Mommy’s Little Girl

Little girls often play different games, assuming the roles of a mother and daughter. The careful “mother” dresses and spoon-feeds her “daughter”, and the “daughter” obeys… But while they are playing, they have no idea how difficult the relationship between the two can be.

“Who do you love more: Mom or Dad?” This is a stupid question that kids very often hear from grown-ups. Usually the answer is “I love them both.” Essentially we get the same answer if we ask ourselves who is more important for a little girl, the mother or the father. They both are important, each of them play their own parts: the image and likeness of a father form the girl’s attitudes towards men; as she grows older she will try to find a life partner with qualities either identical to opposite of her father. The behavior a girl observes in her mother will shape her idea of what it is to be a woman.

If a family is incomplete, and a girl is brought up only by a mother, a girl may develop certain attitudes towards men: either an idealized image, or very negative one - these images may prevent her from finding her partner in life. If there is a father, but no mother in the family, the girl will not have anybody to identify herself with; involuntarily she will begin imitating her father’s behavior. She won’t be a girl anymore: she will come to know the particulars of cars, she will enjoy fishing… The man she emulates may know how to cook, how to clean, etc., and on a small level, she will be able to play the role of a woman very successfully. But growing up she may never know what it means to be a woman naturally. This means that mothers play a significant role in the life of a future woman. And with their mothers, daughters have a unique psychological and biological connection.

There are many elements in the relationships between mothers and daughters, and usually they are varied, complex and affected by many nuances.

Sacrifice

If a mother and a daughter have a strong symbiosis (the daughter is attached to her mother in a way that even after growing up, she is unable to separate herself - sometimes sacrificing her own happiness, remaining single, staying home with her mother), it will not make either of them happy. We should take care of our aging parents, but we needn’t sacrifice ourselves!

Dictatorship

A mother often unknowingly holds her daughter too closely to herself and doesn’t allow her freedom because of selfish reasons: to assure she is well-provided for in her old age, or to simply avoid boredom… The mother’s attitude of ownership over her daughter is instilled at her birth, and this attitude is absolute from the mother’s point of view: “I gave birth to you, so, you belong to me.” This often happens in cases when the mother is unhappy and the daughter becomes a hostage of her mother’s failures: this “careful” mom controls her daughter’s private life, chooses her friends, dictates to her the norms of behavior… That’s why it is doubtful whether the girl in these situation will ever be self-confident and independent. And comical questions like: “Who do you love more: your husband or me?” may become a reality.

Manipulation

There was an interesting case: a mother was paralyzed for 20 years and her daughter took care of her, not retreating a step. She never married. But then suddenly, the mother was admitted to a hospital and the daughter couldn’t be with her mom for some time. And soon after, miraculously, the patient simply got up! Of course, it’s not as though she had been pretending, she just didn’t want to be apart from her daughter on an instinctual level, so she was ready to sacrifice her own health for the sake of her girl. And strangely this almost vain and senseless unwillingness to let go produced an inexplicable medical miracle.

Egoism

Sometimes it happens vice versa: a daughter doesn’t let her mother have her own private life, she is jealous of men, puts obstacles in the way of her mother’s marriage, showing by her behavior that the mother belongs only to her. It often occurs in a family where the daughter is the center of the universe, when she feels that she is the reason for her mother’s existence. Such a model was commonplace about 50 years ago, when raising a child was considered to be the only goal of the woman’s life.

Exploitation

This behavior is much like the fairy tale of Cinderella: a daughter always has to do something, “don’t sit on your hands, you’d better go and do the dishes, water the flowers, do something…” The motive for the exploitation is reasonable: the daughter must be able to do the household chores. But on the other hand, expectations should be within reasonable limits, as there is a great likelihood that the mother