The Struggle Between Mothers and Daughters

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet. Posted June 29, 2006.

Daughters, do you feel that your mother is always criticizing you? Mothers, do you feel that your daughter shuts you out? Do you habitually bicker with each other, yet long for approval and understanding? In her newest book, "You're Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters In Conversation," linguist Deborah Tannen untangles the knots that daughters and mothers tend to get tied up in.

Tannen's bestseller, "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation," brought gender difference in communication style to public awareness. A later book, "The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War on Words," explored why America seems to make everything a battle, a debate, or a war -- and what that costs us as a society.

TERRENCE MCNALLY: In the new book, "You're Wearing That?" you mention that you would often ask yourself, "Would my mother understand this? Read this? Appreciate this?"

DEBORAH TANNEN: My father would read my academic articles. My mother would be impressed, maybe, but she wouldn't read that kind of thing. So I wanted to write things she could read and talk in a way that people like her would be interested in hearing.

MCNALLY: "You're Wearing That?" grew out of a previous book, didn't it?

TANNEN: My previous book, "I Only Say This Because I Love You," was about adult family relationships. The reactions I got -- in frequency, but also in passion -- disproportionately focused on the mother/daughter relationship. In fact, many people told me they heard the title in their mother's voice.

It kind of captures one of the central conundrums of that relationship. Mothers see their job as being helpful, taking care of us, being protective, but anything you do in that vein always implies criticism. If you weren't doing something wrong, you wouldn't need that advice, help or protection.

MCNALLY: Women tend to communicate about personal things more than men. A father may feel that his role is to protect and to care for, but he's unlikely to do it as much in conversation. With a mother and a daughter, "You're wearing that?" can almost never be heard as a neutral question, can it?

TANNEN: I talk about the big three -- hair, clothes and weight. "You're wearing that?" could stand for any comment about appearance. And it's daughters turning that same critical eye on their mothers. Women are judged by appearance, and mothers and daughters feel that the other represents us to the world. Mothers, in particular, do get blamed if their daughters appear unacceptable in some way.

MCNALLY: But it's not just about the Big Three. The same phenomenon occurs with life choices, career choices, relationship choices. Often these two adults are speaking out of their first relationship as a child and a parent, aren't they?

TANNEN: It's about much bigger things -- how you raise your children becomes very loaded. Your choice of partners, lifestyle, all those things. Also tiny things. I cite one conversation where a daughter was making a salad and her mother said, "You're gonna quarter those tomatoes?"

The daughter answered, "Something wrong with that?"

Mom: "Oh no, no, no. It's just that, personally, I'd slice them."

And the daughter's thinking, "Can't I do anything without my mother telling me to do it another way?"

We think we're having a perfectly lovely conversation and then, suddenly, somebody says something and feelings are hurt. When your feelings are hurt, you react and then the other person's feelings are hurt. Each one thinks the other introduced the note of contention into the conversation. No matter now old we are, we want to feel that our mothers think we're great, maybe even perfect -- even though nobody's perfect.

And daughters are the only ones who can give their mothers the final stamp of approval that she was a good mother, which all mothers worry about.

MCNALLY: Your own mother died during the writing of this book. You write that you spent more and more time with her as she grew weaker. How did that experience influence the process of writing the book, if not the content?

Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7 FM, Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org).

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