Why the Term “Mother Hunger” Is Harmful

In her book “Mother Hunger”, Kelly McDaniel writes how she coined the term “Mother Hunger” to describe the emotional hunger daughters feel when their mother couldn’t emotionally bond with them when they were a baby. McDaniel describes “Mother Hunger” as a feeling of “emptiness in the soul that is hard to describe because it may set in during infancy or before language forms and become part of how you always feel.” In this blog I reveal that mothers and daughters, therapists, the media, all of us need to be careful with terms like “mother hunger” and “mother wound” because in my experience, they have limited power to heal and understand mother-daughter conflict. Repeatedly I see the damage that these terms inflict on mothers and daughters, as they set daughters up to blame their mother for her lack of emotional connection. This kind of mother blaming simply adds gasoline to an already burning relational fire, which ends up burning both the mother and daughter.

It is important to honor a daughter’s emotional need for a close connection with her mother. Researchers like Carol Gilligan and Jean Baker Miller discovered that daughters of all ages are wired to need a close emotional connection with their mother. Baby daughters, teenage daughters, and adult daughters all need to feel emotionally connected to their mother for their emotional wellbeing and development. But when daughters, therapists, and the media focus solely on the daughter’s hunger for and lack of connection with her mother, the true reasons for the mother-daughter disconnection remain hidden.

Daughters need to be taught how to dig below their anger and uncover the underlying dynamics in their mother-daughter relationship. Daughters need to be shown how to connect the dots between what is happening in her relationship with her mother and their own and their mother’s mother-daughter history. Daughters need to understand their generational experience with patriarchy. They need to find vital answers as to why their mother struggled to emotionally bond with then when they were young, and why their relationship is fraught with conflict today. The problem with daughters being encouraged to focus solely on their unmet maternal needs, is that it can lead to mothers being blamed for their daughter’s unhappiness and their mother-daughter conflict. Both the mother and daughter will not learn how to listen to and understand each other, which will result in patriarchy being the only winner. The way that patriarchy sets mothers and daughters up for conflict will remain hidden, absolving patriarchy from being held accountable for the way it harms women, girls, mothers, and daughters.    

When daughters are taught to label their hurt as “mother hunger” and “mother wound”, fathers are also absolved from being responsible for building an emotional connection with their daughter. McDaniel writes in “Mother Hunger” that she believes that mothers are the best and main caregivers of daughters, labeling fathers as a bonus person. She writes, “If a daughter is nurtured, protected, and guided by her mother, she’s less vulnerable to her father’s unhealthy behaviors. And she may not need as much of his time and encouragement. His love is a bonus.” This belief is insulting to good fathers, and unsubstantiated by the research that unanimously agrees that daughters need to feel nurtured, protected, and guided by their father, as well as their mother. How fathers treat their daughter, their daughter’s mother, and other women, teaches daughters what treatment they can expect from men. And when fathers are not responsible for their relationship with their daughters, it is mothers who are often blamed, becoming the recipient of the daughter’s projected hurt and anger. As I say to my students, “mothers get blamed for the father’s emotional unavailability, and for society’s mistreatment of women”.   

The Mother-Daughter Attachment® Model teaches mothers and daughters and therapists that mothers and daughters do not relate in a cultural vacuum, and that mothers do not mother in a cultural vacuum. When assessing the underlying dynamics of the mother-daughter relationship, and particularly, what is stopping a mother from emotionally connecting with her baby daughter, teenage daughter, or adult daughter, we must look at the mother’s life and the mother-daughter relationship with a wide generational socio-cultural lens. We must understand what has happened in the daughter’s life, her mother’s life, and her grandmother’s life, and uncover their individual and shared experiences with patriarchy, sexism, violence, racism, and all forms of oppression and inequality. As I write in “The Mother-Daughter Puzzle”;

“Women’s generational experience with sexism and gender inequality is the root cause of why mothers and daughter fight, misunderstand each other, and emotionally disconnect. In every mother-daughter relationship I work with, I see how mothers and daughters are set up for conflict. The background from which their struggle emerges are the ways mothers are expected to be selfless caretakers, the silencing of women’s voices and emotional needs, and restrictive gender roles that limit women’s choices and freedom. When women’s voices are silenced by their family, culture, and wider society, mothers and daughters end up fighting over who gets to be heard.” 

When explaining mother-daughter conflict and how mothers’ mother, we must unpack the narrow lens in which patriarchy defines mothering, expecting round-the-clock selfless, self-sacrificing caregiving. Patriarchal beliefs do not view mothers as people, with needs and lives of their own outside of their mothering role. And patriarchal beliefs do not feel responsible for providing the emotional, financial, and practical support mothers need as people, human beings, and mothers. Rather, patriarchal beliefs are clever at blaming mothers when something goes wrong because it is an effective tool in deflecting attention away from the harm patriarchy inflicts. By directing the daughter’s anger towards her mother, patriarchy avoids being challenged and held accountable.  

The underlying truth about mother-daughter conflict is that it is a canary in the coalmine. Mother-daughter conflict signals that all is not well with how mothers and daughters are being treated. Mother-daughter conflict is a warning bell to families and society that women are being harmed and change is required. And as the Mother-Daughter Attachment® Model reveals, mothers and daughters have a ton of unrecognized power to facilitate change. Mothers can make a huge difference in empowering their daughters to challenge harmful and disempowering patriarchal gender role expectations that they internalize from their culture, religion, friends, school environment, university, films, television, and social media. But true empowerment is a team effort that leaves no room for mother blaming. It requires mothers and daughters to look at their lives and relationship with a wide generational lens that asks and answers; Why are the women in our family emotionally silent, selfless, sacrificing, and self-neglecting? Why are the women in our family controlling or completely passive? And who takes care of mothers in our family? And if the answer is no one does, or the daughter does, what is that like for the mother and daughter? How does this affect their relationship? Why are mothers not viewed as people first in their family, culture, and society? Don’t mothers have that human right?

Terms like “mother hunger” and “mother wound” need to be treated with care, especially by therapists and authors! When understanding mother-daughter emotional disconnection, mothers and daughters are best served by the understanding that their conflict sis a warning bell that all is not well for them as women, as people, and for all the women in their generational family. They need to understand how women today, and in our mother’s and grandmother’s generation, were not taught to speak the language that inquires after what they feel, think, and need, and how this emotional silence sets mothers and daughters up for conflict. And they need to understand, as I write in “The Mother-Daughter Puzzle”, “the dire emotional consequences women face when they surrender their needs in their relationships, families, and workplaces”, and how this warning apples to mothers and daughters equally.