Daughter Bond Research Articles

The meaning of body and movement within the emotional world of a new mother: a case study

This article examines the roles of body and movement in the structuring of the mother’s perceptions of her relationship with her daughter and her inner world during the first postpartum year. Autoethnographic paradigm was used. The article depicts the process in which researcher-mother gathered movement materials using concepts of the Authentic Movement discipline; and writing materials gathered via associative and reflective writing. The focussing was given to internal factors, such as inner emotional dynamics of a mother that may affect motherhood experience. Materials were analysed using a qualitative method. The findings are described herein. The analysis of the materials reveals fundamental functions of the researcher-mother’s body: first, the described process aids in coping with stress and anxiety. Second, embodiment serves as a tool for forming a maternal caregiving style. Third, described process allows the experience of strengthening the mother–daughter bond. These findings are explained using various psychoanalytical theories and neurophysiological mechanisms.

Chef Yasmina and the Potato Panic by Wauter Mannaert

Reviewed by: Chef Yasmina and the Potato Panic by Wauter Mannaert Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Mannaert, Wauter Chef Yasmina and the Potato Panic; written and illus. by Wauter Mannaert. First Second, 2021 [160p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781250622044 $22.99 Paper ed. ISBN 9781250622051 $14.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 5-7 Aspiring chef Yasmina loves nothing more than whipping up delicious meals for her single father, creating dishes from scratch and using veggies from her community garden. Unfortunately, that garden is ripped up by a shady corporation, and when the grocery store proves to be too expensive, Yasmina sneaks onto the rooftop garden of her secretive neighbor. There's a whole lot more growing there than simple greens and beans, however, and it may all be connected to a new type of potato (grown by the aforementioned shady corporation) that's making people literally howl for more and generally behave like animals. The goofy B-movie plotline of this graphic novel leavens what could have been a didactic message about mindless consumerism with a Scooby-Doo–like flair, and Yasmina's tenacity and [End Page 180] ingenuity in rescuing her friends and neighbors from potatoes gone very, very bad makes her easy to cheer for. Traditional paneling is foregone for open borders and fluid scenes, giving the book a sense of movement while easily guiding the eye, and savvy viewers will either initially catch or double back to the various hints dropped throughout the scenes. Yasmina's creations look absolutely scrumptious and it's clear that dad and daughter bond over her meals, making this ultimately a celebration of the art and heart of cooking; readers will just wish that Yasmina would share a (potato-free) recipe or two. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Revisiting Demeter and Persephone Paper B - Revisiting Persephone: towards reconceptualising female subjectivity and erotics

In Paper B, we focus on the figure of Persephone in the myth, as the daughter, but also, as “the silent object of desire” of male imagination. We question whether Persephone’s forceful abduction is a representation of the emergence of female sexuality, as it has often been argued within psychoanalysis (Chodorow, 2012), or in fact, a symbolic representation of female subordination and objectification. We discuss a clinical vignette illustrating how a mother who is unable to face up to her own and her daughter’s vulnerability, unlike Demeter, can result in a daughter who is unable to protect herself from violation, and who cannot find her way up from the underworld so to speak. We then discuss the film, The Handmaiden, where the question of mother–daughter separation is a central theme. We argue that a strong mother–daughter bond is in fact central to the ability of women to find a healthy place for sexual desire and a close relationship in adult life, and that the nature of the mother–daughter bond is such that both mother and daughter seek out each other’s love and care throughout the lifespan.

Father-Daughter Bonds: A Comparison of Adolescent Daughters' Relationships With Resident Biological Fathers and Stepfathers.

To investigate whether the interpersonal dynamics of closeness are different in stepfather-stepdaughter versus father-daughter relationships during adolescence. Establishing a general process model of the relational factors contributing to greater closeness between fathers and daughters is a preliminary step toward examining variations in such processes. The data were from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a nationally representative sample of adolescents. Respondents were female adolescents who were living with either a biological father (n = 1,881) or stepfather (n = 273) and reported on the availability and involvement of their (step)fathers, as well as the communication and closeness in their relationship with him. Involvement and communication were predictors of closeness in both types of relationships, however, communication was a stronger predictor of closeness between stepfathers and stepdaughters. For adolescent girls living with a stepfather, greater involvement with their stepfathers was associated with greater closeness to their nonresident biological fathers. The length of the relationship between stepfathers and stepdaughters was not associated with levels of closeness. Overall, these findings suggest that stepfather-stepdaughter relationships reflect similar interpersonal dynamics as father-daughter relationships but that establishing and maintaining these relationships through meaningful communication may be particularly important for stepfathers and stepdaughters. Practitioners working to help stepfamilies build stronger relationships may want to stress that investing in shared activities and maintaining meaningful communication can be particularly important for establishing and maintaining positive relationships between stepfathers and stepdaughters.

