A role-reversal in the mother-daughter relationship

Psychoanalytic theorists have noted a particular dynamic in the mother-infant relationship in which the emotional needs of the mother predominate. When this situation occurs, the emotional needs of the infant may go unmet, resulting in impaired self-development. Through an integration of the ideas of mainstream psychoanalytic theorists and feminist psychoanalytic thinkers, this paper proposes the idea that, because of the intensity of the mother-daughter relationship, this dynamic may be more prevalent between mothers and daughters than between mothers and sons. A mother-daughter relationship is described in which the mother comes to depend on her daughter for emotional attunement and response, and the mother's selfobject needs predominate. As a consequence, the daughter is unable to develop a cohesive sense of self and experiences difficulty in achieving separation. Two clinical reports are presented to illustrate the way in which this mother-daughter dynamic manifests itself in the patient's life and in the therapeutic relationship. A negative transference dynamic is described resulting from these patient's fear of duplicating their relationship with their mothers in the therapeutic relationship by having to meet the selfobject needs of the therapist.     

Adolescent Daughters of Mothers with Breast Cancer: Impact and Implications

While the literature supports the view that a parent's illness will have an impact on a child, less specific attention has been given to the impact of a mother's breast cancer on her adolescent daughter. In this paper, clinical vignettes derived from interviews with adolescent daughters (ages 12–19) living with mothers who have breast cancer are presented to illustrate some of the concerns daughters have about themselves and their mother's illness. The daughters express anxiety about changes in family roles, but seem more concerned about the potential loss of the mother/daughter relationship. They describe their fears of recurrence of the disease as well as getting the disease themselves. The girls also demonstrate great strength; resilience and hope in the face of the challenges presented by the changes in their lives. Girls who had mothers die of the disease are not included in this article. Implications for treatment are discussed.     

Incarcerated Mothers Reports of Their Daughters' Antisocial Behavior,Maternal Supervision and Mother-Daughter Relationship

ABSTRACT

This study examines the extent of delinquency and antisocial behavior among adolescent daughters of incarcerated mothers and the influence of the mother-daughter relationship and maternal supervision on daughters' participation in delinquency and antisocial behavior. One hundred and one incarcerated mothers completed survey questionnaires that asked about their daughters' participation and involvement in antisocial and delinquent behavior and the nature of both mother-daughter relationship and maternal supervision. Overall, mothers reported low levels of involvement in antisocial or delinquent behavior for their daughters. Participation in antisocial behavior was inversely related to positive mother-daughter relationship. Maternal supervision was not related to level of participation in antisocial or delinquent behavior.     

Relational Perceptions in Mother-Daughter Attachments

ABSTRACT

Two-hundred-twenty-one matched pairs of post-adolescent females (Mean age = 20.2) and their mothers (Mean age = 46.5) participated in a study to examine the relational perceptions of mother-daughter attachments by evaluating their perceptions of reported autonomy, intimacy, conflict, self-esteem and quality of relationship. Results indicated that mothers and daughters differed significantly on one measure of autonomy (Family of Origin Scale) and conflict (Mother-Daughter Conflict Scale). No differences between mothers and daughters were found for measures of attachment, intimacy and self-esteem. Findings suggest close attachments yet differences reflective of individuation.     

Efforts to create meaning in the relationship between aging mothers and their caregiving daughters: A qualitative study of caregiving

Using grounded theory methodology, this research identifies the major themes or meaning systems that caregiving daughters and their aging mothers apply to their caregiving. In depth interviews with 11 mother-daughter pairs explore attitudes toward filial responsibility and actual caregiving experiences. Five themes emerge describing the cognitive, affective, motivational, and interpersonal components of the meaning systems of filial caregiving: increased relational tolerance or acceptance, redefinition of the mother-daughter relationship, aging awareness, relationship priority, and sacrifice. Four themes are evident in both mothers' and daughters' narratives, whereas the final theme, sacrifice, is linked to daughters' accounts. These themes reflect efforts to create meaning at the interpersonal, familial, symbolic, and psychological levels. The significance of the findings for understanding the dynamic nature of the mother-daughter relationship is discussed.     

