A son is your son ’till he gets him a wife,
but your daughter’s your daughter
for the rest of her life.
– Old English Proverb (16th c. or earlier). Bold emphasis is mine.
Last week, I reprinted this post about fathers, daughters and emotional incest. Several folks commented or wrote in that they’d like to see me touch on that same issue, just with a focus on mothers. With the obvious and whopping caveat that I am not a mother, I’ll oblige as best I can.
My own mother is flying into L.A. tomorrow for her annual visit with her older son and his family, so I’ve got mama on my mind. But my regular living arrangement gives me plenty of opportunity to reflect on mother-daughter relationships in particular. My wife and I live with her mother and our daughter. We’ve got three generations of women under the same roof, interacting every day. I’m an intimate witness to my partner’s relationship to her mom, and the relationship of both of these grown women to our little Heloise.
Teaching women’s studies to a predominantly female student body means that I hear and read lots of stories about mother-daughter relationships. It is axiomatic that reflecting on feminism involves reflecting on one’s own mother. The conflict between Second Wave feminist moms and their Third Wave feminist daughters has been well-covered, and I dealt with that issue at length in this 2008 post. (Jessica Valenti — herself the mother of a newborn daughter — had a great piece in The Nation last month on this topic, and Naomi Wolf is hosting what looks like a fabulous panel of young feminists talking about intergenerational conflict next month in New York. And those really interested in this topic must check out Astrid Henry’s Not my Mother’s Sister, which I reviewed back in 2007.)
For many of my students who weren’t raised in feminist households, whose mothers — like my Colombian-born mother-in-law — grew up with deeply traditional values about gender roles which they then passed on to their daughters, embracing feminism is almost always emotionally fraught. For my large number of Latina, Asian, and Armenian students whose mothers were born abroad, “claiming the name” of “feminist” frequently involves a complicated and delicate rejection of their mothers’ values. I note that the most emotionally charged classroom discussions that I’ve ever facilitated in a women’s studies class revolved not around abortion, or body image, or sex — but about mother-daughter relationships.
If there’s one narrative that has the potential to do tremendous damage in mother-daughter relationships, it’s the one in which moms give the “Don’t make the same mistakes I did” speech to their growing girls. This discourse isn’t quite universal among women, but I suspect it’s not far off. Generation after generation of young women come of age, hearing warnings from mothers, aunts, and older sisters about the many perils that lie ahead. Occasionally, the discourse takes a positive tone: “My darling, I’ve found a great deal of happiness and fulfillment in my life by doing x, y, and z. Though I’ll support you whatever you do, I think doing x, y, and z is a very good idea. It certainly worked for me.” Far more frequently, the message is negative: “Don’t be a fool like I was! I got married too young/married for love/didn’t marry for love/slept around too much/slept around too little/focused too much on school/focused too little on school/took too many risks/played it too safe/had kids too early/waited too late to try to have them.”
I often give a gently humorous version of that last speech, asking my students how many have them have gotten a message like that from their moms (or a surrogate mom figure.) Usually, around 75-90% of the women in the class raise their hands, nodding and laughing in recognition. I point out that the great problem with the “Be better than I was, don’t make the same mistakes I did” discourse is that it utterly fails to offer young women a clear roadmap to happiness. We don’t tell people how to get from L.A. to San Francisco simply by telling them, “Whatever you do, don’t drive to Phoenix.” With a clear sense of what they shouldn’t do, and repeated injunctions to achieve more than their mothers achieved, many of my students fall prey to the twin viruses that are ravaging college-age women today: perfectionism and pervasive anxiety.
Perfectionism is closely tied to the “one mistake can ruin your life” narrative that I’ve written about before. But though many young women, when asked, will give eloquent testimony about their own mothers’ perseverance, the messages they too often received from those same mothers were focused relentlessly on the importance of not screwing up. And without a clear roadmap for how to “do it right”, and with so many repeated warnings about how easy it is to screw everything up, it’s not surprising that so many young women end up struggling with anxiety, perfectionism, and exhaustion. Eating disorders flourish as a consequence; the constant warnings about pervasive dangers often leads to the desire for control. And as we all know (or at least imagine), managing one’s body can give many overwhelmed young women the sense that in this confusing, contradictory, and dangerous world, they have at least one thing they can control. Eating disorders thus become, as countless writers have pointed out, about rebellion as well as compliance, about an effort to resist becoming like the mother while simultaneously attempting to please her. (Obviously, there’s more to the etiology of eating disorders than family dynamics.)
In a sexist, male-dominated society, it’s absurd to place the primary blame for women’s struggles on their relationships with their mothers. But to the extent that oppression does become internalized, as I think it does for many women, that internalization process is often closely connected to the enduring mother-daughter bond. And if there’s one particularly complicated, and often pernicious aspect to that bond, it’s the “Do as I wish I had done, not as I in fact did” discourse.
