Being More Than a Daughter: Middle-Aged Women's Conceptions of Their Mothers

ABSTRACT

This study examined daughters' perceptions of continuities and changes in their relationships with their mothers in midlife. Forty-two middle-aged daughters (M = 49.4 years) described the ways in which their relationships with their mothers had remained the same and had changed in recent years. Open-ended responses were examined for the presence of content pertaining to: instrumental support, shifts in emotional patterns, and references to parent/child roles in the relationship. Daughters tended to describe discontinuities in terms of their mother's instrumental needs and her vulnerabilities, and to describe continuity in terms of the emotional qualities of the bond.