The Complexity of the Mother-Daughter Relationship
I feel this is one of those things where the title tells you everything you need to know. Although to be fair, I feel a bulk of you would probably already know everything you need to know even if it wasn’t articulated as a title. Because you have lived through it.
The common consensus among the South Asian girls I’ve interacted with, whether as a close friend or as someone I know in passing, seems to be that we love our mum. But we also think our mum drives us INSANE. That when our relationship is good, it can be SO good. Yet there’s also something about this dynamic that involves a lot of tears, criticism, and defensive tones with results that range from quiet hurting to full-blown screaming matches.
I personally feel the root of the problem lies in the bulk of South Asian women, especially mums, not being listened to or respected at any point in their life. And so, they overcompensate for this lack by demanding and exerting control over their children; primarily, their daughters. Women see themselves in their daughters and vice versa, but this is amped up in South Asian cultures. South Asian mums feel their daughters could be everything they couldn’t, but also fear they could be everything they couldn’t. Their daughters can’t be too modern, too rambunctious, but somewhere deep inside, it seems some South Asian mums also feel their daughters deserve some freedom and independence – things they didn’t enjoy. But what if she gets too out of hand? Because if you have a daughter who isn’t obedient and stays in her lane, what will people say? And in striking that balance is where the consequent friction in the mother-daughter relationship crops up - South Asian mums don’t want to be shamed for raising an ill-equipped woman. They want to raise the all-knowing, all-doing, all-capable mythical woman who works her 9-5 (or quits it for her family), raises impeccable children, cooks delicious meals three times a day, keeps an immaculate home and has a satisfied husband. Children, specifically, daughters, are always automatically seen as the extension of their mums (almost never the dad) and our poor choices and (outwardly) questionable decisions are nothing but a reflection of their poor parenting (again, the mum, almost never the dad).
And in most cases, we grow up being just that, the extension of our mum. Some of us hit thirty and forty years of age not knowing if the voice in our head is our inner critic’s or our mother’s. We grow up almost never escaping this pressure to live up to our mother’s standards. More uncomfortable yet, is when living as our mother’s extension expands our position in her life to that of a caregiver, a nurturer, and a therapist. Where we start to place our mother's well-being upon ourselves. Where we take responsibility for it. Where we hold ourselves accountable. And so many of us grow up learning how to emotionally care for our mums; we mother our mums at times. Whether she’s upset with our dad, her own parents, or just something in her life, we learn to listen and support, being too young for such topics at times, and too innocent to learn to compartmentalise rather than to pick sides. Sometimes, we feel “rewarded” for our good behaviour when we lived up to her expectations or supported her in the way she stands up for us in front of her husband. The way she argues for us or pushes for us. Making us feel like maybe she DOES get it. Especially if you have an immigrant background. “Maybe my mum IS getting how this culture is different from the culture she grew up in.” We start to question if we may have overreacted the last time she crossed a boundary or breached our privacy. We want to give in, maybe start exploring how other people seem to be best friends with their mums even though we had previously dismissed it as a bizarre concept. Only to be yelled at about eating too little or eating too much and getting fat at the very next meal. Classic bait-and-switch. Every time. One minute, we are talking to our mum about the intimate details of her life; we tell her how to handle that inheritance issue that’s ongoing with her family and she seemingly took our advice. The very next, we are incapable of doing what she had done at our age. And so, you scream a silent scream at the ceiling at night or in the privacy of a hot shower about the PATRIARCHY which forbade your mum from living her own life making her take it ALL out on you now.
But just to consider things from the other side of the coin for just a brief minute. Something that has been stewing in my mind since I was a child really. I don’t know about other communities, but I’m very familiar with the way a woman becomes “Arjun Amma” or “Geetha Amma” or “Irfan Amma” almost the very minute she gives birth in ours. And that’s her identity. As in. That’s all her identity is. Walk into a neighbourhood and say you’re looking for “Bharathi” and people will tell you such a person doesn’t exist. Until “Yazhini Amma” comes out and says that’s me – as people clutch their thaalis in shock. “Ohhh Yazhini Amma?? Your name is Bharathi??” Because Bharathi was no longer a multi-hyphenate the minute Yazhini came into the world. Bharathi is a mum. End of. And that’s where Bharathi also stops being a person; a human being with her own desires and wants and needs.