The Social Relationships and Social Support of Aging Mothers Whose Adult Daughters Are Mentally Ill

Guided by a conceptual framework highlighting multiple facets of social relationships and social support, this study examined the extent to which aging mothers of adult daughters with a serious mental illness were socially integrated with members of their network. It further examined the relational content of these mothers’ social ties as tangible or intangible support and the nature of their supportive exchanges with network members, particularly their adult daughters with mental illness. A structured face-to-face interview was conducted with 22 aging mothers of these adult daughters. Two methods of analysis were used to analyze data: counting and content analysis. Findings showed aging mothers of daughters with mental illness were socially integrated with relatives and nonrelatives, evidenced relational content of tangible and intangible support in their social ties and engaged in bidirectional and asymmetrical support exchanges with network members, including their daughters with mental illness. These findings suggest that social resources in the form of social relationships and support are embedded in the networks of aging mothers who have adult daughters with serious mental illness. Practitioners should assess support contributions to the aging mothers of adult daughters with serious mental illness from a wide range of social relationships including their daughters.     

Borderline daughters: An optimal configuration for their growth

A significant majority of patients with borderline personality disorder, in a long-term psychiatric hospital for adolescents, had been the daughters of younger middle class mothers (14–20) with fathers absent since birth or before age 5. This family configuration is optimal for the growth of a symbiotic mother-daughter relationship and the identity disorder prevalent in borderline patients. The similar histories of these patients are examined. They can be described in two categories: those who combine precocious sexuality with infantile behavior and a smaller group with a somewhat masculine pseudo-mature identity. The first group usually attempts to retreat to the father, has clinging, dependent relationships with males, sexually acts out and is at a very high risk for pregnancy and a repetition of the mothers' lives.This paper was presented at the American Association of Psychiatric Services for Children, Las Vegas, Nevada, March, 1986.Mr. Levy is at Wesleyan University     

Protesting Against Mothers’ Surveillance: Salvadorian Mothers and Their Daughters Negotiating Adolescence in a Foreign Context

This article examines how Salvadorian immigrant mothers and their daughters negotiate adolescence in a settlement context that differs from their home country. The author interviewed 42 women, all living in a midsized city in Ontario, Canada: 32 in-depth individual interviews were carried out with Salvadorian-born mothers and, separately, with one of their daughters (either adolescent or adult); and five interviews included mothers and their adolescent or adult daughters together (N = 10). A grounded theory approach was employed to explore the mother–daughter negotiation process from each person’s point of view. The analysis revealed various strategies that mothers developed to guide their daughters through the adolescent years, and the diverse ways daughters resisted their mother’s guidance while maintaining values such as respect and family loyalty. The findings highlight the resilience and resourcefulness of immigrant families in navigating the challenges of the transition to adulthood while also meeting the demands of acculturation into a foreign country.     

Staying Alive: Matricide and the Ethical-Political Aspect of Mother-Daughter Relations

In this article I argue that an account of nonmatricidal relations between mothers and daughters should include an account of the transformative process through which mothers and daughters can overcome the damage of phallocentrism. I further argue that as a lived experience, mother-daughter relations are always actualized in relations with a normative background, authoritative discursive practices, and social institutions, all of which constitute motherhood in different contexts. Transforming this space means challenging these contents and practices. Thus, it follows that creating nonmatricidal relations includes an aspect of witnessing in which the mother addresses to the daughter her refusal of phallocentric practices and values. By becoming the addressee of the mother’s subjectivity, as expressed in her ethico-political refusal, the daughter constitutes relations of difference. Reading the biblical story of Lot’s wife and her daughters, I suggest that the act of witnessing the violence of divine law has constituted a space between Lot’s wife and her daughters wherein they could create a lineage based on resistance to phallocentric law and affirmation of an alternative ethics.     