” often give a gently humorous version of that last speech, asking my students how many have them have gotten a message like that from their moms (or a surrogate mom figure.)”
-The main problem I’ve always had with mother is the opposite: she insists that my life has to be an exact copy of hers in every single aspect and gets very upset that it isn’t.
Feminism and goddess mythology are a replacement for the mother I was never able to learn from. I grew to forgive her when I hit my late 20′s. Her cognitive challenges are no more her fault than my son’s autism is his fault. Reason #1 that I refuse to accept organized religion. If the world is messed up, it’s my responsibility to fix what I can, by any constructive means available to me. When random shit happens, the tough get going and that’s all.
I guess in a way I’m kinda lucky not to have the usual should I be more like mom or less like mom baggage. My experience with her and the foster care system gave me an iron clad sense of what type of woman I’d sooner DIE than be. To use your “Phoenix” example, I was there and it was hell. (Not to be confused with the real Phoenix Arizona–not a bad place) Most of those bible thumping social workers assumed that my so-called “type” would NEVER get from “LA to Frisco”, as you put it. Great. That left me free to start on the opposite side of things, Minneapolis, Mars Hill, Tallahassee, Vancouver, and see for myself where I wanted to be.
I LOVE learning. I am SO lucky to have the mind and the experiences I was born with. I’m not recommending such a blatant rejection of or total separation from mom as the one I had to deal with. Living in shelters and hitchhiking across the continent is no kind of life for most young women. But sometimes a bit of healthy rebellion and exploring can show us paths that we might not have otherwise considered. I had the type of adolescence that most mothers have nightmares about, and I’m one of the most intellectually and emotionally stable people you’ll ever meet. Staring down my fears in what looks like a no-win situation is the most liberating thing I can think of. All the girlie women (social workers who tried to replace my mom) who think I need some guy’s last name to complete me and make my kids legitimate can kiss my ass
“Several folks commented or wrote in that they’d like to see me touch on that same issue, just with a focus on mothers. With the obvious and whopping caveat that I am not a mother, I’ll oblige as best I can.”
The commenters on last week’s post asked you about mother-son dysfunction. But as I’ve noted, criticism of how women treat men doesn’t come easily for you, so you somehow chose to hear them calling for a mother-daughter critique – an easy softball.
But, still, you just can’t help yourself. You narrowly view the dangerous area in a mother-daughter relationship as a perhaps excessive concern on Mom’s part, a genuine wish that her daughter avoid some of the pitfalls she experienced. Now a student of liberal arts and history should have no trouble imagining darker mother-daughter scenarios – tensions and fallouts because of a mother’s jealousy, or because of a mother’s neediness, her fear that a truly independent child will leave her adrift in life. Mom as manipulative martyr. Such dynamics have been know to happen, but such clear, nonredeemable flaws might imply some responsibility, some awkward accountability on Mom’s part. You could go there but it would take more effort, because, as a feminist, you’d have to extend the post so that you locate the true origin of mom’s inner flaws in the behavior of men. It’s far easier, far more concise, to simply select a motherly maladaption that arises from concern, or fear for her child. Something that will allow the pretense of a fair, even view of father and daughters vs. mothers and sons, but without suggesting any inner flaws that might be unbecoming in a mother.
Now when it comes to fathers, you have no inhibitions at all about sure and irrevocable blame. Fathers, being men, need not be credited with simple concern for their children. Go back and read your post on fathers and try to get a hint, even a whiff, that fathers (other than you) might manifest protectiveness, worry, concern, self-sacrifice or even simple, healthy fondness for their children. In your view of fathers, they harm their children not from a motherly excess of concern, or a motherly fear for their child’s happiness. No – when fathers harm their children it is because of their insatiable egos.
Mothers, being women, only do harm because of a misplaced sense of concern, and of course mothers, being women, have no selfishness in their nature. In contrast, fathers – being men – are nothing but selfishness.
Sweating Through Fog VERSUS Hugo Schwyzer. WHO WILL EMERGE VICTORIOUS?
I did talk to both my children in this vein…but it was not about love. It was about money. Spend within your limits. Pay off credit cards every month if possible. Save for retirement, for bad times, for expensive things that you want but don’t have the money for now.
No one taught me about money and credit, and I learned the hard way. Both my kids took the lesson to heart and now in their early 20s they are both excellent money managers with no debt other than their 15 year mortgages. No student loans, no credit card debt, and paid off cars.
