Daughtering and Mothering

Female Subjectivity Reanalysed

KMG Schreurs, L. Woerton, J. van Mens-Verhulst, KMG Schreurs, L. Woerton, J. van Mens-Verhulst

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780415086509
• eBook ISBN: 9781134883646
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book provides analyses of many aspects of mother-daughter relationships, starting from the premise that daughters and mothers both take an active part in shaping their relationship. It discusses contextual issues, examining women's roles in therapy, management and education.

Part I
Daughtering

Chapter 1
Daughtering

The development of female subjectivity

Karlein Schreurs

Many students in social sciences (about two-thirds are women) appear to have an aversion to an explicit feminist view of science and therapy. They argue that the process of women’s emancipation has been completed, that everyone has the same opportunities, and that discrimination against women has disappeared. Unfortunately, this is wishful thinking. Female students hope they will not be confronted with difficult choices and ambivalences stemming from their womanhood. Nowadays, women certainly have more options in deciding how they want to shape their lives. However, this does not mean that more subtle mechanisms have lost their impact.

If we look at education, then we find that girls have caught up with boys, and approximately the same number of girls and boys now get a college education. Boys, however, are overrepresented in the sciences, and girls in the humanities. When choosing a profession, boys tend to take into account market principles, whereas girls decide more on the basis of a caring perspective. In short, at first sight things seem to have changed fundamentally, but careful examination shows that changes filter through at a slow pace. In other words, apparent changes are often no more than that; gender roles are changing faster than the psychological make-up of women and men. So, if we want to understand female subjectivity, we will have to theorize both on constant aspects in women’s lives and on the changes which certainly exist.

Object relations theory, as elaborated by Chodorow (1978), offers explanations for the constancy in the inner world of women. Some main points of this theory will be summarized here. Chodorow claims that mothering is reproduced by women and passed on to the next generation of women. The first human bond of both girls and boys is usually that with their mother. Because gender is an important aspect of individuals in our culture, difference becomes especially salient for boys and men. In contrast, sameness is important in the lives of girls and women. In order to achieve a male identity, boys have to separate from their mother and identify with their father, who is usually absent for much of the time. This leads to rigid ego boundaries in boys, and to a negatively-formulated identity, i.e. male equates with ‘not-female’. As this paper is concerned with daughtering, the development of boys will not be considered here.

Girls do not have to draw such strict boundaries between themselves and their mothers; they do not have to separate as radically from their mothers, nor do they have to repress this bond. Instead of rigid ego boundaries, they develop permeable ego boundaries. Fundamentally, women feel connected to the world around them; female identity is mainly a relational identity. These aspects of female identity lead girls to accept the greatest share of mothering, and make attractive those professions in which relational and nursing capacities are required.

As stated above, Chodorow’s theory can explain many of the constancies in women’s lives. However, if this was the only scenario, we cannot explain changes and shifts. If we apply this theory rigidly, it predicts chains of mothering mothers. Moreover, women themselves would not be able to break these chains. Change would only be possible by intervention from outside, for instance through changed educational practices.

Changes in constancy or constancies in changes are the leitmotif running through the contributions in the first part of this book. In some articles the object relations paradigm is supplemented and differentiated. Other contributions offer alternatives to object relations theories.

One limitation of object relations theories is their neglect of the body in motherdaughter relationships. As a consequence, important aspects of physical experience, sexuality and eroticism in women’s lives cannot be understood. Object relations distinguish the pre-Oedipal from the Oedipal phase. In the pre-Oedipal phase, the bond with the mother is central. The bond with the father develops in the Oedipal phase. The oral, anal and phallic phases, which are distinguished in drive theories, are seen as paralleling these object relational phases (Tyson and Tyson, 1990). The first experiences of genital lust are placed in the Oedipal phase, and the role of the father is supposed to be of central importance. However, observations of female babies and toddlers show that they discover their genitals much earlier than in the Oedipal period, and that they masturbate at an earlier age (cf. Galenson, 1990). Let us consider the care of (female) babies which is usually done by their mothers. Babies are usually suckled by their mothers, the body against which they normally nestle is their mother’s, mothers touch their babies’ genitals and buttocks when changing nappies. Even if fathers participate in the caring, exclusive care by fathers is almost nonexistent. So it is difficult to imagine how mothers could avoid ‘awakening’ genital sensations in girls. As a consequence, mother must be the girl’s first object of genital lust. This line of reasoning is elaborated by Lykke. She proposes distinguishing a new ‘Antigone’ phase in the development of girls. In this phase, the girl’s awakening sexual feelings are directed at the mother.

