Improving the Mother-Daughter Relationship at Every Stage
We’re diving into the infamous mother-daughter relationship. Maybe you’re a new mom raising a daughter and want to learn more about this dynamic. Maybe you’re curious about the relationship with your own mom. It’s all good. Let’s talk about it.
There are many factors that go into how you connect, love, and grow with your mother or daughter, which makes the relationship look vastly different based on the two people experiencing it. Life events in your family and even the life events that happened in the generation before you will trickle down and shape how you show up in your most significant bonds, like the one with your mother or daughter.
There’s also the existential and developmental truth that life comes in seasons, so your mother-daughter relationship might experience different ebbs and flows too. Our biggest invitation, forever and always, will be to get curious about your own familial story.
Let’s get curious and empowered with a deeper understanding of:
Examples of prominent mother-daughter relationships
A view into why differences occur between a mother and daughter
How our stories inform paths of reconciliation
Reflection exercises to help you improve your relationship
This information is supported by some physiological principles encompassing mother-daughter dynamics. That said, at Modern Therapy, we’re not really big on labeled language. So we offer this with a heaping dose of humble curiosity as you listen to what resonates and define things for yourself with the language that serves you most.
Types of Mother-Daughter Relationships
We recognize that the interactions between a mother and daughter are deeply personal and part of your unique human experience. Let’s start by looking at a few examples of the array of relationship types you can have with your mother or daughter.
Maybe you’ll see yourself in one of these examples or feel connected to several small aspects across a few. You could also have a relationship that isn’t covered by these examples. Thinking about your current status or the type of connection you desire is the first step to understanding how to improve it.
Mutually supportive
Mothers and daughters can feel mutually supportive of one another, providing an equal contribution to the relationship. Differences might be respected, and emotions are generally understood to guide a relationship where daughters feel cared for and mothers feel admired.
Best friends
Mothers can act as friends to their daughters with a relationship built on trust and confidence. Daughters tend to feel like they have support from their mom on an emotional level and become more open to sharing experiences without fear of judgment or reprimand. Your intuition will ultimately guide you when that closeness feels wonderful or if that closeness starts to veer into fulfilling more roles than you can (or should) handle at a given time. Remember, a sign of great friendship is support and flexibility, allowing room for the other to flourish independently.
Competitors
Mothers and daughters can experience a relationship similar to siblings where one is trying to “one-up” the other, or jealousy or competitive emotions exist.
Authoritative
Mothers can take away autonomy from their daughters’ ability to make decisions in life. They can showcase disappointment or anger when their daughter does not do something the way they’d like it done. Daughters can feel like they need to comply to please their mothers and may rebel if it becomes draining on life into adulthood.
Outward Perfectionism
There are times when a mother prioritizes a version of herself as a perfect parent to her daughter but doesn’t reflect that when others aren’t watching. There could be a lack of a healthy relationship if a daughter feels disconnected because her mother prioritizes her outward-facing self, but struggles to connect more intimately within the home's private setting. Please note there can be some cultural layers here, too, that emphasize keeping face publicly.
Role reversal
Sometimes, mothers and daughters can swap roles. Daughters can begin to take on responsibility and parent their mothers through support, caretaking, and behaviors that they wouldn’t usually assume. Daughters can feel they need to care for their mother and themselves, which introduces more responsibility to the relationship and potentially a lack of support for themselves.
Strangers
Mothers and daughters can become distant and feel that they are not involved in one another’s lives on a deep level. This can be physical separation or living in the same home with little interaction or affectionate bond. Daughters can feel detached from their mothers and seek maternal support in another way.
Let’s pause for a moment.
What did you notice in yourself as you read through those? Hold your own reflections in mind as we move into the science behind mother-daughter relationships.
The Science Behind Mother-Daughter Relationships
When we start to move into resolution or growth in your mother-daughter connection, take a moment to see what shaped both the positive and challenging experiences that make up your relationship today. We’ll soon learn that the dynamics we experience in mother-daughter relationships are most often connected to a much larger context within the family system. We hope this might be an opening to a more expansive mindset in your approach to this topic.
The Mother-Daughter Attachment Model™
During one of our in-house trainings led by one of our family systems experts, Yvonne Oke, we learned about the Mother-Daughter attachment model, a science-based lens to the topic of mothers and daughters that gives you a more clear view into your relationship.
The Mother-Daughter Attachment Model™grew out of Rosjke Hasseldine’s work as a mother-daughter relationship therapist over the past 25 years. She’s worked with mothers and daughters of all ages from different countries and cultures to understand what’s below the arguments that happen at various stages of life and understand what’s happening on an emotional level.