Many mothers often get the label “narcissistic”. That she makes it ALL about herself. Especially our lives. Now, to be very clear, I'm not minimising anyone's trauma or actual diagnosis. But when this label comes from self-taught psychiatrists, I tend to wonder if the mum in question is an actual narcissist or a victim of circumstance. And when it involves a South Asian mum, where nothing is ever about them, I wonder even more. If the mum is making her child’s life about herself because her child’s life is literally the one place she feels she can make things about herself. The one place she feels she MUST be heard. The one aspect of her life she feels she can, and must actually, deliver. Because then maybe, someone will laud her - for having raised a fantastic daughter. And in that way, maybe, she will be finally seen.
I also wonder if mums, or rather, our relationships with our mums are held to a higher standard simply because... they are mums. Daddy’s princess is cool and all, but it also feels a little normal for there to be a gap in the father-daughter relationship. In fact, I don’t think many of us chase our fathers for a relationship and their approval the way we do with our mums. It’s like there’s almost this internalised misogynism when it comes to your relationship with your mum. “My mum should get it.” “My mum should know how comments like these can affect me.” “My mum too is a woman. She should be doing better.” Which is relayed in the anthem of most daughters - "I'm NOT my mother." A trope that frankly feels like a synonym for “I’m not like other girls.”
Similarly, your mum expects you to get it. Because you’re a woman and you should know what society is like and what her place in society is like. Adding fuel to the fire is how women are simply not taught to articulate what we want. Or rather, to not articulate what we want. And so, mums don’t verbalise what they truly expect of you, from you. The result? “Well, that doesn’t sound too bad.” is almost always replied with, “No, it’s not what she said, it’s the way she said it.” Coded words, the slight downturn of lips, and changes in tone are how we realise we have upset our mother. And as someone who thinks we impact our mothers’ happiness, we bend over backwards trying to figure out what caused this sudden dissonance. Like, why can’t she just TELL us what we did wrong?? What also doesn’t help is the way mums in our community are raised to believe daughters are meant to leave one day. This makes them want to cling to their daughters, i.e., their sole pillar of support more, but also makes them resent the fact that their sole pillar of support will leave. So instead of creating a culture where we say, "I'll miss you when you go off to live on your own ma," we have the all too familiar passive aggression. The bottom line? We both are victims of patriarchy.
I’m not saying either is right or wrong. In fact, it’s hard for one to be right and the other to be wrong because the mother-daughter relationship is easily one of the most vexing, cyclical relationships. Someone saying “My mum is toxic.” is so commonplace, it’s almost accepted. But we as daughters also find our mum overbearing or tell her to stop being so controlling when we tell her we will be out late and she asks us what time we will be home. Only to be more than willing to text our friends once we are home after a late night. Again, I’m not picking sides. And I know the consequences of telling your mum you will be home at 3 am is VASTLY different from telling your friend you reached home at 3 am. But I do think parents, especially immigrant parents and immigrant mums at that, deserve some slack. No one is acknowledging moving countries to where no one speaks your language, as a full-grown adult when you already had preconceived notions about the world with a child in tow is hard. And so I implore you to try. If you are able to find that sweet spot where you can distance yourself sufficiently from your mum’s comments, bar the few meltdowns you have accepted and allowed, then that’s great. But if severing the relationship is the only way to keep your mental health intact, then that’s great too.
I don’t know if there’s a concrete answer for all this out there. As someone in research with a Psych major, I’ve tried to understand the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship at many different times and at many different stages of my life. Earlier in my life, the answers were often a trite, disgusting reduction of hormones, emotions, jealousy and that women talk too much or women share too much. Turns out, the mechanical conclusions that women exaggerate, or “who knows what goes in a woman’s head?” (synonymous with “I simply don’t care enough to try to understand this”) is unsurprisingly the result of this area being under-researched, much like all things female. But recently, I discovered the Adult Daughter–Mother Relationship Questionnaire. A questionnaire that assesses the relationship between a mother and an adult daughter for therapy purposes. Now, it only came to be six years ago. Six. Like around the time of Brexit six. Like around the time Trump was elected six. It’s astounding people acknowledge mother-daughter relationships are a common topic in therapy, but no one came up with a questionnaire until six years ago. Either way, it’s a start, I think. And a source of hope, for women who want to or actively work towards, “It ends with me.”
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