Adult Daughters' Relationships with Their Mothers and Reactions to the Mothers' Deaths

Abstract

This paper examines the reactions of 46 adult women to the deaths of their elderly mothers. Content analysis of interview and questionnaire data revealed that a daughter's ability to resolve the grief associated with her mother's death was significantly affected by the kind of relationship she had had with her mother when the mother was alive. Women whose grief reactions were more resolved were more likely to have had close, mutually accepting relationships with their mothers. Women whose reactions remained unresolved one to five years af~erth e death were more likely to have had relationships that were ambivalent, conflictual, or emotionally distant. These findings provide new evidence of the important influence that mother-daughter relationships have throughout women's lives.