took the shape of a blue stuffed bunny.
But only adults call these items transitional objects, and only adults ascribe to them their clinical significance. For children, they are magical talismans cathected with love. They are more than their physical reality—more than cotton or fleece or polyester plush. They are individual and irreplaceable. They have unique powers to soothe. They have meaning. They have names.
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When I was a child, I could not sleep unless I had my bunny blanket, a castoff from my older brother’s collection of baby bedding that began life as a yellow quilt with eyelet fringe and became, after hundreds of tumbles in the washer and dryer, a tattered beige slip of a thing. It traveled with me to college and to graduate school, and even now rests folded in my linen closet. For my younger daughter, comfort came in the form of a rainbow scarf that we tucked into her backpack before she set off to her first day of school.
Children are made for love, but not everyone who has a child is fit to love them. Miller, a 37-year-old Republican in Ohio, has been accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, according to court filings in their custody battle after a two-year marriage. Moreno, who is the daughter of Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio, alleges that Miller scalded her with hot water, held a gun to her head, and pushed her into a wall, causing her to hit her skull. She has said that she can’t rule out whether he broke their daughter’s collarbone and bruised her shoulder. Miller denies ever having been violent with his wife and child. At his request, the House of Representatives’ ethics committee has announced an investigation into the allegations against him. Senator Moreno and other congressional Republicans have called on Miller, who is running for reelection, to resign.
[Read: Mike Johnson would prefer not to]
Children who grow up in unstable environments tend to rely heavily on the softness and comfort of beloved toys and blankets. According to Miller’s ex-wife, their daughter sought comfort in her blue stuffed bunny. And this bunny, according to court documents, is what Miller took away from her.
In excerpts of emails and texts among Moreno, Miller, their lawyers, a parent-custody coordinator, and Senator Moreno published by Mother Jones, Miller appears to regularly hold his daughter’s bunny hostage, sometimes for days at a time, despite his ex-wife’s pleading and his ex-father-in-law’s diplomatic efforts to retrieve it. In one exchange, Moreno asks if their daughter could “please have her bunny back? She’s had it since birth, sleeps with it every night, carries it with her around the house … Please don’t punish” her, she begged, “if you’re upset with me.” The couple’s custody coordinator wrote to Moreno at one point that because Miller “adamantly” refused to relinquish the bunny, Moreno should plan on keeping it at her house to “avoid these situations because unfortunately in a high conflict divorce these situations blow up often.” (Miller responded on X by asking Moreno to “please stop the lies,” and insisting that their daughter “got her bunny back in 14 hours.”)
In her texts, Moreno appears to allege that Miller’s infliction of suffering upon their daughter is purely instrumental, a way of inflicting pain on his ex-wife by proxy.
When someone else’s pain pleases you, it is called sadism. There is no sound way to manage sadists in society, as normal behavioral incentives do not seem to apply to them. This makes them dangerous. They should probably not spend much time around other people. And they certainly shouldn’t be around children, who can’t defend themselves and can’t understand how someone might thrive on suffering, because children are made for love.
The post Cruelty and a Blue Bunny appeared first on The Atlantic.
