On paper, there may be no closer relationship in the world than that of a mother and her daughter. The relationships between parents and children alone create a bond that can never be truly broken, but mothers and daughters typically have an even closer bond to each other. Unfortunately, with that strong bond, can come even stronger issues.
When daughters are born, they look to their mothers for just about everything. After all, the mother is the whole world for a daughter for a fairly extended period of time, and this can help to shape things like:
Self-esteem
Feelings of femininity
Body image
Self-identity
Where a girl stands in societal norms
It’s up to a mother to help a daughter sort through all of those feelings, and for awhile, it usually works out. Unfortunately, the problem mothers and daughters typically come to is when they start to become too much alike, or too different. Many parents brush this off as something like typical teenage outbursts, or rebellion, but when it comes to mothers and daughters, the issues can go much deeper than that.
If a daughter becomes too much like her mother as she gets older, there’s a good chance there will be some confrontation. Stubborn nature, and a lack of a true sense of self can arise within the daughter, who is really just seeking her own identity, since her entire life she has just related herself with her mother. This can lead to low self-esteem, and a lack of purpose in life. Two similar personalities can also butt heads very often.
When a daughter tends to follow a different path, and goes the opposite route as her mother, it can cause even more issues. Far more than teenage rebellion, these issues can create rifts in entire families, and a daughter can seek opposites from everything they were ever taught in terms of femininity, body image, etc.
Alternatively, mothers can struggle greatly in these relationships, due to issues like:
Unrealistic expectations (of both the daughter, and of self)
An inner-voice/critic
Feelings of inadequacy
Brushing off or downplaying natural feminine gifts
As you can see, a common theme that many mothers struggle with is the idea that who they are, or what they’re teaching their daughters, simply isn’t ‘good enough,’ which can pass on self-esteem and pride issues to the daughter herself.
The mixture of any of these problems between mothers and daughters can cause a cocktail strong enough to strain any relationship. If you’ve experienced a relationship with any of these attributes with your mother or daughter, and feel as though your bond is strained or torn because of it, it can be a good idea to seek family counseling, or talk to a neutral party about different ways to move past it, and re-forge the bond that was initially created. There is no closer bond than the one between a mother and daughter, and personality traits and underlying emotions should never get in the way of that.