Melbourne, May 25 (Inditop): The mother-daughter relationship is the most powerful bond in the world, and can affect everything from health and self-esteem to all other relationships, say experts.
A Pennsylvania State University had found that despite conflicts and complicated emotions, 80 to 90 per cent of women at midlife reported a good relationship with their mother.
According to Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of the book ‘Mother-Daughter Wisdom’, the bond between mother and daughter sets the stage for all other relationships.
“The mother-daughter relationship is the most powerful bond in the world, for better or for worse. It sets the stage for all other relationships,” the Daily Telegraph quoted her as saying.
She said that no other childhood experience could be as compelling as a young girl’s relationship with her mother.
“Each of us takes in at a cellular level how our mother feels about being female, what she believes about her body, how she takes care of her health, and what she believes is possible in life,” she added.
Jennie Hannan, executive general manager of services at counselling provider Anglicare WA, agreed with Northrup.
“How a woman sees herself, how she is in her adult relationships with partners, and how she mothers her own children, is profoundly influenced by her relationship with her own mother,” she said.
She, however, insists that the world’s strongest bond hits a roadblock when the daughter reaches adolescence.
“The time you are going to start having major problems with your daughter will be around adolescence,” said Hannan.
“Adolescence is a very difficult, tumultuous time for children and their parents, and it tends to happen in girls earlier than in boys.
“If the mother and daughter can hang in there during adolescence, your relationship moves to a different level and becomes more of a respectful friendship,” she added.
But Hannan still stresses that having a less-than-perfect relationship with mother doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t have a good relationship with your own daughter.
“It gives you a head start if you had a good relationship with your mother, but lots of women who have had bad relationships with their mothers have had really positive relationships with other women in their lives,” she said.
“The idea that you can have a perfect relationship with anybody is flawed. Mothers do get blamed an awful lot if something’s wrong with their kids.
“But being aware of things that were good and not good in your relationship with your mum is really important in not repeating any mistakes,” she added.
“The relationship between mothers and their adult daughters is one in which the participants handle being upset with one another better than in any other relationship,” said researcher Karen Fingerman, author of Aging Mothers And Their Adult Daughters: A Study In Mixed Emotions (Springer).
“There is value in the mother-daughter tie because the two parties care for one another and share a strong investment in the family as a whole,” she added.
rounak