Why is the Mother-Daughter Conflict the Canary in the Coal Mine?

 The mother-daughter relationship is largely thought to be one of the most complicated relationships to understand. Colleagues often ask me how they can help their female clients heal the anger they feel towards their mother or daughter. They ask how they can help a mother and daughter learn to listen to each other rather than argue about everything and anything. And they ask how they can help a mother or daughter change their emotionally manipulative behaviors.    

One of the common mistakes therapists and society alike make when trying to understand what is happening between a mother and daughter is treating the mother-daughter relationship as a separate entity to the wider socio-cultural family and societal environment they grow up in, live in, and are trying to relate in. The Mother-Daughter Attachment® Model (MDAM), which grew out of my lifelong mother-daughter work and research reveals that the attachment dynamics between mothers and daughters is best understood through a systemic lens. It makes sense that when trying to dig below the arguments mothers and daughters engage in, and why mothers and daughters commonly engage in emotionally manipulative behaviors, an exploration of what it means to be female, mother, and daughter within their generational family, culture, and society is essential.

The MDAM reveals that mother-daughter relationship conflict is the “canary in the coal mine”, warning therapists and society alike that all is not well with women and girls. Mother-daughter conflict is a warning that women and girls are suffering from the lack of vital emotional needs like being heard, understood, believed, and emotionally supported. And when these vital emotional needs are missing for women and girls, mothers and daughters turn to each other to try and get these needs met.

Sally and Karen (names and identifying details changed for confidentiality reasons) are a typical mother-daughter couple who engage in a cycle of arguing, withdrawing into silence, which is emotionally manipulative, and then restoring their relationship without talking about and resolving the anger and frustration they are feeling. Sally, the mother is in her early fifties, and Karen, the daughter is in her mid-twenties. Sally and Karen have already seen a therapist because they wanted to understand why they were engaging in this cyclic pattern of arguing, silence, and then a perfunctory truce, but the therapy didn’t help. Their therapist tried to help them set boundaries and to communicate more clearly, but even though these tools and exercises were helpful, they did little to uncover what was causing their repeated problems.

One of the first exercises I do with clients is to map their mother-daughter history. This exercise is the main diagnostic exercise of the MDAM, and it maps out the emotional reality of what it means to be female in a client’s generational mother-daughter history. When I mapped Sally’s mother-daughter history (I often start with the mother because it provides a longer generational view), themes of emotional silencing, selflessness, self-sacrifice, lack of support, and unfulfilled career dreams quickly emerged for Sally’s life and relationships, and her mother’s and grandmother’s. As Karen saw these themes highlighted for every generation in her family, she agreed that she too had inherited these themes. She told stories of how she prioritizes other people’s needs over her own, and how she has felt neglected by many of the important people in her life, including her father and her mother Sally.

The themes of women silencing their voices and prioritizing other people’s needs before their own are global themes that cause conflict between mothers and daughters. These themes describe what life is like for women within a patriarchal society. Patriarchy is designed to silence women and to cast women in a caregiving role, viewing women as care providers, not care receivers.

Sally and Karen are far from alone in the way they fought over the silencing and emotional neglect they were experiencing. Their arguments are a warning siren, warning them that the women in their generational family are invisible. The work Sally and Karen need to do to heal their conflict is to change the way the women in their family are silenced and neglected. They need to unpack the emotional and relational consequences of the sexist gender roles that they and their family have internalized and normalized. And they need to learn how to speak the unknown and often ignored language that inquires after what women feel, think, and need.   

Bio

Rosjke Hasseldine MS MBACP (Accredited) is an internationally recognized speaker and teacher on Mother-Daughter Attachment®. She is the author of “The Silent Female Scream” and “The Mother-Daughter Puzzle”, and Founder / Director of Mother-Daughter Coaching International, a training organization that teaches professional courses on mother-daughter attachment for therapists and coaches. To read her articles, blogs, and watch her YouTube videos visit www.rosjke.com For information about Mother-Daughter Attachment Training visit www.motherdaughtercoach.com