Remembering Mama Too Much

Out of the feminist closet comes a touchy, complex relationship

For Poet-Essayist Adrienne Rich, it is "the great unwritten story." Author Nancy Friday calls it "the last taboo," and Psychology Writer Lucy Freeman sees it as the feminist movement's "last liberation." The subject of these slightly breathless descriptions: the tangled, ambivalent and often hostile relationship between mothers and daughters.

Until recently, this touchy and complex relationship seemed almost an embarrassment to the women's movement. If it was discussed at all, it was done privately. Says Village Voice Women's Movement Observer Karen Durbin: "It's a painful topic that has been rattling around in women's consciousness-raising groups for years." Now, in a spate of popular writing, accompanied by some unsisterly mudslinging, the knotty mother-daughter relationship is finally emerging from the feminist closet.

The most successful and talked-about of the new books is Friday's My Mother/ My Self. Out of some 300 interviews as well as poignant glimpses of her own life, Friday has portrayed a pessimistic, almost Portnoy-in-reverse picture: it is so extraordinarily difficult for daughters to break their mothers' possessive bonds. Since its appearance in 1977, the book has sold 250,000 copies in hard-cover and an even more astonishing 2 million in paperback. A onetime editor and freelancer, Friday has become a favorite of the lecture circuit and TV talk shows.

But Friday is hardly alone. Such recent books as Freeman's Who Is Sylvia? and Signe Hammer's Daughters and Mothers, Mothers and Daughters also dwell on the maternostra theme, and still more of the genre are in the offing. Even Hollywood and television are exploiting mother-daughter tensions. Woody Allen's Interiors and Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata are based on such themes; CBS plans two dramatic specials, one of them starring Bette Davis, tentatively scheduled to be aired on Mother's Day.

One common refrain in all this is a basic psychological truth: girls have far more trouble liberating themselves from Mother than boys do. At about 18 months, all children go through a deep conflict between a comforting sense of oneness with Mother and a strong drive to seek independence. For boys the crucial emancipating step is easier; they know their destiny is to be different -like Father. Says New York Child Psychologist Louise Kaplan: "The girl can't pull away without seeming to reject the model of what she will become -a woman."

Women who never truly separate from their mothers are likely to re-create the mother-daughter antagonism in adult relationships. Freeman, in her confessional book, says that she repeatedly projected her mother problems onto the men in her life: "I was still trying to earn my mother's love -any way I could." Comments Cambridge Psychoanalyst Gregory Rochlin: "Many women know they are in a struggle but not that it's displaced from Mother onto men."

Hammer, a writer and lecturer, says in her book that "women tend to live through and in response to other people." One consequence, she says, is that,"a vicious cycle has developed in which women who were not encouraged to grow up raised daughters who are not encouraged to grow up either." Friday adds that as "the first and lasting model" for their daughters, mothers all too often pass on clinging, dependent attitudes, a fear of sex and an impoverished sense of self.

This position has outraged some feminists who think that the women's movement should focus on the abuses of male power rather than on what women do to each other. Says Feminist Author Judith Pildes Arcana: "The message is still the same -blame your mother, woman-negative." In her view, mother-daughter problems are really the result of the repressive roles forced on women by what she calls "patriarchial capitalism." Sociologist Pauline Bart has even accused Friday of trying to push her into a blame-Mother position during an interview for her book.

In her more scholarly The Reproduction of Mothering (University of California Press; $12.95), Nancy Chodorow occupies the middle ground. A sociologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, she agrees that a male-dominated society sets up mother-daughter conflicts, but she sees them in largely sociopsychological terms. By depicting motherhood as the most valuable state for a woman, she says, men are able to leave most parenting to women. This lets mothers dominate their children's emotional lives, and, as Chodorow explains, ensures the cycle's repetition: in what she calls the psychological "reproduction" of mothering, the daughter will try to solve her difficulties with Mother by having a child of her own. Late in life, there may even be a switch of roles, with Mama herself demanding mothering. For example, says Friday, Mother will ask: "How is it that you can't come see me on weekends when all I've ever done is be your mother?"

Chodorow says that fathers must take over half the parenting and raise daughters with a sense of self derived from both parents. Friday thinks that women must begin by speaking out about their ambivalence and anger. Says she: "If you allow yourself to express these feelings, the sky doesn't fall."

That advice may be too late for some women, including Friday. She and her husband have decided not to have children. She explains: "I still have these anxieties and doubts, and I don't want to pass them on to another generation.'' qed

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