Mother Daughter Relationship: Daughters' Experience

Mother Daughter Relationship: Daughters' Experience

This study explores daughters' experience of their relationship with their mothers, and how this relationship has been perceived and interpreted by them during different periods in their lives, starting from childhood till the time of their motherhood. Further it recognizes the changes in the mother daughter relationship and factors contributing to these changes over a period of time. The study also explores stressful times in the mother daughter relationship, and the impact that the mother has on the daughter. 11 married women with at least one child were interviewed using life history method and data was analyzed using Thematic Analysis. Findings indicated changes in daughters' communication with her mother over the life cycle and change in roles for the daughter as evident through role reversal and mutual mothering. Factors contributing to growth and change in the relationship were identified as the daughter experiencing wife and mother roles herself. Daughters' pregnancy, and birth of grand children have been identified as factors which evoked a lot of support from mothers. Further, adolescence was reported as a stressful period in the mother daughter relationship. In addition, the mother's values, and behaviour was found to have a direct or indirect impact on the role attitudes and behaviours of some daughters in the study. The power of the mother's influence lied in her implicit and explicit messages given to the daughter more than her actual role choice. Some mothers and daughters had gender based expectations for each other.

P. Shilpa

Psychology