What is Mother-Daughter Attachment?

Attachment theory is taught in psychology courses and counseling and psychotherapy training courses, because it teaches us about our human need to feel emotionally attached to our primary caregivers when we are young, and it connects the dots between our early attachment experiences and how we behave as adults in our relationships. Mother-daughter attachment expands our understanding of our attachment needs to the mother-daughter relationship, by making the complicated dynamics between mothers and daughters of all ages, as well as step mothers and daughters and mothers and daughters-in-law easy to understand.

Mother-daughter Attachment or Mother-Daughter Attachment Model TM grew out of my work over the past 25 years as a Mother-Daughter Relationship Therapist, listening to mothers and daughters of all ages and from different countries and cultures. The Mother-Daughter Attachment Model digs below the arguments mothers and daughters of all ages have, uncovering what is going on emotionally. The model explains what causes mothers and daughters to fight or suffer from attachment disruption, and why emotionally manipulative behaviors are common. The model explains why daughters can feel overly responsible for their mother’s needs and happiness, and why this dynamic is passed down from mother to daughter. The model explains why mothers and daughters engage in power struggles, feel hurt and misunderstood, and why mothers and daughters feel blamed and shamed for not being a ‘good enough’ mother or daughter. The model explains the flash points in the lifespan of the mother-daughter relationship, namely when the daughter is a teenager, getting married, having a baby, and when the mother is elderly and needing care, and what mothers and daughters need to do to navigate these flash points. And finally, the model teaches women and mental health professionals, how mothers and daughters can heal their conflict or attachment disruption and emotionally strengthen their bond.

Because the mother-daughter relationship tells the story of women’s lives, the Mother-Daughter Attachment Model provides insight into how women behave at work and in their other relationships. For example, the model explains why women sacrifice themselves and put their needs last. The model explains why women struggle to say what they need emotionally and advocate for themselves. The model explains why women are great at advocating for what their children need, their mother needs, and for what their friends need, but when it comes to saying ‘no’ for themselves and setting their own healthy boundaries, their voice and self-care evaporates. The model explains why girls and women police each other and undermine each other with jealousy and power struggles. The model explains why women believe that their success is due to luck, rather than their effort and talent, and why so many talented women and girls suffer from the imposter phenomena, feeling like a fake and a fraud. And finally, the model teaches women and mental health professionals how women can raise their entitlement to speak their truth and claim their rights and full equality.

One of the three solutions in the Mother-Daughter Attachment Model reveals that the mother-daughter relationship is a history lesson, highlighting that mothers and daughters do not relate in a cultural vacuum. This combines the generational understanding of women’s lives in Attachment Theory and Family Systems Theory with Feminist Counseling Theory, by connecting the dots between women’s generational experience with patriarchy and sexism, and how these experiences harm women’s emotional and mental well-being, women’s ability to advocate for themselves, and mother-daughter attachment.

For example, patriarchy has deliberately for generations silenced women’s voices and denied women the right to ask for what they need. The silencing of the language that asks women what they feel and need emotionally is directly linked to how women today struggle to know what they need emotionally and how they put their needs last. The silencing of what women feel and need, is also directly linked to mother-daughter conflict, because they do not know how to openly and honestly say what they feel and ask for what they need. And worse, patriarchy has taught women to believe that it is selfish to focus on yourself. Patriarchy teaches mothers to feel afraid of being a neglectful mother if they put their needs first. And this shaming also affects daughters, making them feel like they are a bad daughter if they don’t meet their mother’s needs. In the past, and still today, women are taught to believe that it is their duty and responsibility to meet other people’s needs before their own. This dynamic sets mothers and daughters up to fight over who gets to be heard and emotionally supported in their relationship. I write about this dynamic in great detail in “The Mother-Daughter Puzzle”.

The Mother-Daughter Attachment Model highlights the emotional and relationship consequences for being the “second sex” as Simone de Beauvoir called it. It puts women’s lives and the mother-daughter relationship firmly back into the social and cultural context that they belong. And it connects the dots between women’s generational experience with being silenced and emotionally neglected, and the behavioral and relationship consequences of these traumatic experiences.

This is the first of many blogs about Mother-Daughter Attachment that I will be writing in the coming months. In future blogs I will unpack more insights from the Mother-Daughter Attachment Model and share case studies of my work with mothers and daughters.

Reprinted with permission from my blog for the American Counseling Association.