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Home › Articles › Parenting Strategies › Moms and Daughters

Moms and Daughters

Redefining the Relationship in the Preteen Years

By Tara Swords

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Ali Pohn McCarthy recounts a recent episode with her adolescent daughter, Lexie, just one battle in a small war that wages daily in her household.

"We were going shopping for school clothes last weekend," Ali says. "[My daughter] knew that we had plans to do that, and I was telling her what she needed to have done before we went. She put her hands over her ears. I said, 'Forget it – we're not going.'"

Mothers of preteenage and teenage girls the world over experience the same thing to varying degrees: the struggle of young daughters to separate themselves from their mothers. It manifests itself in rolling eyes, stomping feet, backtalk and flat-out defiance. This common phenomenon leaves moms groping in the dark for a way to re-connect, while their annoyed daughters barrel ahead into young adulthood as though they want no ties to the little girls they once were.

The Search For Self

Most children – both girls and boys – typically distance themselves from their parents around the time they enter adolescence. But there seems to be something special about same-sex parent-child relationships, says University of Illinois psychology professor Karen Rudolph, adding that daughters are more often expected to be like their mothers than like their fathers.

Lexie, now 13, was about 11 years old when her quest to carve out an identity started leading to routine clashes with her mother. But becoming an individual can seem difficult when you attend the same school your mother attended and even taught at. In fact, one of Lexie's teachers was her mother's teacher years ago.

"In many ways, she can't get away from me," Ali says.

Nor does she really want to, says Rudolph.

"There is more stress, more conflict in terms of kids individuating themselves from families," Rudolph says. "People sometimes interpret that to mean that families become less important and peers become more important. But the fact that girls experience more conflict doesn't make [their family] relationships less important."


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