Interdependency in immigrant mother–daughter relationships

Intergenerational interdependency involves coinvolvement in each other's life, including the care and concern that one generation expresses for the other, the root of the care and concern, and how each generation embodies the care and concern. Three factors may influence interdependency between immigrant mothers and their adult daughters: social geography, interdependency expectations, and life events. Twenty-two immigrant mothers and adult daughters participated in an in-depth individual interview about social geography, interdependency expectations, and life events in their mother–daughter relationship. Eight mothers and daughters participated in a second in-depth individual interview about the same topics, a year later. Analyses of the data from the two data collection periods showed that social geography promoted interdependency, interdependency expectations shaped actual interdependency patterns, and life events, such as motherhood for daughters and spousal separation, altered interdependency patterns. The participants in this study expressed general satisfaction with the degree of involvement in each other's life.     

Appearance-Related Communication and Body Image Outcomes: Fat Talk and Old Talk Among Mothers and Daughters

The current study sought to investigate mothers’ and daughters’ appearance-related communication and its relation to body image outcomes. Participants included 199 mother-daughter dyads that completed online questionnaires containing measures of fat talk, old talk, body dissatisfaction, body surveillance, drive for thinness, and bulimic tendencies. Actor-partner interdependence models revealed that (a) mothers’ and daughters’ fat talk, but not old talk, were significantly related to one another, (b) mothers’ and daughters’ fat talk and old talk were significantly related to their own body image outcomes, (c) mothers’ fat talk was positively related to daughters’ bulimic tendencies, and (d) mothers’ old talk was positively related to daughters’ body dissatisfaction. These results suggest that engaging in appearance-related communication is problematic for the person making the comments and, to some extent, being exposed to another person’s appearance-related comments can be harmful to the individual as well—at least for the daughters in the current sample.     

Predictors of Adolescent Adjustment: Parent-Peer Relationships and Parent-Child Conflict

A telephone survey of 114 mothers and their sons, 132 mothers and their daughters, 64 fathers and their sons, and 64 fathers and their daughters investigated the predictors of adolescent adjustment, as separately estimated by parents and their children. Results revealed that the best predictors of adolescent adjustment were the level of conflict within the household over mundane domestic matters and the parent's general disposition towards the child's friends. When results were broken into parent-child gender dyads (mother-son, mother-daughter, father-son, father-daughter), it emerged that the father's perceptions tended to be the dominant predictor of adolescent male adjustment.     

Role Expectations and Role Evaluations in Daughtering: Constructing the Good Daughter

The relationship between mother and daughter is unlike other family dyads and important to both parties over a lifespan. One underexplored area of this relationship is how adult daughters construct and perform the daughtering role. The present study explores how daughters talk about the ways they enact daughtering and evaluate their role in a social world. The findings reveal how daughters position themselves within a family system and, more broadly, in society. This paper includes interview data with 33 adult daughters about their mothers. We illuminate more about how daughters, as role players, conceive of the expectations for their roles and evaluate their role performance in light of role expectations. Analysis revealed four role expectations tied to good daughtering: showing respect, providing protection, eliciting mothering, and making time for connection. Our analysis supports that daughters assess themselves based on their understanding of these role expectations. We present a matrix to illustrate these findings.     

Religiosity as a Moderator of Family Conflict and Depressive Symptoms among African American and White Young Grandmothers

ABSTRACT

This study examined the association between religiosity, conflict in the mother-daughter relationship, and depressive symptoms among 83 African American and white grandmothers. Interviews were conducted during the early stages of adaptation to grandparenthood due to the birth of a baby to a teenage daughter. The results of this study suggest that religiosity is associated with less depressive symptoms. In addition, religiosity moderates the relationship between conflict and depressive symptoms for African American grandmothers. Specifically, highly religious African American grandmothers experiencing low conflict with their daughters reported lower depressive symptoms than those who were less religious. These findings were not evident for white grandmothers. The implications of these findings for grandmothers in families with teenage mothers are discussed within the context of race, religiosity, family relationships, and psychological well-being.     

Adult Daughters whose Mothers Come Out Later in Life: What is the Psychosocial Impact?

SUMMARY

When a family member comes out, it is a process not only for that individual lesbian but also for their entire family. Adult daughters whose mothers come out later in life have distinctive paths to navigate. This article reports findings of an interview study with six daughters who were adults when their mothers came out to them. Most daughters felt they emerged from childhood with an open mind about sexual identity, but had no idea about their mother's lesbianism until told by her. Half the participants questioned the role of women in their lives after their mother came out. Five of the six have a very close relationship, or have become closer, with their mother, since her coming out.     

