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 ill
"jyyr other, I'd ratier 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
XjL rels she has with her daughter arise from the
fact that they are bo different She says, "Amy
makes me ashamed of what I was at her age; Bhe
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.
Such 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 196S 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 Oizie Sweet.
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