If we accept that mothers play a role in eroticism and the lust experience of their daughters, does this mean that they validate their daughters in this respect? Fathers make tender utterances, such as ‘What a little flirt my best girl is’. However, mothers would rarely use similar approaches with their daughters because of the taboo on homosexuality. But there is more at stake here, as Flaake’s contribution shows. In our culture, the beauty, attraction and desirability of the female body is defined by way of an object position in male lust experience. On the other hand, those bodily processes linked to reproduction, e.g. menstruation, have negative connotations. Therefore, most women will not feel as though they ‘inhabit’ their own bodies, and will develop a negative body image. Based on object relations theories, Flaake states that mothers pass on this negative body image to their daughters, and this chain can only be broken when mothers themselves develop positive body images and experience sexuality in a positive way. Generally, therapy will be necessary to accomplish this goal. In Flaake’s contribution, one sees again the power of object relation theories as tools to explain constancies in women’s lives. However, change can only be brought about through outside intervention. Is therapy really the only way? Or are we blind to other ways because our thinking is restricted by the straitjacket of object relations theories?

A second way of integrating change and constancy is by contextualizing both the position of the mother and that of the daughter. Daughters separate from their mothers. De Kanter criticizes the vision on the mother-daughter relationship as a universal bond independent of social context. She argues that this relationship is always imbedded in a cultural and social environment. This author sees separation as a task for daughters in their process of becoming women in their own specific social context. Therefore, they must perceive their mothers as women in all their different roles, positions and contexts. In short, daughters become ‘situated’ women and mothers are ‘situated’ women.

A method of placing mother-daughter relationships in a social context can be found in De Waal’s contribution. She emphasizes the arrangements in which interactions between mothers and daughters take place. Paralleling the general informalization of social relations, these interactions resemble more the negotiations between equals than the disciplining of behaviour by an authority. However,

De Waal shows that even under these ‘democratic’ conditions, mothers seem to have the last word. Daughters respond to this with their own strategies. De Waal picks up on some constancies and changes over generations of women. Bjerrum Nielsen and Rudberg elaborate this theme further. They distinguish gender identity from gendered subjectivity. Gendered subjectivity refers to a gender-specific way of relating to the world and oneself. Gender identity is the meaning girls and women attribute to being biologically female. Bjerrum Nielsen and Rudberg state that changes in gendered subjectivity are not paralleled by changes in gender identity. As a consequence, the different generations of women, i.e. grandmothers, mothers, daughters and granddaughters, have to deal with different conflicts. Using this distinction in gendered subjectivity and gender identity, these authors are able to place mothers and daughters in a chronological context.

To summarize, object relations theories are the main frame of reference in this first part of the book. These theories are dealt with in three different ways. Firstly, the importance of the body in the mother-daughter relationship and the role of the mother in the developing sexuality of the girl are emphasized in the contributions by Karin Flaake and Nina Lykke. Secondly, the necessity of contextualizing mother-daughter relationships is argued by Ruth de Kanter. Finally, alternatives to object relations theories for approaching the bond between mothers and their adolescent daughters are offered in the articles by Mieke De Waal and by Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen and Monica Rudberg. In this first section we concentrate on the side of the daughter in the relationship. The usefulness of object relations theories in understanding the mother’s side in different contexts will be dealt with in part two.

REFERENCES

Chodorow, N. (1978) The reproduction of mothering. Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Galenson, E. (1990) ‘Observation of early infantile sexual and erotic development’. In M.E.Perry (ed.), Handbook of sexology, VII. New York: Elsevier.

Tyson, Ph. and Tyson, R.L. (1990) Psychoanalytic theories of development: an integration. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Chapter 2
A body of one’s own

Sexual development and the female body in the mother-daughter relationship

Karin Flaake

This article concentrates on a special aspect of the mother-daughter relationship, which has not been analysed as yet from a feminist perspective: the sexual development of girls and the relevance of the female body within the context of the mother-daughter relationship.

In psychoanalytic literature, it is the father who confirms and acknowledges the value of the daughter’s femininity. Most authors legitimize the daughter’s need to turn to the father by emphasizing a ‘deficit’ in the mother. Freud and other theorists who argue in this tradition presuppose a characterization of the mother in terms of an organic deficit. She lacks the only valuable genital, a penis, so the daughter turns away from her in disappointment. During the Oedipal phase the little girl turns to the father and only by this transfer can she achieve a femininity of any value (Freud, 1920; 1925; 1931). The fundamental notion in this construction is that neither mother nor daughter are able to value the female body.

Similarly, the French psychoanalyst Christiane Olivier (1984) argues that it is impossible for mothers to see their daughters’ bodies as erotic, thereby precluding a positive image of the daughter’s own female body. According to Olivier a positive evaluation of the female body can only be bestowed by men. A positive evaluation of the female body by women is unthinkable, and hence women’s dependency on men is inevitable.¹

There are other psychoanalytic approaches, for example Chodorow’s (1978), which differ from the traditional approaches mentioned so far. These approaches are based on a feminist viewpoint linked to the object relations theory. They do not see the mother-daughter relationship as being based on a deficiency, but as highly valuable in emotional terms, and the relationship to the father as secondary. But these approaches hardly mention the body and sexuality. Their main interests are social and intrapsychic relational situations.² These theories thereby avoid a confrontation with an especially problematic dimension of female development: the relationship of women to their own body, and to their own sexuality, and the meaning of the mother-daughter relationship in this context.

