A daughter often sees herself as a woman who is intimately connected to how she perceives her mother, while a mother will identify with her daughter as when she looks at her daughter she sees herself. Such a form of mutual influence reflects their interrelated identities and especially reinforces that a daughter’s relationship with her mother is important in the construction of herself as a woman.

As mothers and daughters share the same gender identity, social roles and expectations in a society, there is a greater potential for them to identify with each other either positively or negatively, compared to father-daughter relationships.

For example, motherhood is always a complicated and contradictory experience for many mothers: “one of love and frustration, fulfillment and restlessness.” The social expectation that women will find motherhood naturally rewarding makes it difficult for mothers to openly express feelings of dissatisfaction and emptiness. Their ambivalent feelings are also likely to be projected onto their daughters and then those very daughters will apply this contradictory message to their daughters in the future.

The society defines how to be a perfect mother and a good daughter making it hard for every woman to conform to. Not realizing that their motherhood and daughterhood have been idealized and glorified by society, both mother and daughter attribute each other’s failure to meet their expected roles as each side’s incapability or disobedience.

Hence, as Richardson points out in “Women, Motherhood and Childrearing,” “the way we construct our identities as mothers and daughters is a process that is embedded in assumptions and expectations about women.”

To some extent, when one alters herself to fit in with the expectations of the other person, the relationship itself loses authenticity and mutuality, becoming another source of disconnection.

As one of my girlfriends describes the gap and silence between her mother and her, “Thousands of miles and several oceans and a few mountain ranges are between us.” Thus, only when the roles of mother and daughter are questioned and explored in the form of conflicts and silence, can mutual empathy and satisfaction within the relationship be achieved.