Mother-daughter relationships! What can I say? Wynona Judd put it the best in very simple terms. It is the most complicated relationship ever. Mothers and daughters love each other, fight hard, judge each other the most but in the end are the ones they each can run to and rely on.  It is a very complicated relationship that can not be understood by most even those who experience it in their own lives.

Must be noted that I am not implying this is in every case but in most cases that I have come across and have heard from friends, colleagues, acquaintances etc. When you bring up the topic of mothers, most women’s initial reaction is to recoil or make some funny sound which leads me to ask about their relationship with their mother. Almost 80% will tell you they love their mums but that is always followed by a but…….. They will say  “she drives me crazy”, “she never appreciates me”, “she is too judgmental”, “she is mean”, “she is evil”, “she is trying to live through me”, “she is too controlling” etc . What captured my interest is the fact that these are not young women but most are into their late 20s, early to late 30s and even their 40s. Furthermore, most of them are mothers themselves.

I then ask why they think it is so rampant that girls or women are the ones that complain a lot or fight with their mothers? This gives different answers. Some say “maybe she wants the best for me and it is not about  the message but how it is delivered”. Others say “I swear to you, what she missed out in her days, she is trying to recapture through me”, or “what can I tell you, she is just a plain old miserable woman and wants me to be miserable like her”, “that woman is hell bent on seeing me unhappy” . These all make me laugh and I definitely can relate to an extent. At one point or the other I have probably gone down each of these roads.

One of the things I noticed is that it is a given most mothers treat their sons and daughters differently. It does not matter the age of the kids. Stuff that the boys can get away with, the girls will get “skinned” for lack of a better word. Mothers…………it makes your girls mad, pissed off and feel less worthy. It can even make them hate you and their brothers so STOP!

I know society has double standards for boys and girls and sometimes parents feel like they have to be stricter with the girls. I will not even go into that argument because it could take all century but what I have to say is that it is not about the message, it is about how it gets delivered. 

Mothers stop making your girls be responsible for their brothers when growing up. Why can’t your son pick up his own bloody clothes and do his own laundry or why does his sister who is a year his senior or 2 years his junior have to make sure he has eaten or brushed his teeth. She is not his 2^nd mother. If the girl is say 19 and her brother is 10 or even 12 then it makes sense for her to look out for her brother but If they are say 14 year old twins or he is 16 and she is 14, then we have a problem. If the girl is helping you in the kitchen, there is no reason why your son can’t take out the trash or clean the bathrooms. Mothers start discriminating when the kids are young in most cases and it truly never ends.

As we grow into women and find our own feet, we generally push back from our mothers who do not respect boundaries. Some women fear the retribution of their controlling, manipulative mothers while others who are fed up just do not care and say to hell with it.

It can be especially difficult for grown women who are mothers themselves and would love their kids to have a relationship with their grandmother in spite of their own personal relationship with her. This can be a very delicate situation because you are trying to help your kids have a relationship with a woman whom you do not particularly either want in your space or who has no sense of respect or privacy.

I will say this, in spite of our relationships with our mothers, we SHOULD NOT deprive the kids of knowing their grandma except in the cases where she is just psycho and says inappropriate things to the kids (especially about their parents) or if she is one who does not maintain a save environment for the kids to be around.

It is so funny that sometimes those of us who are mothers perpetuate the same things we complain about with our kids. We expect the girls to pick up more around the house than boys. I have asked some friends why and sorry to use these words but they STUPIDLY tell me “oh I want her to be ready to take care of a house when she gets married”, or “if I get busy she needs to be able to handle the household”. And I am like why when she is 14 and has 2 brothers living at home who are 19 and 21? SERIOULY? Why can’t they handle the house incase the mother is not able to? Whatever happened to The whole thing about women going to Beijing for equality blah blah blah? Is this where it has brought us?

This is where it starts, while it is a very good thing to get our daughters responsible it is not right for them to handle all the work when there are boys laying around, sleeping or playing video games.

Another thing is that some mothers are hard on their girls because they do not want them to make the same mistakes they have made but they forget that the boys can make those same mistakes. Them trying to protect sometimes instead makes them loose their daughters.

I have no idea how to fix these relationship issues between mothers and daughters. For the most part I guess we can just learn to co-exist or …………………