“White folks ain’t got hair like us”: African American Mother–Daughter Hair Stories and Racial Socialization

Abstract Limited research focuses on the memories that shape African American mother–daughter bonds and racial socialization. Informed by Marva L. Lewis’s hair-combing interaction paradigm that emphasizes the role of hair in African American mother–daughter relationships, this study analyzes qualitative data from 13 African American female college students to explore mother–daughter dynamics, race, and hair. Multiple experiential themes emerged in the data: recognizing differences in hair texture, making doll choices, and daughters requesting permission from mothers to alter their hair chemically. Participants identified being between the ages of four to 14 years old during the experiences and expressed a range of feelings that centered on sadness, anger, and confusion. The findings address an indisputable void in understanding the internalized stories about hair that shape African American racial identity and racial socialization.

Elders Need Special Attention When Adult Children Die

Elders Need Special Attention When Adult Children Die

Audre's daughter: Black lesbian steganography in Dee Rees' Pariah and Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

ABSTRACTThis article argues that African-American director Dee Rees' critically acclaimed debut Pariah (2011) is a rewriting of lesbian poet-activist Audre Lorde's iconic “bio-mythography” Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982). The article examines how Rees' work creatively and subtly re-envisions Lorde's Zami by way of deeply rooted and often cleverly camouflaged patterns, resonances, and contrasts. Shared topics include naming, mother–daughter bonds, the role of clothing in identity formation, domestic abuse, queer time, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender legacy discourse construction. What emerges between the visual and written texts is a hidden language of connection—what may be termed Black lesbian steganography—which proves thought-provoking to viewers and readers alike.

Five women’s recollections and reflections on being raised by a mother with psychosis

This qualitative research project explored the recollections and reflections of women who were raised by mothers suffering with psychosis. Existing research has documented the mostly negative effects of maternal psychopathology on offspring; they are exposed to both the genetic and environmental effects of such illness. Very few qualitative studies exist in this research area. The mother–daughter perspective was taken to explore the ways that daughters felt maternal psychosis might have affected this primary relationship. Five participants comprised the purposive, snowball sample. The semi-structured interview method was used for data collection. The data was analysed using thematic content analysis. Nine themes and two sub-themes emerged from the interview data; these were (1) resilience and survival (with two sub-themes: (1.1) extreme self-sufficiency and (1.2) low self-esteem and the need for approval); (2) memories of maternal psychotic episodes; (3) mother–daughter bond; (4) importance of father; (5) sibling sounding boards and responsibilities; (6) silent family storms; (7) significant others; (8) stigma, shame, and secrecy; and (9) maternal psychosis, motherhood, and feminine identity. All participants believe that maternal psychosis had affected them profoundly, both in childhood and adulthood. They felt that it had influenced their personality development in various ways, including the formation of feminine identity.

MOTHERS, DAUGHTERS AND FAMILY IN GOLIARDA SAPIENZA’S L’ARTE DELLA GIOIA

This article discusses Goliarda Sapienza’s L’arte della gioia, which many Italian critics have hailed as the new Gattopardo. The novel was written over nine years, from 1967 to 1976, but for over two decades Sapienza failed to find a publisher. Two years after the author’s death in 1996, the small publisher Stampa Alternativa printed 1,000 copies of the novel. Ten year later, L’arte della gioia Gioia was published in Germany and France where it enjoyed instant success. As a result of this success abroad, Sapienza’s novel finally gained full recognition and public acclaim in Italy, where it was re-published by Einaudi in 2008. In this article, we argue that through the deconstruction of male and female gendered roles, L’arte della gioia gioia articulates an unconventional deconstruction and reconstruction of the Italian family and the role of the mother within it. In so doing, Sapienza proposes unconventional mother–daughter bonds based on the recognition of maternal authority.

