by Alejandra Jiménez Máñez
‘Conversations with People I Love’ emerged as an idea, a proposition to use active listening as a method of feminist reflection and analysis. In times in which everything seems to be fast-paced, in which scrolling through 6-second-long videos is enough to keep us entertained and information is one click away, listening has become one of the hardest skills to master. Through this series of columns, my objective is to come to terms with my listening skills as part of my daily feminist practices and activism. Through multiple talks with people I love -that is: people in my life who I take in, look up to, and admire dearly- I plan to retroactively reflect upon multiple topics raised in conversation through the prism of feminist and other social, critical theories in an attempt to make sense of the academic vernacular through my (our) own experience(s).
When I was younger I had big dreams of becoming just about anything: a literature teacher, a forensic doctor, an astrophysicist, an interior designer, a writer. Yet, there is one thing I dreaded becoming: my mom.
I have a complex relationship with my mother. Years and years of comparisons and an early emancipation made our bond completely devoid of any complicity or interest. It was not until my parents got divorced that our relationship got better. Years after their separation, I find myself wondering why I have always hated her so much.
Throughout my childhood, my brother and I spent much time with my father since he was retired. Although my relationship with my father was not the greatest, he made sure to provide the type of validation I sought as a kid. My mother worked full time, therefore, he was our primary caretaker, taking my brother and I to the doctor or to do the weekly grocery shopping. We spent much more time with him (in retrospect, more than I would have liked) so I just subscribed to everything he said as the ‘absolute truth’. Together with my mother’s absenteeism, it all led to a cocktail of bitterness and hostility towards her.
To be honest, I always envied those girls in my class who had a great bond with their mothers. Sometimes I would live vicariously through them how my relationship could have been with my own. When I still lived in my hometown (and mind you, I left at age 15), people used to tell me how much I looked like my mother. I despised it, but deep down I knew I could not do much about how my body displayed my inherited DNA. However, I found it even worse when they told me I acted like her. Nothing can ever compare to the feeling of rage that ran through my body as I grasped onto those words. I was set on becoming anything but my mother.
The divorce took me by surprise. After their separation, I began to speak more to both my parents. While my father always ranted about the bad in my mother, she spoke of her relationship with him as a rather beautiful stage in her life. She had moved on swiftly from the situation, finding a new partner, and I was both saddened and interested in how that could have happened so fast. During these conversations, I realized that my mother was not even that bad. Rather, my demonizing mental image of her had been carefully manufactured by my father’s demeaning comments on her behavior, her attitudes and her looks.
Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate (Burstow, 1992, p. 12).
This quote stuck with me for the longest time because it took me back to my very own past. I was in shock to discover I had perceived my mother through my father’s eyes all along. He thought of her as a lesser being, and of me as an improved version of her genes.
The intricacies of the mother-daughter relationship are a tale as old as time. Some of us might be familiar with Freud’s Electra Complex, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott or the Apple song by Charli XCX. In short: they all speak of troubled mother-daughter relationships; but why is it that this bond is only relevant when it is tainted? I find some reassurance in Marcia Westkott’s work. In an essay from 1978, she writes “to try to understand the mother-daughter relationship apart from [the world of the father] is to abstract it from the patriarchal society in which it is embedded” (p. 16).
Through her comprehensive analysis of Adrienne Rich and Nancy Chodorow’s research on motherhood, Westkott (1978) paints the greater picture of the mother-daughter relationship by interweaving psychoanalytical principles and societal expectations of women and, more specifically, mothers. Although big words are used in this text, the conveyed message is quite simple: in a heteronormative family, even if the mother is made responsible for the children’s (successful/unsuccessful) upbringing, she is still subjected to the father’s rule.
By pushing the mother into the spotlight, the family dynamics shift. It is the mother who must be present, who must be attentive to her children’s needs. It is motherhood that we deem as indispensable: just another way patriarchy strikes.
