Mom-daughter bond delicate
Consider the mother-daughter relationship. It’s a wellspring of comfort and love and at times a cauldron of anger and pain. And the words mothers and daughters use with each other can heal and wound with equal strength.
It’s literally the “mother of all relationships,” says Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University linguistics professor, who examines the meaning behind those words in her new book, “You’re Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation” (Random House, $24.95).
Tannen wrote the book, which is on several best-seller lists, after the response to a chapter in “I Only Say This Because I Love You,” her previous book on family relationships, that focused on mothers’ relationships with their adult sons and daughters.
“It was just so obvious that everyone wanted to talk about the mother-daughter relationship,” Tannen says. “I think it’s because women really are struggling, because it’s a very important relationship in your life.”
Daughters – whether 5 or 45 – seek their moms’ approval, she says. And moms – whether 25 or 65 – want to help their daughters. Often those desires collide, as daughters interpret their mothers’ advice as criticism and mothers feel left out when daughters retreat, Tannen says.
“Part of the reason (motherly advice) bugs us as daughters is because our mothers are so powerful in our lives. They loom like giants,” she says. “The reason mothers keep at it is because they’re so powerless. They cannot get you to do what is so obvious to them you should do.”
The book, which uses actual conversations between moms and adult daughters, details how many of their conflicts arise from “the Big Three topics” of hair, weight and clothes. Tannen examines the meaning behind the messages and offers ways to improve communication.
In the spirit of Tannen’s book, we asked some women what their mothers or daughters said or did that set them on edge and then had Tannen give them the “You’re Wearing That?” treatment. Scenario: Mom thinks daughter’s skirts ride too low on her waist. Daughter says, “This is who I am, Mom.”
Tannen: “I think it’s fascinating that the daughter says ‘This is who I am,’ rather than ‘This is how I like to wear it.’ Isn’t that a message … that to the daughter, it’s all about acceptance of who you are? The mother thinks (she’s) just saying this would look better another way.”Advice to mom: “Talk to the girl about how she feels. Often when kids get mad at their mothers, it’s because mothers are saying something they kind of suspected themselves.”
Scenario: Mom loves daughter’s naturally curly hair and chides her for using a blow-dryer to straighten it.
Tannen: “She thinks (the daughter) would look better letting her hair go curly, and maybe she’s right. We have so many choices that the chances that any two people are going to agree that the same thing is the best choice is slim.”
Advice to mom: “It’s a textbook case of you’ve got to bite your tongue. … If she didn’t decide to do it differently the first 50 times you said it, she’s not going to decide to do it differently on the 51st.”