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It’s pretty common knowledge that mothers and daughters can have complicated relationships. You see the cliché everywhere, like many of your favorite female-centric shows. Maya Lewis and Olivia Pope of “Scandal.” Annalise Keating and Ophelia Harkness of “How To Get Away With Murder.” Then there’s the hit-show “Mom” that needed no other title than, simply, “Mom” for people to instantly recognize this would be a show about a messed up mother-daughter relationship. It may not necessarily be that mother-daughter relationships face any struggles that father-son ones don’t, but rather, that mothers and daughters just feel things intensely. Women do, after all, score higher on empathy and emotional perception tests. So, to put it simply, when something is wrong, we know it, and we feel it—strongly.
Maybe you belong to the club of women who need a stiff drink after seeing their mom, or who at the very least need to vent to their friends. And maybe you go through the cycle of battling it out with your mom over the same topics, only to later feel guilty that you took a tone with your mom – she is your mom, after all. No matter how right you were in the argument or how justified you felt, it’s never very gratifying to win an argument with your mom because you feel that you owe her so much. We spoke with licensed marriage and family therapist and the author of “Hard Work or Harmony?” Kiaundra Jackson. She provided insight into the complicated mother-daughter relationship, and how mothers can sometimes pass down their wounds to their daughters.
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A special bond with mom
We asked Jackson why exactly the bond between moms and daughters can be so intense, and so sensitive. “There’s something really special about a mother’s love because if we really think about it, the connection that we have with our children starts in utero. I like to look at things from a holistic perspective: mind, body, spirit – all of those things. You can also look at the physical element here.”