We have been educated to see in every mother the «self-sacrificing mother who gives everything for her children to be the best mother in the world» and we do not see that beyond the mother is a person, who also has aspirations, ambitions, problems, and a personal, social and love life (César del Amo, 2019).
It is not only the father who is at fault. We, as children, are also to blame: we ask for and demand, and when we are done, we demand a bit more. Our mothers become the medium by which we are able to navigate life: we take their time, we exploit their (material and intangible) resources, we make ourselves dependent on their lives, and we still take them for granted. To be taken for granted means to cease to exist: you stop being a person to become just another utensil that others use to make their lives easier. Taking a break from this inevitably comes with the “bad mom” label attached to it.
As the daughter grows up, she also inherits some of the responsibilities the mother has in order to become her substitute once the mother is no longer able to nurture the family. “This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate” (Burstow, 1992, p. 12). Right after the divorce, I had suddenly become the “woman” of the household on my father’s side of the family. I was now expected to take care of my brother and father. But there was an issue: I was already the absent, emancipated child.
For context, I flew from the nest at age 15 because I obtained a scholarship to study abroad and never returned. During those years I was described as “the golden child”, the family’s pride who pursued her dreams and left for a better future. It was after my first year in university that my parents separated. As my plane landed for summer break, they informed me that my mom had left the household and I was stuck with my 77-year old father and 16-year old brother for the summer. That was the summer I finally decided I would never have children. When holidays ended, I told them I had no plans of returning. I went from being the family’s newest motherly figure to being the “bad daughter”. It was a resentment I was not acquainted with, especially coming from my father.
After leaving under my father’s disapproving gaze, I found comfort in my relationship with my mother. I had long conversations with her, in which she confessed she had a hard time leaving my father. She thought she owed us, my brother and I, a secure family environment to grow up in. She would have left him earlier, but she felt she couldn’t because of us. I felt incredibly awful: I had spent years despising a woman who had given up her freedom to do what she pleased for me. I had wronged her for so long and all she tried to do was to meet the expectations of being a good mother.
I guess the apple don’t fall far from the tree/’Cause I’ve been looking at you so long/Now I only see me (Apple, Charli XCX, 2024).
As I continued to meet the woman behind her, I experienced some cathartic moments during which I realized that I am, in fact, my mother’s daughter. Even though I had always tried to grow up different from her, I now find her reflection in everything I do. By accepting my mother as part of who I am today, I have also been able to abstract her from the ‘mother’ role, acknowledging her existence as a complete human being, not just as the part of her identity associated with me. By “humanizing” my mother, I have come to understand her issues, which are my issues as well.
By embracing the mother’s fate as one’s own fate, we can begin our feminist healing journey. It is never too late. The other day, as we were having dinner together with some family friends, someone said “you have a great heart.” I found myself pronouncing a set of words I never would have imagined I would say out loud: “I got it from my mom.” It was a scary realization, because to admit that also meant admitting to myself that, by avoiding her influence, I had also been running away from all the good in her. I wonder if this is also how the feminist journey works: acting out of fear and stepping into the unknown to disrupt the patterns embedded in our imaginaries.
References
Burstow, Bonnie. (1992). Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence. SAGE Publications: Newbury Park, California, p. 12.
César del Amo, Iris. (2019). Cuidados de una hija a una madre. Pikara Magazine, retrieved from: https://www.pikaramagazine.com/2019/04/cuidados-de-una-hija-a-una-madre/
Charli XCX. (2024). Apple [Song]. Atlantic Records: Sony Music Publishing.
Westkott, Marcia. (1978). Mothers and Daughters in the World of the Father. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 3(2), 16–21. https://doi.org/10.2307/3346393
Alejandra Jiménez is a gender and sexuality expert, recent graduate of the M.A. in Women, Gender and Citizenship Studies by University of Barcelona with a background in Psychology and Law. Throughout her series of columns titled Conversations with People I Love, she hopes to embrace theory as part of her everyday life.
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