I think it's true, childhood love is for childhood. I guess that's why we go on to mate and have an adult love, become fathers and mothers, etc. ourselves. Funny how that works out :-)

I didn't get married until I was 39 and I was interested to "watch" my feelings about my father change as I became involved with my boyfriend/husband. All the fears about what would happen when my father died, etc. kind of migrated so I'm worry about myself when my husband dies :-) I think a lot of people have insecure childhoods where what seemed safe and good gets kind of caught and I know I've looked around in adulthood for other places to go/find the safe and good, and I don't think that's bad/wrong/transference necessarily, I think we all need love at all stages of our life. It's the untangling of the ones where we glomp onto others who might not be able to meet our needs that are the hard work for me.