Daughters and Mothers

While it is a given that daughters yearn for love from their fathers, they are no less interested in reinforcing intimacy with their mothers since their mothers are of their own gender. The identification with her mother is due to a daughter’s need to model herself after her.

Certain traditional understandings and social preconceptions can mislead people to think with antiquated maxims such as, “A son is a son till he takes him a wife, a daughter is a daughter all of her life.” While a child’s duties over the course of their life may affect how closely involved in their parents’ lives they can continue to be after marriage, their personal dedication and emotional attachment will be influenced by their character and the bonding they experience with their parents in their early childhood. So in light of this, is it better to have a boy or a girl? Of course, there is no correct answer for this. Our preferences are related to our own experiences and views. However, when we convey our reality and opinions to others, we influence and direct them.

Of course, it is unthinkable for a parent to resent their children because of their gender or build emotional walls to keep them out of their lives, for a parent should love their children unconditionally. Yet, daughters traditionally tend to have a special and even privileged spot in the eyes of their families: as a nurse, loyal companion, or loving caregiver—especially when streaks of gray begin to show as the parents advance in years and roles are reversed.

Between two polar opposites

Mothers with poorly-managed attitudes toward their daughters can be placed under two categories. These mothers can either care for their daughters too much and overwhelm them with their authority, underestimate and undervalue them like temporary guests, or do both at different times.  Even though some may come to regret their choices in how they handled their relationships with their daughters, by that point, it may be too late. Meanwhile, there are also those who hold a cautious approach toward their daughters, thinking that they will have no one but them to care for them when they grow old.

The sense of responsibility that comes with having a child must not be misplaced with the expectation that they will care for us in our times of need. If we predicate our thoughts on such a basis, we will have selfishly prioritized our personal interests. A parent’s love should be unconditional.

While it is a given that daughters yearn for love from their fathers, they are no less interested in strengthening their ties with their mothers since they are of their own gender. The identification with her mother is due to a daughter’s need to model herself after her. This psychological phenomenon, which occurs through various stages of imitation and identification, is a fundamental process that shapes a daughter’s identity. That is to say, a healthy spiritual bond between a mother and a daughter positively shapes the kind of person the daughter will be. A self-confident mother might impart her confidence to her daughter and support her in her character development journey.

Sons on their mothers’ side, daughters on their fathers’

The nature of communication between spouses determines a daughter’s relationship with her mother on both ends of the spectrum. During conflictual situations within the family, the sons regularly take a defensive stance in favor of their mothers. In contrast, the daughters generally take a stance on the other side due to partiality toward their fathers. In such a case, a daughter experiences deep inner conflicts between her mother, with whom she identifies herself on one side, and her much-loved father on the other. However, many daughters will be inclined toward their fathers’ side no matter what their mothers do. There isn’t much that can be said or done in this case since this will almost always hold true due to an emotional bias towards their fathers.

“What is the harm in this being so?” one might ask. Unfortunately, some women with troubled souls who feel uncomfortable with such natural tendencies blame their daughter for ungratefulness and come between the father and daughter relationship; the idea of her backbiting her husband at every opportunity to turn her daughter against him is not all that unusual in that case. Such a toxic environment and agitational attitude prepare the girls for an inevitable war, not for life and marriage. In years to come, these neurotic women maintain their hysterical battles by opening up an additional front against their sons-in-law. The most sensible option to avoid potential complications is to formulate a trilateral communication instead of creating a bilateral tug of war that always pits one side against the other. Doing so will allow the family to achieve a healthy means of conveying their thoughts and emotions while heading off the possibility of misunderstandings and resentments.

Mother-daughter conflict at home

Admittedly, mother-daughter conflicts can be prevalent during housework and responsibility sharing. Mothers can be both happy about and uncomfortable with their daughters representing them. They find genetic pretexts for their character flaws or ineptness with arguments such as “she has taken after her grandmother or aunt.”

Another important stumbling block in the way of a daughter forming her own identity and learning her life’s role is the “dominant mother.” How hard it is to be the daughter of such a person who does everything by herself and seeks appreciation, taking strange pleasure in oppressing her daughter by proving her incapable of performing tasks to her exacting standards. One must immediately carry out her commands, not take one step out of line, follow everything she has taught to the letter, and not idle around, etc. Ultimately, she angrily takes over the work while blaming her daughter for doing an awkward and clumsy job and hurling insults at her. The houses where such hurtful relationships are experienced daily can be common. And so the conflict deepens and a final nudge, possibly in the form of a stinging remark, sends them over the edge. They are no longer two friends but cautious opponents walking on eggshells. As sons are not typically interested in housework nor are they expected to participate as much as the daughters in most families, they often get on well with their mothers. So, the daughters naturally envy this smooth-sailing arrangement that somehow doesn’t seem to be on the table for them.

In such cases, the daughters accuse their mothers of discrimination and of loving their sons more. This leads to an ever-increasing number of girls who want to get out of such an environment as soon as possible but do not wish to even consider marriage.