More Work for Mother: How Spouses, Cohabiting Partners and Relatives Affect the Hours Mothers Work

This paper investigates the determinants of work hours for mothers ofsmall children living in households with one other adult. We hypothesize that the presence and characteristics of the other adult affect a mother's work-related decision-making, and that the nature of the effect varies by the relationship to the otheradult—whether a spouse, an unmarried partner, or a relative. The results indicate that relationship type shapes how mothers' weekly hours of work respond to financial need, childcare pressures, and their own human capital. Married mothers appear to be more able to call on the earnings of their partners to reduce their work hours than mothers in other household situations. There was little evidence that female relatives freed mothers to work.     

Daughter's Perceptions of Being Mothered by an Incest Survivor: A Phenomenological Study

ABSTRACT

This article presents the results of a qualitative analysis of the experience of being the daughter of an incest survivor using a phenomenological approach to the narratives of six women. The majority of the daughters identified a number of effects of their mother's abuse that they perceived as harmful as a child and that lasted into adulthood. Most perceived their mothers as failing to grow up. The daughters responded with a lack of affection toward their mothers, complications in differentiation and integration of a negative self-view. Even in adulthood, the daughters reported a number of characteristics that are normally associated with being a victim of sexual abuse, despite the fact that only two of the six had been so abused. The mother's ultimate disclosure of her incest history helped the daughter to offset these difficulties. The clinical implications of these findings are outlined.     

The Impact of Religious Intensification on Family Relations: A South African Example

Using the example of South African Jewish families in which the daughters became Ultra‐Orthodox, this article examines the reactions and adaptations of mothers to their daughters' religious intensification. A qualitative study in which 15 mothers and 15 daughters were interviewed found that the mothers' initial reactions were primarily positive and ambivalent, with some negative reactions, but over time the mothers became increasingly ambivalent. Overall, mothers and newly observant adult daughters made serious efforts to maintain family cohesion and relationships of mutual respect. The results are explained by the South African context, stress theory, the concept of family resilience, and intergenerational theory.     

Like mother, (not) like daughter: The social construction of menopause and aging

In recent American history, the definition of menopause has shifted from a natural, developmental transition to an increasingly more medicalized perspective that emphasizes biological deficits of the aging female body. Using qualitative data from two generations of women, this essay explores how and why this redefinition has occurred and what effect it has had on women's attitudes toward health and aging. The physical experiences of menopause were remarkably similar across mother-daughter pairs; however, daughters (who represented a slice of the baby boom cohort) differed from their mothers in how they talked about menopause, how they defined and treated menopause, and how willingly they accepted or fought the changes associated with menopause. Major social institutions, including the media and pharmaceutical industry, have played a significant role in reshaping the cultural lens through which women experience issues of health, body, and aging. This essay emphasizes the baby boomers' desire to maintain control over their bodies and considers how this cohort of women, as a result, may experience late-life issues of body and health.     

Reclaiming the Mother-daughter Relationship after Sexual Abuse

This paper seeks to provide direction to therapists working with mothers and daughters after a disclosure of father-daughter sexual abuse. The importance of the mother's belief in and support for the child's recovery is highlighted, as are some of the cultural assumptions about mothers and daughters which negatively impact on the relationship. Despite paying lip service to offender responsibility, there continues to be a culture of mother blaming in the child sexual abuse and family therapy literature on incest. Current research findings challenge some of the prevalent myths about mothers’ responses to their children's disclosures. Few clinical sources have addressed this issue, and therapists who reject the mother blaming literature are therefore left with little guidance as to how to work more effectively with mothers and daughters. Consequently they may unwittingly further undermine the relationship. Work with mothers and daughters as they recover from intrafamilial sexual abuse is discussed, and key therapeutic themes and guidelines for practice presented. We explore the significant theme of the rebuilding of trust between mothers and daughters and facilitate a process whereby the woman is able to bear witness to and acknowledge the trauma experienced by her daughter.