Cassandra Spratling
Detroit Free Press
May. 6 2008 6:26 pm
DETROIT - Let's get this straight right away.
Julie Halpert loves her mom dearly.
In fact, the writer - who's a mom herself - says there's no more precious relationship than that between an adult daughter and her mother.
It's just that, well, no one can make an adult daughter feel less like an adult than her mother.
And oftentimes a mother's best-intentioned suggestions, about everything from careers to cleaning to cooking, can sound like criticism to a daughter's sensitive ears.
Halpert knows.
And not just from personal experience.
Halpert, a freelance writer in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Deborah Carr, a sociologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, interviewed nearly 100 women - mothers and their adult daughters - all over the United States about what they conclude is a common concern: Mothers and daughters aren't getting along as well as they should and could.
They compiled their findings and suggestions for making the relationships better in a new book titled Making Up With Mom: Why Mothers and Daughters Disagree About Kids, Careers, and Casseroles and What to Do About It (Thomas Dunne Books, $24.95).
The idea began with Halpert, 42, who graduated from the University of Michigan in 1984. Marriage, a successful career as an environmental journalist and three kids later, she found herself at home one morning in the midst of the usual chaos of getting the kids fed and out the door.
Typical and manageable to her looked like a madhouse to her mom, Joanna Edelson, who happened to be visiting. Edelson offered a few comments, meant to be helpful but taken as hurtful, especially since they came coupled with that look.
"If you're a mother and you have a mother, you probably know the look. It's the doubting glance that makes you question your parenting skills and your competence as an adult," Halpert writes in the book's introduction.
Sometime after that experience, Halpert came across a reference to an academic study on mother-daughter relationships by Carr.
Halpert contacted Carr, and the two launched the research that culminated in Making Up With Mom.
Mothers and adult daughters across the country and across cultures and racial and socioeconomic lines all experience tension on matters related to relationships, housework, child rearing or careers.
The book describes numerous troublesome scenarios.
Mostly, it goes like this: Moms step in uninvited to offer comments or suggestions, daughters bristle, bark, sulk or say nothing, then moms feel shut out.
The things said and left unsaid can inhibit the growth of a strong bond, Halpert says.
"Fundamentally, the mother-daughter relationship is the closest bond there is," she says. "We look to our mothers for approval, and our mothers really want to be close to their daughters.
"Ultimately, we want our mothers to support us, but we find each other snipping at each other."
The root of some of the tension lies in the way women's lives have changed compared with their mothers, the researchers believe.
Most women today have many more choices than their mothers did - on everything from whether to have children at all to what careers to pursue. Instead of turning to their moms for advice - which used to be commonplace - today's moms turn to books, research or their peers.
"Often we feel they don't get it, and we shut them out," says Halpert, who's been a regular NPR contributor.
"Women today are navigating so much; our confidence is shaky. Even the most strong woman wants her mom to say, 'You're doing a good job.' "