In love and relationships, life work, school, etc…you can’t tell someone else what to do, really, because there are so many choices. But if you don’t talk to your kids about money, they will be in a world of hurt because society pushes the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
“Mothers, being women, only do harm because of a misplaced sense of concern, and of course mothers, being women, have no selfishness in their nature. In contrast, fathers – being men – are nothing but selfishness.”
Strindberg got there first, STF.
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-08-31/entertainment/ca-39_1_true-evil
“If there’s one narrative that has the potential to do tremendous damage in mother-daughter relationships, it’s the one in which moms give the “Don’t make the same mistakes I did†speech to their growing girls. This discourse isn’t quite universal among women, but I suspect it’s not far off.”
When I find the woman whose mom didn’t hammer that speech into her head from pre-puberty onward, thereby proving it’s not a universal, you will definitely be the first to know. Don’t hold your breath, though…
I had a side bet with myself how far down the comments section I’d have to get before I hit the first comment from one of your specific subset of male commenters complaining that you’re not talking about mother-SON relationships or FATHER-SON relationships. But then I thought to myself, Hey, you’re being unfair and stereotyping..! Surely these guys aren’t such obsessively bitter resentful types that they will find it intolerable that Hugo is focusing on woman-woman relationships in this one particular post, won’t feel they have to try to derail and disrupt and moan and groan about it…they don’t REALLY think that woman-woman relationships are so insignificant that they don’t deserve a post of their own…
…of course I was wrong. Oh well. At least I win the slice of key lime pie in my fridge. It’s actually vegan, too, from the Common Market in the nearest city to me, you want some?
The problem, Lisa, is not that Hugo is focusing on woman-woman relationships (he often does). Rather, the problem is that he is writing about mothers and daughters in order to get out of writing about mothers and sons- which is what was initially asked in the comments section. The reasoning for said misrepresentation of commentators seems to be that a post on mothers and sons would necessarily entail direct criticism of mothers (women) in regards to their actions toward sons (men), which goes against everything Hugo stands for. At least in mother-daughter relationships, the victims are women, so therefore, he feels he can criticize the female perpetrators. Though, of course, it has been noted that he is much easier on mothers in this post than he was on fathers in the previous post.
Lisa: if even feminists are reading Hugo’s new posts and anticipating the criticism that will follow, then I’d say my work here is starting to bear fruit. When you manage to forecast the exact line of criticism, or even accurately read the criticism after it has been posted, then my work here will be done.
Hahaha, “my work here.” What are you, the MRA Jesus?
Listen, boys: this is my blog. It is a feminist blog, and I have long had a comments policy that is feminist friendly.
Comment please, on the substance of this post — and note that anything else will be deleted from here on out. I may get around to mothers and sons as well (I’ve certainly written quite a bit about my own feminist mom); I may not. So chill.
Hugo, respectfully, you’re talking out of your ass here. This seems to be a variety of blogger’s disease (originally championed by print-media pundits): grab a subject and throw it on the rhetorical Procrustean bed until ta da, it fits a cherished theory, in this case, the pressure on women to be perfect.
We don’t tell people driving from LA to San Francisco “Whatever you do, don’t go to Phoenix” because Phoenix is not between LA and San Francisco. You don’t decide to take a quick shortcut and five minutes later discover you’re in Arizona. We do, however, tell people about the actual and common hazards of that drive. Would you similarly wag your finger at a person who said “Don’t take 99 unless you absolutely have to, it’s a deathtrap, and you’re better off leaving late morning so you miss most of the LA rush-hour traffic”?
What these mothers are telling their daughters is not “be perfect.” They’re sharing their experiences of growing up as women in a world with many pitfalls, where ordinary things like marriage and children can completely sidetrack their lives, and put burdens on them that they never expected. Would it make you feel better if these mothers carefully phrased their cautions as “Honey, remember that we live in a patriarchal society that places gender-specific expectations on women, and if you have children, you’ll be fighting against those expectations coming from your husband, your workplace and your friends, so you may want to think very carefully about getting married and having babies until you’re got structures in place to address those?”
Well, actually, my mom was pretty much telling me exactly what Hugo describes above. I *wish* it had been more what you’re describing, Mythago, but unfortunately it wasn’t. Though Hugo isn’t going into the details of what lies behind the “Be better than I was, don’t make the same mistakes I did” perfectionist/pressure meme, I can, the more negative aspects anyway–it was a lot of swallowed rage over the life my mother thought she ought to have had, *deserved* to have, but didn’t have–and there I was, a younger fresher version, that she could get it right through *this* time. (The fact that I look extremely like my mother physically probably made it worse.) Unfortunately, even if you do actually succeed in life (generally speaking, anyway), some mothers (like mine, obviously, lol) still aren’t satisfied–they don’t like the *way* you did it, for example, or they’re mad because once you did succeed you showed a marked lack of enthusiasm for taking *them* out of their cruddy life that they feel got unfairly wasted and showering money/gifts/living with you/etc, and of course there is the unacknowledged jealousy which expresses itself as “if I’d had YOUR opportunities I would have done even BETTER than you have,” etc. etc. Sigh.
