Aging mothers and daughters: Relationship changes over time

Abstract

In the midst of health care crises involving older mothers and their adult daughters, health care professionals must attend to the significance of past roles and relationships of aging women. This article explores two concepts that influence aging mothers’ and daughters’ management of a health crisis. The two concepts, Internalizing Female Lineage and Evolving Matriarchs facilitate understanding of the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship over time. These concepts emerged from a grounded theory study of six older mothers who had experienced an acute hip fracture and their adult caregiving daughters. The purpose of this article is to highlight the experiences of these elderly mothers and their adult daughters prior to a health crisis. These aging mothers and daughters reported that understanding who they were as women, their history, their relationship, and sources of strength during health crisis was essential in order to understand their situations during a health crisis. Study findings are presented in the context of the literature about healthy mother-daughter relationship, mother-daughter transition to caregiving, and future direction of research related to multiple generations negotiating a health crisis.