The Impact of Breast Cancer on the Mother–Daughter Relationship: Implications of Relationship With God on Attachment

This study focused on the impact of breast cancer on the mother−daughter bond and the role of spirituality in adjustment. Two mother−daughter dyads were interviewed about their experience of maternal breast cancer. Breast cancer triggered a fear of relational loss in both dyads, however each dyad evidenced a different pathway in adjustment. Analysis revealed themes of intrapersonal reactions (e.g., emotions) of mothers and daughters as individuals, interpersonal dynamics (e.g., avoidance coping) of the mother−daughter dyad, and the role of relationship with God in the relational adjustment process. Relationship with God can serve as a compensatory resource or a source of stress for daughters coping with maternal breast cancer.

Early Motherhood and the Disruption in Significant Attachments

Based on a qualitative study of 48 teenage mothers living in the Denver metropolitan area, this research examines the loss of multiple attachments, including mothers, siblings, and other extended family members and friends, among African American and Latina girls who become young mothers. Through life history narratives, this article explores the isolating effects of teen motherhood on the relational world of young mothers and the transition to “forced autonomy” that emerges out of the relationship strains in the teen mothers’ lives. Faced with ruptures in significant childhood attachments and strains in the mother–daughter bond, young mothers develop strategies of accommodation to cope with the disruptions to connectivity and the demands of forced autonomy that are the result of early motherhood. These findings are interpreted through the frame of self-in-relation theory as this theoretical perspective has been informed by the scholarship on race and ethnicity. In reengaging the discourse on race, class, and gender, our findings contribute to the field in a number of significant and related ways: first, through an investigation into relationship loss and repair among teen mothers; second, by addressing the conditions under which teen mothers gain acceptance in their families; and third, in applying self-in-relation theory to the experience of adolescent girls of color whose relational lives are disrupted by the stigma and adversity of teen motherhood.

Cracked Perspectives

We examine effects of the Crack Cocaine Era on two generations of females. Interviews were conducted (1996-2001 for separate National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded projects) with 58 women and 24 girls born into distinct drug eras (Crack Generation and Marijuana Generation). Using attachment theory as a framework, we analyze each cohort’s drug involvement and family relationships. Women’s crack use contributed to disrupted attachments and girls’ marijuana and alcohol use and violence. Findings extend the generational thesis of drug eras and counter suppositions that rejection of crack might enhance future prospects. Interrupting intergenerational transmission of drug-related problems requires mother–daughter bonds be addressed.

Coping with Breast Cancer across Adulthood: Emotional Support Communication in the Mother–Daughter Bond

Women diagnosed with breast cancer encounter traumatic changes and their ability to cope is tied to support they receive from their families. Women describe the mother–daughter relationship as a significant potential source of this support. Forty diagnosed women in young, middle, and later adulthood and 38 of their mothers/daughters were interviewed to capture how communication functioned both adaptively and maladaptively in their adjustment. Findings highlight differences in women's communication preferences related to development.

The Embracing ‘I’: Mothers and Daughters in Contemporary Black Women's Auto/biography

This article focuses on representations of mothers and daughters in autobiographical texts by contemporary British Caribbean women writers. It examines the ways in which the texts under discussion subvert generic conventions, blurring the boundaries between autobiography and biography, fiction and ‘truth-telling’. It traces the ways in which the ‘I’ in these selected works shifts and splits between the mother and daughter, further problematising issues of authenticity and secure self-hood already identified by critics of the autobiographical genre. The autobiographies are marked by journeys from the Caribbean to America, to Britain and back to the Caribbean: in each location black female identities of these autobiographical subjects are invented and reinvented both to resist and to ‘bear witness against the racism, sexism and classism’ of the cultures and institutions they encounter. Through their destabilising narrative structures, the authors return to and revise the thematic and structural preoccupations of migrant and postcolonial writing: conditions of loss, fragmentation, estrangement and alienation are expressed within the framework of lasting mother–daughter bonds. These texts are used to suggest that the reclamation of the black female subject depends not only on the authority of self-inscription but on what Carol Gilligan calls an ‘ethic of care’, which binds women to each other and to those they seek to protect. The stories and selves that emerge from these narratives are simultaneously secured and liberated by the strong, though not unproblematic bonds within which they are inscribed.

Reframing the Power of Lesbian Daughters' Relationships With Mothers Through Black Feminist Thought

The present article uses Black feminist thought to recast the discussion of Black lesbians' coming out to their mothers from a dismal experience to a personal liberatory endeavor influenced by their mothers' instructions on Black womanhood. The literature usually depicts coming out in Black families as an arduous task that often is delayed or never transpires for Black lesbians. However these findings are often void of a cultural relevant analysis of lesbian identity development and Black mother–daughter bonds. The article examines how Black mothers' can be extremely influential in their daughters' decision to proclaim their lesbian identity.

