Mothers and Adult Daughters…Love and Controversy

This morning I watched some interviews with mothers and daughters openly talking about how their relationship changed when the daughters became mothers. These mothers and daughters were extremely close, but when grandchildren came into the picture, the relationship changed. The daughters wanted and needed their mothers to respect their choices in child-rearing. The grandmothers wanted to give their advice.

Listening to their stories helped me understand myself. My mom and I had a great relationship. We went shopping together, walked together, went to the movies together. When I became a mother, however, that close relationship created some conflict.

Mom had set ideas on how things should be done. She was my greatest cheerleader when I did things she approved of or encouraged–my writing and drawing efforts, my activities in drama club in high school, flying by myself to Arizona at the age of 18 to visit my only brother and his family, and my career change from banking to teaching. She and Dad thought teaching was one of the highest callings, probably just a shade below nursing. Mom had always wanted to be a nurse.

She wasn’t a cheerleader if she didn’t approve of the choice. Go to Europe with a well-chaperoned group following high school graduation? No way. The plane might go down over the ocean. Go to art school in Atlanta instead of college? No way. Atlanta was a dangerous city. Continue to live in my apartment after she and my dad moved to the town I was living? Of course not. It wasn’t proper for a young woman to live away from her parents if they lived in the same town. There was no question I would have to move in with them, even though it was 1979, not 1939.

When I became a mother, then, the unasked for advice, meant to be helpful, began to flow. I listened to some things and made my own choices in others, but listening to that advice was hard at times. “Better put him in bed with you tonight,” she told me and my husband on cold Christmas Day referring to our then six-month-old son. “The electricity might go off, and he’ll freeze to death.” No, I’m not kidding, she actually said that. Or, “I can’t believe you’re going off and leaving him,” she said when I took my five-year-old youngest son to my parents’ house for him to spend the night while I drove to Nashville to meet up with one of my best friends at the Opryland Hotel. “I never left you and Ronald.” It was Friday. I was going to be home on Saturday.

You get the idea. But as strange as these things sound and as annoying as they were, the good things outnumbered the bad. She and my mother-in-law insisted on keeping our boys so they didn’t have to go to daycare, which saved us a huge amount of money. The downside is it gave my mom more free rein to do her own thing as though our sons were hers.

We made it through without a rift. Sure, we had our moments, our hurt feelings, our spats. My mother was a loving, well-intentioned mother whose love I never doubted. If anything, her crime, if you can call it that, was loving too much. As her independent, ambitious, dreamy daughter, I often read her reservations and concerns as being a wing-clipper.

But maybe she was right in most things. Maybe she was right about me going to Atlanta alone. I have a feeling I would have been homesick. Maybe she was right about not going to Europe. If I’d gone to Europe instead of flying to Arizona, my life would have turned out very differently because I wouldn’t have made the choices I did. And no doubt she was right about the times I resisted taking the boys to do the doctor because I thought whatever they had would run its course when they needed antibiotics.

Please understand I loved my mother very much while still recognizing her flaws. And I guarantee my sons look at me and see my own flaws, the ones I don’t see in myself. I’ve done things over the years that have embarrassed them or made them think I’m too old-fashioned or set in my ways or whatever, but I’ve tried to avoid interfering. I haven’t always succeeded, but I continue to try.

The women this morning described how they still have a strong bond and relationship, and my mom and I stayed close until she died. Sure, I could have been one of those daughters who separated myself from her, full of resentment over her perceived bossiness, but how could I do that? My mother loved me in a way no one else ever would or ever could. To dishonor her by shutting her out of my life was never an option.

I am not meaning to dishonor her now. She and I had these conversations, and I know in her mind she meant well and wanted only the best. She had a strong sense of family commitment and rook care of her own mother the last three years of her life, even though their own relationship was a little bumpy at times. Mom knew the bonds of family were stronger then the rifts that sometimes occur.

If your mom is still alive and your relationship is sometimes a struggle, I ‘d encourage you to find a way to overlook what’s bothering you or have a conversation to resolve your differences. If you and your mom have a great relationship, count your blessings. From what I saw this morning, most adult daughters and their moms travel a bumpier path.

Above all, if your mom is alive, honor her this Sunday. When my husband’s mother was dying, she told him, “There’s nothing like a mother’s love.”

I know that statement is not always true, but if you’re one of the fortunate ones who has/had a loving mother, no matter what her flaws, realize how fortunate you are and recognize your own shortcomings. Your mistakes as a mother don’t mean you don’t love your child. It just means you’re human.

Thank you, Mom, for loving your children and grandchildren so ferociously, no one and nothing could ever kill that love, no matter how we treated you, no matter what happened.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you Moms.