No, I don’t have a relationship with my mother anymore. I mean, who could…? ::sigh again::
There is some literature developing on this – literature literature, the kind that reaches a lot of people. Amy Tan’s “Joy Luck Club” was all about this. It gets taught widely in high schools, although inexplicably it gets cast as a diversity hire, even though there is nothing Asian at all about either of its two main themse, the immigrant first/second generration tensions or the mother/daughter tensions.
Lisa – I didn’t mean to deny your experience, and of course there are parents (mothers and fathers) try to re-live their lives “right” through their children.
But I disagree strongly with Hugo’s thesis that every mother who says “Don’t make the same mistakes I made” is hand-wringing over nothing and trying to push her daughter to be perfect. Frankly, I wish my mother had shared more of her “here’s where I made a mistake” moments with me.
WHOO HOO!! Thanx Mythago. That’s exactly what I told my daughter. Sometimes I still wonder if what she heard was “you suck, but men suck more, so stay a virgin until you die broke in spite of working your ass off like your poor old mom.”
Mythago, I’ll add my voice to those who see the post as right on. I have a great relationship with my mom and she’s been so close to a perfect parent its ridiculous but I can still very much relate. She’s always pushed exceptionally hard on the things she regrets from her own past and its hard to have that double responsibility. No much of a problem anymore but it absolutely used to drive me crazy and hurt me.
I don’t see Hugo saying that the hard wringing is over “nothing” or that the explicit conscious motivation is to push her daughter to be “perfect”.
Victoria, I *do* see Hugo explicitly saying that (for example) “don’t get married right after high school like I did” is just one more way that the mothers of his female students push them to be perfect, and that it’s as stupid as giving somebody directions from LA to SF by saying “whatever you do, don’t go to Phoenix!”
Hugo is and in the past has been very clear about the fact that he’s pleased as punch with the male privilege that allows him not to have to make hard choices about his family life – he didn’t have to worry that an early marriage or fatherhood would mean giving up his career for a life of domesticity, or that if he had a child he would likely be stuck as a single father.
I’m with Mythago. I don’t see it as a bad thing that mothers (in my experience all parents) share their mistakes and struggles in the hope that their children will not repeat them. It would be a bad thing, certainly, if a parent became determined to live vicariously through a child, demaning that the child take the path that the parent wished she had chosen for him or herself. But this post went much further than that.
Of course women, having experienced the perils of living in a patriarchal society, are likely to have hit roadblocks that they want to alert their daughters to. My mom did this on occasion, and I always found it helpful. Am I persuing the path that my mom wished she had chosen for herself? No. Did I think about what she shared with me when making my choices about career, spouse and family? You bet!
Exactly. It’s absolutely correct that parents should never try to push a child to ‘live the life I wanted to have’, and parents who see their child doing [thing they regret] should strongly consider whether it really is the same situation.
But using Hugo’s highway metaphor, it’s the difference between having your mother sit in the passenger seat and constantly tell you to drive slower, vs. having your mother warn you that there’s always construction up near Santa Cruz and that shortcut Google Maps says exists was closed years ago. If I gave somebody directions on driving from LA to San Francisco, I’d expect them to be pretty pissed off at me if I said “Oh, I didn’t want to warn you about Highway 99 because I assumed you’d figure it out on your own, and anyway, it just would have made you feel like I was backseat driving.”
I’m mostly with Mythago here. The advice in itself isn’t the problem; what makes it difficult is when it comes with a side order of controlling.
That said, in my time in the States, most of the mother-daughter relationships I saw did involve quite a bit of controllingness and emotional pressure to follow their advice constantly — back-seat driving, in Mythago’s analogy. It seemed a much bigger issue there than among people I knew back in the UK — but of course, small sample sizes and so on, so I don’t know if it’s fair to generalise my experience..
“A son is your son ’till he gets him a wife,
but your daughter’s your daughter
for the rest of her life”
I heard this expression a few weeks ago and it made me wince–like someone raking their nails across a chalkboard. The comment was made after a woman inquired about the sex of a newborn. It left me feeling like I wished I hadn’t had been there or even heard it. In fact I left as soon as I could not even staying around for the well wishes.
Advice with a side-order of controlling may not be so problematic either, but when control starts feeling like it’s the main course…well that’s a menacing beast to battle. Unhappy mothers and daughter’s that can never do enough to please them (ditto for parents in general) isn’t this why there seems to be a never-ending steady supply of self-help books and why this industry tends to flourish in general.