Lived experiences

In the popular discourse, ‘arranged marriage’ and ‘love marriage’ are assumed to be radically opposed forms of conjugal union, associated with equally polarised responses from the natal kin—approval and encouragement for the former and the opposite for the latter. This article critically examines the lived experiences of ‘arranged marriages’ and ‘love marriages’ among working–class women in Delhi in order to show how, in practice, conjugal relations, in both instances, elicit complex and heterogeneous responses from natal kin. The article highlights the role of emotional, material and practical support provided by the primary natal kin to their married daughters in shaping women's relationship with their husbands and affines. Using ethnographic methods to study the dynamics of married couples’ everyday marital conflicts in slums and low–income resettlement colonies in Delhi, this research makes a case for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of contemporary natal kin support structures, mother–daughter bonds and spousal intimacy in urban north India.

The Current Relationships of Taiwanese Women With a History of Childhood Sexual Abuse to Their Non-Offending Mothers

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to explore the mother–daughter relationships of Taiwanese women who have experienced childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Using a life-history design, qualitative data were collected from 11 Taiwanese participants. The results identified both positive and negative images of the mother–daughter bond. Cultural factors, including seeking harmony in relationships and valuing female virginity and filial piety, impacted the view of closeness and the use of avoidance strategies in the mother–daughter bond. The changes in the mother–daughter relationships grew out of participants' life experiences and developmental maturity. Moreover, participants reported that they have learned diligence from their mothers and use diligence to deal with the impact of CSA. Once participants perceived that they had this strength, they were able to look at their mother–daughter relationships more positively. The study suggests that cultural factors may affect the long-term consequences of CSA for Taiwanese mothers and daughters.

Social interactions among wild female Bechstein's bats ( Myotis bechsteinii ) living in a maternity colony

Although sociality is common in bats, few studies have investigated individual social behaviour in free-ranging colonies. This study quantifies social interactions among wild female Bechstein's bats (Myotis bechsteinii) belonging to one maternity colony. Our main goal was to analyse allogrooming and nose rubbing, which are both regularly displayed by adult females. Based on data of individually marked bats with known degrees of pairwise relatedness, we suggest that allogrooming has both a social and a hygienic function. Females groomed colony mates mainly on parts of the body that are difficult to reach by a bat itself. Thus, allogrooming may function to remove ectoparasites from inaccessible body parts. Allogrooming was rare compared to self-grooming (on average 0.7% vs 37.7% of a female's total observation time), and there was no significant correlation between the rate at which a bat groomed itself and the frequency with which it was groomed by conspecifics. Therefore, we assume that allogrooming also has a social purpose in addition to its assumed hygienic function. We suggest that allogrooming could strengthen social bonds among colony members that live together for many years. Mothers and adult daughters groomed each other preferentially. Thus, allogrooming may reflect special mother–daughter bonds. Nose rubbing occurred mainly within minutes (median: 80 s) after the arrival of a female in a night roost, and there was no correlation with relatedness. Therefore, it probably allows recognition of colony mates and may also be a greeting behaviour.

The Relationship between Adjustment of Mothers with HIV and their Adolescent Daughters

The emotional distress, self-esteem and problem behaviors of adolescent daughters aged 11–18 years ( n= 121) and their mothers with HIV were examined and related to reports of parental disclosure of serostatus and adolescents’ perceived bonds with their parents. Most mothers with HIV reported emotional distress in the clinical range (70%). The levels of emotional distress, self-esteem and drug use were significantly correlated between mothers and daughters. Adolescent’s emotional distress was significantly related to maternal disclosure of HIV status. Daughters who perceived their mothers as highly caring also perceived them as low in overprotection. Daughters who perceived their mothers as low in caring were more emotionally distressed and reported more conduct problems and lower self-esteem. Interventions to enhance adjustment of daughters in families coping with HIV must focus on mental health symptoms and mother–daughter bonds.

Family Support Patterns for Midlife Lesbians

Summary The authors, an “out” lesbian couple, address the topic of support and nonsupport patterns as they apply to their own extended families over a 26-year period. As the family members age, interaction between the lesbian couple and the family appears to increase. An examination of the midlife lesbian's relationship with family of origin, particularly the mother-lesbian daughter bond, is discussed. Service providers are encouraged to pay special attention to the degree of acceptance and the quality of ties and interaction patterns that occur for later life mother-daughter relationships among “out” and “closeted” lesbians.