One doesn't have to be an infant or infirm to need this kind of connection from time to time. This is why Cancers sometimes attract an extended family circle around themselves. And there you see the necessary emphasis on protection, security, maintenance, and defense. Cancers care for those who cannot care for themselves. Cancers consider that their job.
Cancers are possessive, loyal, and extraordinarily well suited for the role they fill.
To Cancer, these concepts of family and continuity are literally sacred, and their special blend of qualities are those needed to keep things going. Only a fool would disagree. As its reaction against the intense intellectualism of Gemini, which can be brittle, superficial, detached, restless, inconstant, insensitive, and impersonal, Cancer energy is approachable, passionate, expressive, fertile, profound, consoling, intimate, patient, and understanding. But under too much stress, this lovely energy becomes childish, clinging, resentful, compulsive, obsessive, anxious, fretful, complaining, insecure, paranoid, depressed, and unstable. It can be smothering in its attentions.