The Anger of Hope between Mothers and Daughters

Anger is a common and often misunderstood emotion between mothers and daughters. In my therapy work with mothers and daughters, I hear how deeply angry mothers and daughters of all ages can be with each other, how intensely hurt they feel when they don’t feel heard, understood, or valued. Mothers tell me that they feel taken-for-granted by their adult daughters. They want to be a source of help and support for their daughter with childcare for example, but they don’t want to end up feeling that helping-out is all they’re good for. Mothers want to feel emotionally connected to their daughter. They want to feel known by their daughter, important to their daughter, not just for the support they provide, but as a person. They want their daughter, regardless of how busy her life is, to show that her connection with her mother is important to her and deserving of time and attention. And I hear the same from daughters. Teenage and adult daughters tell me that their mother typically turns to them, rather than her husband, partner, other family members or friends when she has a problem. Daughters tell me that they feel taken-for-granted by their mother as her emotional helpmate, and that their mother treats listening and supporting as a one-way street, with the daughter doing more of the listening than the mother. And just like mothers, daughters tell me how desperate they are for a closer emotional connection with their mother, where they feel heard and they know who their mother is on the inside as a person, a woman, without being responsible for the mother’s emotional wellbeing.

John Bowlby’s observation about anger being “the anger of hope” (“Separation — Anxiety and Anger” Vol 2 of his “Attachment and Loss Trilogy”) corroborates the anger I witness between mothers and daughters. On the surface it may look like mothers and daughters fight about who’s right, but underneath these common arguments, lies a more accurate emotional truth about how mothers and daughters fight to be heard, understood, and known. I write in the “The Mother-Daughter Puzzle” how mother-daughter conflict can be understood by the following equation; “Being Heard + Understood = Feel loved”. For mothers and daughters, feeling loved requires feeling heard and understood. Understanding this key dynamic gives the anger between mothers and daughters a new voice.

The difficulty mothers and daughters have in voicing their anger to each other as “the anger of hope” that communicates; “I want you to listen”, “I want you to know me”, and “I want you to see me as my own person”, is that our patriarchal society does not provide women with a language that voices their anger. Patriarchy is afraid of angry women. It shames, criticizes, and pathologizes angry women as bad, unfeminine, dangerous, crazy, selfish, unlovable, because an angry woman demands change. And when anger is linked to being unfeminine and disliked, mothers and daughters learn to fear their healthy anger.

In “The Silent Female Scream” I write;

“What is the Silent Female Scream? We hear a silent female scream anywhere where females have silenced themselves out of fear. Fear of not being heard, of being criticized or ridiculed. Fear of invoking anger or disagreement they fear they cannot stand up against, fear of loss or rights, promotion, services, livelihood, or even life. The Silent Female Scream is present anytime a female is trying to speak her truth but isn’t heard, and then learns to believe that her words don’t matter anyhow. The Silent Female Scream is present when a female’s needs and feelings are not respected and instead are turned around as if it is her failing or her fault.”

For mothers and daughters to listen to each other’s “anger of hope”, they first need to decontaminate themselves from their patriarchal socialization that has taught them to be “nice” and fear their healthy, wise anger. Mothers and daughters need to recognize that being “nice” within patriarchy doesn’t mean showing normal human empathy and caring. It means being compliant, selfless, caring more about other people’s needs and feelings than their own, and silencing their female scream. And this kind of “niceness” creates harmful dynamics between mothers and daughters that stops them from speaking openly and honestly about what they feel and need.

Mothers and daughters desperately desire an emotionally honest relationship. They want, as the above equation reveals, to feel heard, understood, and known. Anger is an essential part of an honest relationship. It is an internal warning that something is wrong, that you’re not being heard or valued. When women are shamed for speaking their emotional truth, mothers and daughters are set up to fight over their respective silencing. And when we understand this dynamic, mother-daughter conflict becomes a mirror reflection of women’s generational experience with sexism. We recognize the wide-ranging harm that the silencing of women’s emotional truth inflicts on women and girls’ connection to themselves, mother-daughter attachment, and entitlement to advocate for themselves in all their relationships and at work.

Reprinted with permission from my American Counseling Association blog.