Closeness and Caring That Lead to Conflict

Historically, mothers and daughters have been burdened with psychological theories that say theirs is a relationship fraught with jealousy and resentment, attachment and rejection, love and indifference.

The bond is more intense than father-daughter or mother-son relationships, say many psychologists, but rarely lives up to its notorious theoretical reputation in real life.

As women, experts say, mothers and daughters share a particular closeness because of their shared gender and its myriad physiological passages, and because they tend to be highly communicative compared to mothers and sons and compared to fathers and daughters.

(Although fathers and sons share the same gender, studies indicate that they are more distant, less engaged and talk much less about their feelings than mothers and daughters.)

“It is a two-way umbilical cord through life,” says Terri Apter, a social psychologist at Cambridge University who studied adolescent girls and their mothers for “Altered Loves: Mothers and Daughters During Adolescence” (Fawcett Columbine, 1991).

“There is a basic identification with the mother, in seeing the same feminine identity in one another. There is the idea that our mothers might define us and our fear is we are pre-programmed to be like her. And it can be positive. Here is someone who is always there for you, supportive and all loving.”

Mothers also identify with their daughters. “A mother has a narcissistic interest in her daughter as an extension of herself,” says Harriet Wrye, a West Los Angeles psychoanalyst. “She vicariously identifies in being the blushing bride, the first kiss, her daughter’s emerging sexuality.”

Conflicts often arise when the daughter tries to strike a new balance in the relationship by seeking a separate identity during adolescence and again in adulthood. Apter described these arguments as the adolescent daughter asking her mother to “recognize that I am different from what I was as a child . . . change your assumptions about what I am.”

Studies of mother-adolescent daughter relationships indicate that they are more quarrelsome, conflict-ridden and fraught with deeper strains than a mother-adolescent son relationship, Apter says. (There are no known studies on mothers’ relationships with adult children.)

The closeness and volatility continues throughout life, says Apter, who also wrote “Secret Paths” (W.W. Norton & Co., 1995), a book that examines the psychology of midlife women.

“It continues because mothers and daughters care about each other, value each other and respect each other,” she says. “I don’t see conflict as a sign of a bad relationship. It’s a sign of an active relationship.”

Apter found women so deeply identified with their mothers that even in their 30s and 40s, they described “feeling orphaned” at the death of their mothers.

Ann F. Caron, who has written a book on mothers and daughters and a book on mothers and sons, also believes that the mother-daughter link is more tumultuous.

“As a daughter becomes a woman, she looks at the possibility she will become her mother. If she does not reconcile that anxiety, it could lead to further alienation if the mother is still struggling to control the daughter’s life or if a daughter has not felt that her mother has confidence in her or approves of her.”

Stuart Fischoff, a professor of psychology at Cal State Los Angeles, says most of the women he sees in his clinical practice, complain about feeling betrayed by their mother because she did not protect them from something or someone, or because she wasn’t, somehow, maternal enough.

“Daughters expect more from their mothers than they can give and mothers feel guilty for not being able to give it.”

Certainly much conflict between mothers and adult daughters is over an accumulation of past hurts, psychologists agree. Ultimately, the daughter needs to dismiss her mother as scapegoat, and the mother has to let go, including any guilt, over-involvement or need to make it right, they say.

A healthy starting point for healing wounds--especially if a mother and daughter are estranged--is shedding emotional defenses and for each to explain why she feels hurt and why the relationship is valuable.