It can be the best of relationships and the worst of relationships - often at the same time. The bond between a mother and daughter is one of the strongest, but it's also among the most complicated.
Interpretation
The mother-daughter relationship is deeply complex, embodying both love and conflict.
In this quote, Deborah Tannen emphasizes the dual nature of the mother-daughter relationship, highlighting that it can simultaneously evoke both affection and tension. This complexity often leads to a strong emotional bond that is layered with unique challenges, making the relationship one of the most profound yet complicated connections in life.
In practice
During a speech about family dynamics, one might use this quote to discuss the complexities of parent-child relationships.
Women as mothers grapple with corresponding contradictions. The adoration they feel for their grown daughters, mixed with the sense of responsibility for their well-being, can be overwhelming, matched only by the hurt they feel when their attempts to help or just stay connected are rebuffed or even excoriated as criticism or devilish interference.
Sister relationships span a huge range, from best friends to worst enemies. From 'I adore her; I talk to her five times a day' to 'I decided to cut her out of my life.' For most women, it's in between.
The trickiest thing about the double bind is that it operates imperceptibly, like shots from a gun with a silencer.
For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.
Mothers and daughters find in each other the source of great comfort but also of great pain. We talk to each other in better and worse ways than we talk to anyone else.
Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention - an argument culture.
If he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him?
Someone knocks at the door of an apartment to borrow salt or sugar, people run into each other in the elevator, and in this way become inscribed in the spectator's memory.
We think of faith as a source of comfort and understanding but find our expressions of faith sowing division; we believe ourselves to be a tolerant people even as racial, religious, and cultural tensions roil the landscape. And instead of resolving these tensions or mediating these conflicts, our politics fans them, exploits them,and drives us further apart.
Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack. Yet both have been hounded, harassed and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors.
How do you live with one person for 13 years and another for eight and find both as alien as strangers?
She was trying to say something else; she was trying to say that the inability to articulate what one feels in any satisfactory way is one of our enduring tragedies. It wouldn't have been much, and it wouldn't have been useful, but it would have been something that reflected the gravity and the sadness inside her. Instead, she had snapped at him for being a loser. It was as if she were trying to find a handhold on the boulder of her feelings, and had merely ended up with grit under her nails.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.