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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (April 7, 1963)
41 Why Mothers and Teen-Age Daughters Fight Quarrels are normal at this stage but there are ways of lessening the sting and keeping the hurts from becoming lasting ones By DOMINICK A. BARBARA, M.D. with Flora Rheta Schreiber "-r other, I'd rattW do it myself!" 1VL laments the teen-age daughter. And the mother replies, "But I only want to be helpful, dear." Scenes like this occur in every home where there are mothers and teen-age daughters. It is part of normal growing pains for mother as well as for daughter. Daughter must grow up and break away gracefully; mother must grow up, with equal grace, by allowing her to do so. But quarreling between them is their passport to declaring their independence of each other, and it is more usual during the difficult teens than it was when daughter was younger or will be after she enters her twenties. How can these teen-year quarrels be dimin ished or avoided? It takes effort and understand ing on both sides. Mothers should stop being perfectionists with imperfect children. Children aren't perfect, and mothers should accept daugh ters as they are instead of trying to make them over into what they would like them to be. They should stop listening to daughters through ears that judge in terms of the mother's past rather than of the daughter's present. Daughters, for their part, should stop assum ing that mother is always wrong just because she is a mother. A teen-age girl is justified in declaring her independence only when she has first proved her self-reliance. Quarreling will be lessened, too, if mothers and daughters, despite their clashes over specific issues, try to maintain the bond of affection and understanding they have built through the years. That bond can and should survive the break ing of the dependence between them. A common cause of quarreling is that mother and daughter are too much alike. I know a mother and daughter who are equally extroverted. As a result, they compete for center stage, and their battles are the kind of personality clash that would take place between any two women of such similar temperament Their weapon against quarreling is humor. "Oh, Mother, you're on" or "Yes, my darling daughter, it's your move" goes far toward nipping the verbal explosion that might otherwise take place when they vie with each other. Another MOTHER admits that most of the quar jt. rels she has with her daughter arise from the fact that they are so different. She says, "Amy makes me ashamed of what I was at her age ; she has a mind of her own, and I was just a carbon copy of my mother." This pair should shout, "Vive la difference!" Instead of brooding that her daughter has a mind of her own, this mother should be proud of her and of herself for having allowed her daughter to be a free spirit. Other mothers trigger quarrels by trying to make their daughters "everything that I myself was not." They invite rebellion by overcrowding their daughters' lives with "you shoulds" and "you oughts." Ironically, when these daughters become "everything" that the mother was not, the mother often resents it. A woman of very little education, who made great financial sacri fices to send her daughter to college, later re sented the daughter for having more cultivated manners than she had. Once, when the girl de clined an invitation to dinner at an aunt's house, this mother flared, "Oh, your relatives aren't good enough for you. My fine lady wants to be invited to Park Avenue!" Quarrels are normal when they take place in an atmosphere of mutual respect, with both parties seeking agreement, not deadlock. Quar rels become abnormal when they are incessant and when they are used as a stage on which to act out one's emotional problems. Suck quarrels take place when a mother re sents her daughter's quite natural affinity to her father. One mother, for instance, deliberately provoked quarrels by refusing to play tennis with her daughter or husband although she would play eagerly with their friends. But when father and daughter played together, she accused the daughter of "monopolizing Daddy." One daughter provoked quarrels by refusing to break her dependency on her mother even though the mother tried to make her do so. This 16-year-old girl refused to go to the beauty parlor because she wanted mother to set her hair. She wouldn't accept a date until her mother had ap proved. But the mother wanted her to make her own decisions. Quarrels ensued. There are no shortcuts to surmounting this difficult period. Some quarrels reflect deep-rooted difficulties and require the help of a trained psy chologist or psychiatrist. The total absence of any quarreling may be equally neurotic and may also call for professional help, for it is as abnor mal never to quarrel as to do so all the time. But fortunately the only "doctoring" that most quarrels between mothers and their teen-age daughters require is a little common sense. COVER: As the 1963 baseball season opens this week, handsome Detroit Tiger Rocky Cola vito is ready for the pennant chase, and his adoring fans are ready to cheer him on (see p. 7). Photograph by Oztie Sweet. Family Weekly I April 7. 1MI HONAIO $. DAVIDOW PrreidoeU PMeker urn c. otrrrus vim f.,.ii PATIICK i. O'tOUtKI o. .!.. rirum MOtTON RANK Director of PvbliMlirr Rrlat Sond all odvortlting. communication! to Fomitv Wcoklv 153 N. Michigan Atro., Chicago 1, III. otolyn Abrouoya. Anion Eid.ll. Hoi London, lock ,-.; Poor J. O-oinhiluc, Hollywood !U, EAMIIY MBIT MAOAZMt, INC, 1JJ N. Mkhioon A.. CWcooo I. III. All rlaht I mi .ail. fftNtrr v. mm Editor. ,,,-cn.r; EN KAITMAH Ecocatira Editor lotnrr nrzoiMON Iugiv Editor rmiilf DYKSTKA Art Director MILANII 0 PtOfT Food Editor AdoVvu oil communication about editorial foaturat to Family Wookly. 60 . 56th St.. Now York 22. N. Y.
