The adult mother/daughter relationship: a uniquely and universally close relationship?

Despite developments in the sociology of welfare and in feminism, the examination of young adult mother/daughter relationships has been relatively neglected. Such relationships are still popularly seen as ‘very close’, although studies such as Branneti and Collard's (1982) have shown that they are not intimate. In this paper the content and quality of such mother/daughter relationships is examined using a small scale intensive study of sixty married or cohabiting women randomly selected from medical records in north London. Their relationships with their mothers were typically characterised by high levels of visual contact, felt attachment and identity enhancement. The majority of the women did not see their relationships with their mother as very close. Furthermore, even those who did see them in this way, did not have relationships characterised by high levels of practical help, dependency or intimacy. In arguing that mother/daughter relationships are neither universally nor uniquely close, such relationships are juxtaposed with relationships with sisters who were identified as very close. Finally it is argued that the continued popular perception of mother/daughter relationships as very close reflects current definitions of feminity; the idealization of the mother role and an equation between closeness and tending.