Why Do Girls Hate Their Mother

THE WOMAN THAT BIRTH ME

THE WOMAN I LOATHE MOST

The relationship between girls and their mothers has always been so much more complex. 

Lady Bird with her mother

 I am not sure though, if this is because it is in our nature to bicker, or   has the glamorization of this 
 "conflict" in literature and the media water down the connection between girls and their mothers. Before even touching on this subject,   we have to understand and acknowledge that the world has always entertained itself by placing women against each other. They imprisoned us and told us the other woman was the reason for our imprisonment. They have convinced us that it is a competition and whoever wins makes it out alive, and we all want a chance to see the light again. So they would bring us to a podium, a thousand lights shining onto one spot, and release us from our cages. We would face one another for the first time and the fight starts. Cameras are clicking,  the audience is laughing, the circus is profiting. Everyone seems to be getting something out of this, except for women. 

 In a mother-and-daughter relationship context, the middle man is most surely your father or the male presence of the house. He would be the one watering and taking care of the misogyny seeded into you from birth, passed down from your mother. Your father would be the one whispering lullabies of hatred into your ears. 

 At the age of 6, you will be convinced that your mother is a monster in all the disasters and disaster at sets foot into your home. At the age of 8, you will start lashing out at your mother, thinking of her as ugly and fat and a lazy pig.  At the age of 12, you get your first period, and your mother silently hands you a pad as you look for your father. At the age of 15, you completely stop talking to your mother. You see her as toxic and misogynistic in the way she talks about your body, degrading you to merely a pig. 

At the age of 18, you leave for college and enter womanhood. 

At the age of 25, you become your mother, and you don't know what to do. 

"Often father and daugther look down on the mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not as bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daugther from the mother's fate."

        Bonnie Burstow, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence 

Are we raised to seek validation from men? Is that why we come to our father and nod our heads against the rhyming of his sexism, just for that satisfaction that we are more validated by a man than our mother is. 

This is not one-sided, however, because our mother was also fed the same rhetoric by her dad, that there is always a constant need to compete and bring other women down for us to move up. She is angry at you because that is all she knows how to do. 

The complexity of this relationship, therefore, is deeply rooted in misogyny and centuries of generational trauma. Your mother did not get along with her mother. Your grandmother did not have a good relationship with her mother, and the cycle continues on and on and on. It is not these women's fault though, that this is happening. And by understanding this cycle of generational trauma we can empathize with our mothers, understanding what she has gone through. 

This is the first step to breaking the cycle. 

And the next time your father makes a misogynistic remark about your mother to you, stop and think for a second before you nod your head before you agree if you are actively participating in nurturing the cycle of generational trauma, and whether or not the flower of misogyny is being carefully watered. 

xoxo, Yours Truly