Thus far, traditional psychoanalytic approaches to the mother-daughter bond, which are based on the idea of a deficiency as motive for orientation and dependency on men, can be understood as a mirror of a problematic reality. It is a reality in which women cannot enjoy their own bodies. The social reality is that the female body is a male-defined and occupied territory. Often women cannot see their sexuality as a genuine source of power, creativity and enjoyment, but remain oriented towards a male definition of female sexuality.³ Under these social circumstances, the mother-daughter relationship precludes both the possibility of valuing the female body and the granting of space for female desire. Femininity therefore, is not based on one’s own self worth, in which the mother shares her pride about the body and its pleasure, but rather its dependence on men for acknowledgement and value; the task falls on the father to acknowledge his daughter’s femininity. It is only with the sense of otherness, the perception of the opposite sex, that bestows meaning on femininity.

These structures are not inevitable. They are the result of a social reality based on male dominance. To overcome this reality, it is important to understand the mechanisms by which devaluation of femininity is transferred from one generation to the next. In this context, I want to discuss the conditions under which women are able to appreciate their own bodies without depending on male acknowledgement, and thus provide confirmation of their daughters’ sexuality in a positive way.

DAUGHTERS, MOTHERS AND SEXUALITY

Contemporary studies of developmental psychology show that children develop a sense of their own body, including genitals, during their second year (Chehrazi, 1988; Galenson and Roiphe, 1977; Glover and Mendell, 1982; Heigl-Evers and Weidenhammer, 1988; Kleeman, 1977). Starting at the age of 15 to 16 months old, girls discover their visible genitals and their vaginas. They discover their clitoris as a sensual organ, enjoying the pleasure of stimulation. These first experiences with their own sexuality become the foundation of a positive sense of their own bodies which is important for their later sexual development. Often the daughter’s early discoveries of her own body are not welcomed by their mothers. Mothers prevent their daughters’ bodily pleasures and sexual activities, and thus daughters are unable to develop a positive attitude toward it; they inhibit their daughters’ development of a positive self image of their genitals. Observations of children—for example by Stern (1986)—have shown that the pleasurable discoveries of little girls irritate their mothers. For example, mothers ignored such activities and even prevented them. Harriet E.Lerner (1977) describes mothers’ silence in naming the female genitals. This silence conveys the unconscious message that the daughter is not allowed to have sexual desires as well as ignoring or preventing autoerotic activities of the daughter.⁴

In her psychoanalytically-oriented study on groups of children Schmauch (1987) describes how problematic the development of girls can be for their mothers during the separation and individuation phase which starts at the age of two. The mother-daughter relationship appears to be relatively harmonious and unimpaired during the first two years. The relationship becomes conflictive as the girl develops her own identity as a sexual being, enjoying her growing autonomy and the erotic charm of her body. Many mothers cannot celebrate this development; they turn away temporarily from their daughters instead. With great insight Schmauch describes how a young girl’s belief that her search for physical identity includes her movement, nakedness, erotic charm and the exploration of sexual pleasures causes her mother to turn away, and thus she loses the ability to enjoy these aspects of herself. She can no longer enjoy autonomy, nakedness and sexual activities, and therefore she loses her erotic charm. The girl returns to a presexual phase of development; her overt sexuality, the possibility of becoming an active, erotic object, and rival for the father disappears temporarily. Thus, Schmauch claims the mother’s behaviour is influenced by her unconscious aspirations. She assumes that mothers unconsciously envy their daughters’ sexual desire and autonomy because they themselves cannot fulfil their own desires and autonomy. The daughters remain dependent on their mothers, and thereby open to their mothers’ needs.

In later developmental phases, the sexuality aspect of the mother-daughter relationship is similarly problematic. In adolescence, the girls’ bodies develop to the state of womanhood, making it possible for them to discover their sexual desires in an adult way. Sociological and psychological studies show that mothers and daughters rarely discuss the full range of the daughters’ sexual development, thus reducing it to a technical problem. At best, the mother informs her daughter about bodily functions, hygienic necessities and birth control. Discussions on these topics are primarily factual. Mothers and daughters do not speak about emotions, or the sensations accompanying the daughter’s development; about desires or fantasies, about shame or pride concerning the body, about inner sensations during menstruation, or about the desire to explore the changing body or sexual preferences (Apter, 1990; Burger and Seidenspinner, 1988; Haase, 1992; Waldeck, 1988; 1992).

In her study on the societal conventions concerning menstruation, Waldeck (1988) has shown that mothers pass on their own limitations to their daughters by defining menstruation as ‘dirty’—in acc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Daughtering
• Part II Mothering in context
• Part III Daughtering and mothering
• Part IV Review and prospects