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 behaviours.    

One of the common mistakes therapists 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 are best understood through a systemic lens. When trying to dig below the arguments and emotionally manipulative behaviours mothers and daughters engage in, an exploration of what it means to be female, mother, and daughter within their generational family, culture, and society is essential.

I have come to think of mother-daughter relationship conflict as the ‘canary in the coal mine’, warning therapists – and society alike – that all is not well with women and girls. When mothers and daughters are not feeling heard, understood, believed, and emotionally supported they turn to each other to try and get these vital emotional needs met.
 

Mapping a mother-daughter history with clients

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 with a perfunctory truce 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 to try to understand this pattern. 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. I often start with the mother because it provides a longer generational view.

When I mapped Sally’s mother-daughter history, themes of emotional silencing, selflessness, self-sacrifice, lack of support, and unfulfilled career dreams quickly emerged within her life and relationships, as well as her mother’s and grandmother’s. As Karen saw these themes highlighted for every generation in her family, she recognised that she too had inherited them. She told stories of how she prioritises 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.

Making systemic sense of mother-daughter conflict

In our patriarchal society, Sally and Karen are far from alone in the silencing and emotional neglect they are experiencing. Their arguments are a warning siren, alerting them that the women in their generational family are invisible. To heal their conflict, they need to unpack the emotional and relational consequences of the sexist gender roles that they and their family have internalised and normalised. And they need to learn how to speak the language that inquires after what women feel, think, and need.