When such mothers begin to urge the fathers to train their daughters and scold them, countless wild possibilities, including running away, begin to rush through the daughters’ minds. If followed through, it makes for a series of unfortunate events that we are all too used to seeing in the news. A despondent young lady who has lost all hope of finding happiness is avenging the years she spent under her family’s thumb and punishing them by wasting herself on this path to self-destruction.

If the father is not caught up in one of the various forms of abuse or abusive behavior at home, meaning if he is not an alcoholic, aggressive, and so on, the daughter’s problem is likely with her mother. The first reactions of the young girls overwhelmed by family problems are signals to their parents. These signs foreshadow disaster scenarios that are likely to follow, such as a rebellion against their parents, embracing contradictory, radical ideals and values, smoking in secret, locking themselves in their rooms, and returning late from school with a medley of excuses. It is an everyday occurrence that innocent young girls who reveal their secrets to the wrong types of people, who are neither equipped with the qualities necessary to sort out their troubles nor interested in helping them, are often taken advantage of by them. Since most girls are emotional by nature, they can be more susceptible to deception. This can lead to abuse, especially in the early teenage years when their minds are impressionable to outside influences that might offer them a seemingly fresh take on life that doesn’t force their parents’ life lessons on them.

Educated girls and housework

There are also mothers who don’t let their daughters do work around the house to avoid affecting their child’s schoolwork. However, when the occasion arises, they still complain that their daughters are hardly ever present and accounted for to help them as they are preoccupied with their studies. This is a fundamentally flawed mode of thinking as it defeats the purpose of getting an education, which is to give individuals basic skills and a profession to let them be self-sufficient and succeed in life. However, one cannot say that a young lady, who listens to music with headphones or flips through her social media accounts for hours in her room, has no time to learn how to cook and clean. When considered from that point of view, many young girls are pitifully unprepared for life. This is because their mothers think they are doing them a favor by letting their school duties be the perfect excuse for not learning essential life skills. They believe their daughters can fix everything when they have a salary in the future.

Many women are productive and diligent and willingly bear the burden of preparing a dozen different kinds of treats for guests coming for tea. So, shouldn’t our young girls have additional qualifications apart from attending school, soaking up the curriculum, and acing their exams? It is an all too common experience nowadays among newlyweds who have recently graduated and landed jobs in prestigious companies with their shiny, brand-new degrees. The wives might have no idea how to whip up a batch of chicken fajitas or a steaming pot of veggie stew, or they might lack the knowledge on how to fold sheets and duvet covers, swearing that they could fit in much smaller spaces in their mothers’ wardrobes.

Who can appreciate a true gem?

Some women quickly get bored of marriage and its responsibilities and dump all the heavy workload, including childcare, on their first daughters. By doing so, they think they are teaching their daughters through experience and preparing them for life. I say with all seriousness that those girls get to enjoy neither their childhood nor their youth. They are too exhausted and crushed under the inordinate weight of the responsibilities handed off to them to grow and develop as individuals.

On the other hand, there are mothers who think they are the best authority to refer to in all matters in life and try to manage their daughters’ homes and marriages. They mean well and believe they are just giving advice, but their controlling attitude can be intrusive and invasive, making things worse.

If you take your children seriously, do not think about how to handle their departure or how to insert yourselves more deeply than you should into their marriages. As an old saying goes: “When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”

As mothers, some of us let our fledglings take flight from the nest too soon. Thinking that we have raised strong daughters, we leave our young ones, who are still going through character development, in the hands of their friends. Without properly ingraining the Islamic values we hold dear and sacred in their personalities, we cannot even begin to steer them in the right direction, much less have control over who they spend time with and what they do outside the house, which apps they use, and who they talk to on the internet or how they use it. The only path that comes even close to ensuring that our daughters can safely navigate the storms that can slam them against the rocks and sink them is by educating them on the principles they need to stand firm against such harmful influences.

We have significant problems passing our values and virtues to new generations. We fail at times. While we expect them to be on par with our expected norms, even if not exact copies of us, we shouldn’t be shocked to find out that the youth, in general, is in dire straits. They might be in disgraceful situations and will in no way be on course to elevate themselves from rock bottom without the proper guidance, particularly lessons in the moral virtues of Islam. Granted, we may be praying for their well-being with an abundance of supplications to Allah, but are we making the necessary effort to support them?

Reading alone will not solve our problems. Ignoring the issues we read about leads to severe danger. Every paragraph we read should prompt us to think about and evaluate our family. The first step in producing a solution is to define the problem clearly. Our age is the age of solitude, so it is necessary to pay sufficient attention to human relations. Only someone who knows what a true gem is and doesn’t cast it aside after a brief glance understands its actual value. Our little girls are innocent, immaculate creations of Allah. We have been entrusted with preserving them precisely as they are meant to be, protecting them from sudden undercurrents as well as raging waves, and nurturing them to help them grow into mentally, socially, and spiritually healthy Muslims. Such a trust is well worth our ardent dedication as the hadiths on this topic put so compellingly.

Ayşe İzci