Understanding Conflict between Mothers and Teen Daughters

Mothers with pre-teen daughters tell me that they are afraid of the time when their daughter will become a teenager. They are afraid that their emotionally close, easy-going relationship will end, and their daughter will morph into an angry, emotionally withdrawn teenager. This fear is voiced so frequently, it is the overriding reaction I hear from mothers with pre-teen daughters. And these mothers aren’t being paranoid. They have many examples of other mothers who have struggled with their teen daughter. They have heard stories of how a once peaceful, emotionally close relationship turned into an angry, emotionally distant relationship soon after the daughter turned twelve. And many might have experienced conflict with their own mothers when they were teenagers.

The media plays a large role in normalizing the belief that conflict is a normal part of the mother and teen daughter relationship. Whenever the mother and teen daughter relationship is mentioned, it is most often discussed in terms of anger and conflict. And social media chat rooms are echo chambers where a daughter’s anger is encouraged and amplified, rather than understood and healed.

Counselors, marriage and family therapists, and coaches can also normalize this negative belief about mothers and teen daughters. Most counselors, marriage and family therapists, and relationship coaches have been trained to understand the mother-daughter relationship through the eyes of male human development theorists who believed that conflict is a necessary part in a daughter’s, and son’s, separation process. The problem with this male view of human development is that it has been disproved by mother-daughter relationship and women’s development research. Researchers like Carol Gilligan and Jean Baker Miller discovered that teen daughters need their connection with their mother for their emotional development. And the Mother-Daughter Attachment® Model (MDAM) reveals that the core reason for today’s high levels of mother and teen daughter conflict lies in understanding the patriarchal environment mothers and teen daughters relate in, and teen daughters are trying to claim their voice and selves in.

In this blog I will draw on my work with Veronika and Kate (names and details changed) to show how a mother and teen daughter can understand and reduce the conflict that they are experiencing. Veronika, the mother, had heard horror stories from other mothers about what happens when a daughter becomes a teenager, and when Kate, her daughter, turned thirteen, she wasn’t surprised that arguments became their usual way of communicating. She said that she had prepared herself for the turbulent teen years and was hoping that their relationship would return to how it was before Kate turned thirteen when Kate becomes an adult.

I understand Veronika’s plan to white-knuckle her way through Kate’s teen years and her hope that she will get her old Kate back when Kate becomes an adult, but as the MDAM reveals this plan will not work. Kate’s anger is vital information that something is wrong with how the family is treating women, and Kate’s anger is their canary in the coalmine that is warning Kate and Veronika that something vital is missing for them, and the other women in their generational family. And it is my job as their mother-daughter therapist to decipher Kate’s anger, and uncover what was missing for her, her mother Veronika, and Veronika’s mother and grandmother.

During their first session, Kate accused her mother of not listening, which shocked Veronika, because she felt that she does listen to Kate. Veronika said that she spends her day focused on what Kate needs, and she felt that Kate was the one who wasn’t listening. The MDAM shows that for mothers and daughters, feeling heard + feeling understood = feeling loved, and like all mothers and teen daughters, Veronika and Kate’s arguments were about not feeling heard and understood, which made them feel unloved and unimportant.

Veronika and Kate needed to understand what was harming their ability to listen to, and understand each other, and as we mapped their mother-daughter history map, (MDAM diagnostic exercise and instructions are in “The Mother-Daughter Puzzle” by Rosjke Hasseldine) we uncovered how the women in their generational family were emotionally silenced by controlling, emotionally unavailable men, a history of trauma from Veronika’s grandparents fleeing war and violence, and how mothers were seen as caretakers, not people with lives and needs of their own. Veronika and Kate’s family did not speak the language that inquires after what women feel, think, and need. And this lack of emotional inquiry meant that mothers were unknown and invisible. Kate knew very little about her mother Veronika’s life, and Veronika did not know who her mother had been outside of her role as mother and wife. And sadly, it was too late to discover who Veronika’s mother had been because she died a few years ago.

As Veronika and Kate saw how their generational family silences women, they recognized that this was what was causing their arguments. Veronika and Kate were trying to be heard and understood, but they didn’t have the right language that inquires after and understands their emotional truths. Kate’s anger was expressing her need to feel known, and to know who her mother is, and to end the generational pattern of unknown, invisible mothers whose entire identity and life revolved around providing care. Veronika and Kate were screaming out their need to feel connected to each other. Not for Kate to separate from her mother as many male human development theorists have led us to believe.

Through her arguments, Kate was voicing her “silent female scream”. A woman’s or girl’s silent female scream is “present anytime a female is trying to speak her truth but isn’t heard, and then learns to believe that her words don’t matter anyhow. The Silent Female Scream is present when a female’s needs and feelings are not respected and instead are turned around as if it is her failing or her fault.” (“The Silent Female Scream” by Rosjke Hasseldine) It is highly likely that Veronika had screamed her own “silent female scream” when she was a teenager, because Veronika’s mother didn’t have the language and sense of entitlement to listen to herself, let alone her daughter.

In summary, understanding and healing mother and teen daughter conflict requires an understanding of the wider cultural and patriarchal environment they live in, and particularly, how their culture and generational family views mothers and women as caregivers, not as people, and how the language that inquires after what women feel, think, and need is silenced into nonexistence. Mothers and teen daughters are not fighting to separate. They are fighting for connection. And it is time that the counseling, marriage and family, and relationship coaching professions amend their understanding of the mother-daughter relationship, to include the MDAM and women’s development research, so that mothers and teen daughters can get the help they need and deserve.