My mother, my daughters and me

It may seem a strange way to begin an article with this title by mentioning my grandmother. But the relationship between my mother and myself and also mine with my daughters, they have to begin with my grandmother. Where else could all that love have come from?

We all know nowadays that mother love in infancy is as important to a child’s future mental health as vitamins are for physical health and growth, but I don’t believe that this feeling of love is something which just ‘happens’. So how can we understand that special something which gets transmitted between a mother and a daughter? Of course, we love our sons too, and we know that fathers are vitally important to a child’s welfare, but I am talking of the thread which keeps the women of the family in a close-knit bond.

I feel I am very fortunate to be poised between a mother who is well into her eighty-fourth year, and my two daughters who are both mothers of daughters. So already the chain has another link, my five granddaughters.

As a psychotherapist working with adults I see the difficulties that many women have in adult life with close relationships, and often their roots of distress are grounded in early childhood experiences. These women can often recall very painful memories of depressed mothers or absent ones - and this can mean absent either in a physical sense or through an inability to keep the child in mind. Without being involved in the understanding of their infants’ feelings, without this kind of mental ‘holding’, children become lost and cease to build a strong sense of self, or a positive identity. Of course, it is not easy to be a mother if you are suffering from a mental illness, have a chronic disability or are struggling against poverty. It is not easy to be a caring loving mother if you yourself have been deprived of early mothering. The unhappiest of mother/daughter bonds are where the mother is looking to her child for the parenting which she did not receive at a time when it was needed.

Mothers today don’t have an easy time at all. More women work outside the home, either from an economic necessity or because there are internal or external pressures to have a career as well as being a homemaker. Studies in the UK show that a large proportion of the women who return to work shortly after they have a baby wish they could spend more time at home. Unhappily society does not value motherhood, and status is often given to women who can have ‘another’ identity and show they are valued in the workplace. Meanwhile, when are they supposed to give the time and care and undivided attention that babies and children need? Mothering does take time and as any working mother knows, there are only so many hours in the day.

Looking back on my own childhood I can remember that my grandmother seemed to have endless time for me, and I always knew she would be pleased to see me and that there was always a lap to sit on and songs to be sung and stories to be told. Without putting it into words I knew with a certainty that I was loved and loving her back gave me an excellent blueprint for later life. I have a mother who has always been ready to tell me if she thinks I am out of order, but as I know this comes from a bedrock of love and acceptance, it becomes part of the fabric of our relationship. Time is bringing change, and even though it is now my turn to do some of the caring of my mother, I find it can come from the heart - it is just something I am fortunate enough to give back to her now she is in her eighties.

When I think back to the childhood of my daughters, the memories are of those long lazy summer afternoons when there seemed to be all the time in the world to play with the children. Children do need to look into their mother’s eyes and see the love there. They need to see the signs of approval - the little gestures which signal ‘you’re okay’ and ‘I love you’ because if, as children, we gather up enough of these memories we have them stored inside us to call upon if the adult world gets cold and hostile.

If we can send the message to our daughters that they are loved, and lovely, they are less likely to search for artificial ways of ‘feeling better’ by turning to drugs, early sexual activity, or to anorexia in the mistaken belief that life will be better, and they will be more loved, if they are thinner.

Today at a family Sunday lunch I looked at the women gathered together. There we all were from two years of age upwards. What will they remember in the years to come? I pray they will have somewhere inside of them the memory of the times we have all spent together and, whether consciously or unconsciously, recall the laughter and love we shared. If I had one magic wish it would be that the thread, started perhaps by my grandmother’s grandmother, will remain unbroken and that my daughters, my granddaughters and all the future generations of women will build on the foundations which I hope I have laid for them.

© Jill Curtis 2001