Lfurious fights, slamming doors, daily clashes over clothing or bad grades at school. All water under the bridge: the conflict between mothers and daughters is something from the last century. Generation Z girls, born between the late ’90s and the ’10s, no longer fight against their mothers, as has always happened, but are their best friends. After all, most of the time they draw from the same wardrobe, wear makeup in the same way, listen to the same music: they are more accomplices and companions than mothers and daughters. But are we sure that both are not “losing” something in these new, very equal relationships?
The myth of youth
What is happening is an “intersection of generations”, to put it in the words of the two American psychotherapists Linda Gordon and Susan Shaffer who some time ago, studying the topic, came to the conclusion that fixation on youth at all costs is the main driver of change in mother-daughter relationships: the pressure to continue to look, think and behave “young” leads mothers to become increasingly confused in the life and appearance of their teenage daughters.
The cult of eternal youth and the confusion for a rapidly changing world has produced a mutation, the mother-girl (Getty)
Mother-daughter: precise roles
The result confuses the roles, with potentially explosive effects on the growth path of daughters, but also indicative of the mothers’ poor well-being. «Up until twenty or thirty years ago, mothers maintained the role entrusted to them by psychobiologyfrom human nature: the father is the one who teaches how to live, who explains the rules, the mother teaches how to love, she is the one who welcomes and indicates a model of femininity for her daughter” observes the psychologist and psychotherapist Maria Malucelli, professor of psychology clinic at the Fatebenefratelli Foundation in Rome and author of Hidden love (Armando Editore).
Rebellion is necessary
«It is no coincidence that little girls want to emulate their mother, they take her shoes from the wardrobe or try her lipsticks, and then criticize her and enter into conflict in adolescence: an important phase, because to build herself a girl must question what was “written” about her by her mother, she must distance herself from the model that was proposed to her to find her own formula of femininity. Which may also be the same as the mother, but the moment of detachment is essential for her growth. Today, however, mothers have radically changed».
The misunderstanding of confidence
Women who have daughters between the ages of 13 and 25 are those girls of Douglas Coupland’s Generation faster than they grew, and end up in an era where anyone who isn’t young is out. Thus, as Malucelli underlines, «for them motherhood is secondary to the need to assert themselves through beauty. They are women who, faced with men who are increasingly free to leave, have to fight to keep their partner, they are “competing” with time and thus set themselves up as a model, but an aesthetic one. They do not welcome, but compare themselves to their daughters, with whose beauty they even compete. They try to be their friends, to give advice on relationships, sometimes they even end up confessing to them the arguments they had with dad: disastrous for the well-being of the family.”
Never cancel mother-daughter distances
A report from BFF, Best Friend Forever, described by journalist Paige Williams on the pages of the New Yorker: mother and daughter who go out together, exchange confidences, follow each other on social media. And the former also becomes friends with the latter’s partners, so much so that she remains close to them even after the end of the relationship. An “unnatural” relationship, Malucelli defines it, «because the parent’s role is to stay close with affection, never cancel distances. Mothers must return to being an affective model without dominating their daughters, even sharing experiences, but as a “supervisor”. We must demonstrate emotional presence when it is required: a mother who shows respect for her daughter’s space can build a satisfying relationship with her.” An example? When a fifteen-year-old has a long face, it’s better not to try to “extort confessions” or to get even, but to try to distract her and make her understand that if she wanted to talk about herself we would be there to listen to her.
Moms without borders
The risk, otherwise, is ending up in an “entangled” relationship, defined as one of the eight types of toxic mother-daughter relationships by psychologists from the American Psychological Association: they are the “mothers without borders” who overflow into the lives of their daughters, preventing them from finding their feet to discover who they really are, from asserting themselves in their emotional independence and beyond. A study presented at the World Conference on Psychology, Counseling and Guidance, for example, demonstrated that mothers who are too friendlyunable to maintain distance and a hierarchy with their daughters, lead girls to have low self-esteem also because they somehow find themselves with their wings clipped despite themselves, with the danger that sooner or later they harbor resentment towards their mother-partner.
Female insecurity
Which for its part is certainly not well, as Malucelli specifies: «These crazy relationships arise from a profound insecurity. New mothers are women who don’t feel as appreciated as they would like or they would need it, at work, from their partner, from a world that always wants them young even if their daughters are ashamed of them because they are dressed like teenagers. It is the generation of exams that never end, which have to deal with a reality that wants them to perform better and better in the many roles they cover. A continuous judgment that creates an uneasiness that one seems to escape by identifying with the daughter and throwing oneself headlong into her life.”
Mother-daughter: dad must not become the third wheel
This is not the case: doing so can only have negative effects on the daughters, who can’t find themselves, and about mothers, who continue to never feel enough. Not to mention that in all this the father remains on the sidelines, a silent presence who can no longer be “the one who teaches how to live” but only a third wheel in a sort of de facto couple.
The importance of working on yourself
How to go back to being mothers? «To be a role model for our daughters we must be more tolerant with ourselves, forgive ourselves for the defects that make us who we are, accept them” concludes Malucelli. «We must find more space and time to love ourselves and reclaim an interior life which too often we do not give the weight it has, because all the efforts we make are aimed at responding to external models. To find a new harmony you need three As: attachment, which must be demonstrated by loving ourselves and others, accepting how we are, adapting to what life brings. It takes commitment, but it’s a choice for your mental well-being: you can be happy or unhappy, the effort is the same.”
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