The drama of childhood, or why the relationship between mothers and daughters is so complicated

The voices of 13 women could represent millions. The 13 daughters could be everyone’s daughters.

Many of the writers present in Blanca Lacasa Carralón book — The Terrible Daughters — have turned their relationship with their mothers into literature: Vivian Gornick, Jeanette Winterson, Annie Ernaux, Amélie Nothomb. And then, there are the experts, including a philosopher, a sociologist, a psychologist, a historian and a political scientist.

Lacasa — a journalist and author of children’s books — dives into a topic that we could describe as an overarching theme: the disagreements that daughters have with their mothers. Why is it so difficult to talk about this, and — at the same time — why do we have such a need to do so? Why is the least-explored topic of motherhood precisely the one that all human beings have in common: being a child? And why is being a son so different from being a daughter? Lacasa has dedicated herself to researching this sweeping topic, which is present in almost everyone’s life. The result is a book that’s as painful as it is necessary and restorative.

Question. How did the idea for the book come about?

Answer. It’s a topic that I talk about a lot with friends. I realized that it’s a tricky issue, it raises many mixed feelings. When I read Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments (in which the author analyzes her very difficult relationship with her mother) I thought: how is it possible that a woman — a woman who isn’t from my generation, who has different values — has a story that seems so familiar to me?

Q. It became an obsession.

A. I wouldn’t say an obsession... or, maybe, yes. It’s a topic that’s very present: in conversations, in books, in movies. Writing the book was relatively quick, because I already had a lot in my head. Maybe Fierce Attachments was the trigger, telling me that there was something universal here. How is such a powerful emotional communion possible when we talk about our mothers?

Q. Did you set out to demonstrate something specific about the relationship between mothers and daughters?

A. I decided that there would be no black-and-white portrayals. I would escape from stereotypes: the bad daughter, the prodigal daughter… relationships aren’t like that, there are many gray areas.

Q. What surprised you the most when you were doing research?

A. It struck me that there were practically no non-fiction books about the relationship between mothers and daughters. The two books I found were anchored in psychoanalytic theories and — for me — they left out the environmental, cultural, religious and sociological criteria that greatly influence this matter.

Q. Let’s talk about the relationship between patriarchy, motherhood and daughterhood.

A. The construction of the figure of the mother that is pushed on us is clearly an ideal of patriarchy, which seeks to guarantee the institution of the family. In the book, I talk about this at length… but the fact that women identify only with a maternal identity means that men are at the top of the pyramid and women are at the bottom. It’s a question of privilege: we must maintain a structure in which, at the end of her life, the daughter becomes her mother’s mother. It’s a pattern that repeats itself… and this only happens in the case of women. Those of us who don’t have children — since we haven’t fulfilled that function — have to fulfill it by taking care of our mothers. We don’t escape.

Q. Some of your interviewees have gone to therapy. What happens to those who haven’t done that kind of reflective, self-analytical work?

A. I would like this book to help people who don’t have access to therapy to reflect. This is a topic that isn’t talked about. I want all those people — who don’t have the time or money to go to therapy — to know how this cultural pattern has affected them. I would like this book to lead to conversations — that’s already a path forward.

Q. Do you think it will strike a nerve?

A. The problem is the deification of the mother figure, not the book. In any case, I find it to be a conciliatory book: the person who gets upset with it hasn’t read it. It frees mothers from the yoke of perfection and helps us, as daughters, to understand them.

Q. There may be some mothers who don’t want to be de-idealized…

A. Motherhood has been — for some women — a vital driving force and an identity. When that function ends, they’re left empty. There’s a moment in which both mother and daughter are already two adults relating to each other. That’s when conflict occurs, when the mother has to change her role. She has to stop being a mother and she doesn’t know what to do with her [adult] daughter. We cannot perpetuate this system of women with a single identity.

Q. There’s a lot of anger in the book. But there are also women who have learned to heal.

A. Yes. Perhaps having spoken with those who have already gone through therapy will help others understand the idea when they read about it. I feel that, without the voices of the people who have been able to heal from the pain and anger, the book would be incomplete. I didn’t want it to be a very emotionally-charged dialogue — we’ve had lots of that already. We’ve been very caught up in endless arguments that then lead to blame. I wanted to leave all of that behind.

Q. How do you feel after having published this?

A. I think we have to do a lot of work to break the continuous cycle of anger and blame [with regards] to the mother. Talking about [the mother-daughter relationship] with someone — a therapist, or a friend — helps you find release. In silence — where there’s fear, resentment, hatred — there’s no healing.

We also need to talk with our mothers. They’re subjected to a very brutal kind of social judgement. You have to make a great effort to understand them, because the pressure they’ve been under is very strong. Fathers, on the other hand, haven’t experienced this. The judgement levied against mothers is very quick: what did you do wrong? You haven’t been present enough! For a generation in which the only function was to be good mothers, being judged is very harsh. It’s basically like telling them: the only thing you had to do, you haven’t done it well.

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