The Mother-Daughter Attachment Model™ helps to explain:
The dynamics between mothers and daughters
What disrupts attachment and how to facilitate greater emotional attunement
The role of women and girls’ multigenerational experiences with sexism and patriarchy
How developmental, emotional, and relational needs inform the relationship
The power of the mother-daughter connection to facilitate generational change
As we look at the above model, let’s start with a reflection invitation. Time to grab a journal and get to writing.
When you’re looking to understand the makings and dysfunction of a family system, look at the mother-daughter relationship. This relationship is often a significant conduit of expression or conflict that points to things going on not only in their unique relationship but also in the systems surrounding them. Factors outside of the mother-daughter relationship can actually get channeled into their relationship. Take a moment to reflect on the dynamics between the daughter(s)-mother-grandmother dynamics within your family system. What comes to mind? What do you start to notice?
Is it normal for mothers and daughters to have conflict?
YES, (but that doesn’t make navigating any less frustrating). You might think your disagreements are due to your mom or daughter’s behaviors or something that happened recently, but as you may have uncovered already in your previous reflections, there’s more to the story if you go a bit deeper below the surface.
Let’s explore some of the many reasons mother-daughter relationships can feel difficult to normalize the experiences many of us have and understand a route to improvement.
Some reasons mothers and daughters fight
Mother-daughter relationships as the conduit of communication
Even when that communication is in conflict, gender norms can weaken other relational opportunities that exist within the family system. Gender norms can apply added pressure on the mother-daughter relationship to seek, or subsequently grieve, needs that are sought to be met through that relationship.
Differences in Experience
When mothers see their daughters living with more opportunities and freedoms than they experienced on a personal or generational level, feelings of discomfort, grief, resentment, and even conscious or subconscious jealousy can arise through conflict or relationship strain. Daughters can become an uncomfortable mirror to their mothers.
The Societal Role of Women
At one point, men were considered the default sex, often resulting in women feeling limited or reduced to a supporting role that didn’t fully recognize the equality of their value to society. Women were not necessarily themselves but who they were relative to men. This type of multi-generational experience with gender narratives and expectations can play into the mother-daughter relationship as the culture and roles of each woman vary greatly. It may come up as mothers equate their ability to parent to the physical, financial, and emotional support they can offer.
Marginalization of Mother-Daughter Relationships
When it's assumed that mothers hold the blame (mom shaming, anyone?) and daughters are just difficult, it’s hard to break out of a cycle of blame. This is an area where there may be unvalidated or unmet needs on both or one side of the relationship that results in conflict, tuning the other out, or seeming hard to interact with.
Improving Mother-Daughter Relationships
Improving your mother-daughter relationship can look like speaking for the first time in years or resolving a small conflict at the moment. There is no perfect view of what your connection should look like, but there is usually a way to grow through what you’re experiencing. The improvement can simply be healing yourself through compassion for what shaped your relationship with your mother or daughter.
What to do when mothers and daughters fight
Conflict is one example of a time when more understanding may be needed to support both parties. While your relationship is deeply personal, a few questions may help you arrive at the answers you’ve been seeking or support you in understanding yourself, your past, and what would be most impactful for your future as a mother and daughter.
Mothers, consider asking yourself:
Do you feel you have the authority to act independently and make decisions?
If not, what might be preventing you?
Do you feel there are occasions when you didn’t show up as you wanted for your children?
What were you thinking and feeling at the time?
Where does a tradition of modeling behavior from past generations have an opportunity to be broken to allow for more open communication of needs?
Where can you release any shame or judgment you hold on to?
Have you communicated what you need to those that can appropriately support you within your system? Ensuring you allow your daughter to remain in the role of your daughter, have you communicated your emotional needs as well? ?
Daughters, consider asking yourself:
How can you better understand the origin of pain in your mother’s past to understand where she is coming from?
How can you balance being close to your mom and independent?
Have you communicated what you need to your mom emotionally?
Can you give your mom grace for a limitation that exists?
Is there room for forgiveness?
How does it feel to release past blame and rewrite the generational story of womanhood for your family?
Feeling Heard and Understood Leads to Feeling Loved
Love is felt when someone feels heard and truly understood.
Together, mothers and daughters can explore practices that grow relationships by honoring where differences lie, talking about them openly, and loving one another through the healing process. Empathy is a path to seeing one another’s experiences with understanding and communicating what those experiences felt like to the other person. We hope this article provided helpful reflection as you listen to your unique mother-daughter dynamics and needs.