How common is it for a mother to resent her daughter?

Question

I'm sans children, so I'm not fully aware of the dynamics. Have you experienced and/or witnessed this? What are your thoughts on the frequency of such a thing? Does this occur with fathers and sons as well?

Answer 1

I can't imagine *anyone* resenting kids of either gender unless they have psychological problems.

I live and breathe for my girls. I have based my life on caring for them and providing for them. I lost a son and I will never take my kids for granted (or anyone else I care about for that matter).

Answer 2

Marie Cardinal - The Words to Say It -is one of the best books I ever read on psychoanalysis - first hand account...

To make a long story short - a long story worth reading - Marie's mother did not wish to have a child, and did everything she could during her pregnancy to have a miscarriage. It's one of the most poignant passages in the book - the one where she actually tells her daughter all this. Cardinal was a troubled woman and lived an interesting life. If you truly want to see how a child, in this case female, lived her life knowing that she was never wanted by her own mother... read it.

True story too. But how many children go around discussing these things? As is, Cardinal broke the most important rule of psychoanalysis by publishing this book.

In a case like this it really makes you wonder who is right - the pro-life or the pro-choice folks....

Answer 3

My Mom didn't really want me i was an "accident"so she has shown me more then one time how she feels about me.

I am a Mother to a Beautiful Daughter who is my life. I only Love her NOT resent her. i guess growing up with a mother hating you makes you want to be a better Parent.

As for Father's and Son's I do not know sorry. God Bless

Answer 4

It's a relationship thing - usually the daughter is the "apple of daddy's eye" which can make the mother a bit jealous and then again the daughter can be jealous of the mother's relationship with her father. It's all part of growing up - that's why mothers and teenage daughters often have such a volatile relationship - I know I did with mine, but I'm happy to say as I grew up, I came to regard my mother with respect and love - she was truly my best friend!

Answer 5

I don't experience it personally (I have two teenage daughters) but I've seen it happen with other people. What typically happens is that the father comes to love his daughter more than his wife. He sees the daughter as a younger version of his wife but one he created himself. That can cause intense jealousy in some women and drive them to actually become rivals to their daughters instead of being their mothers.

Answer 6

I believe it to be a 'natural' reaction to the sick way that ageing, esp for women is viewed in our societies. A younger woman replaces an older woman in many men eyes (and lives). One excuse that men give for raping their daughters is that she looks like her mother did when she was young. Not as extreme as that is the attitude of invaildation that occurs when a woman 'loses' her looks. My mother said that she felt like she had become invisible at about the age of 45 - by no means old, but men just started ignoring her, There is a certain type of man that will only acknowledge a woman or girl if he finds her sexually attractive or if she reminds him of his mother.
So it is not altogether surprising that the end result for women with no feminist analysis is to take this on and instead of acknowledging it as a divisive patriarchal dynamic, they see it in a personal way - their daughter gets the attention that they used to get and they don't like it.

Answer 7

it's an odd thing really--- my mother always said that mothers and daugthers often resent each other...

but then she goes on to say about her sons "a daughter is a daughter for life, a sons a son until he takes a wife". so i guess it goes both ways...

Answer 8

well i ve seen it a few times. particularly with a close frind of mine. she is filipina and black. her mom is flilpina. some of the things her mom would say are some of things a jealous teen girl would say. she would can her dark(shes not even dark...like a tan color actually) she owuld call her fat, nasty...etccc and she was barley even chubby. i really felt for her... i think h er mother was jealous of all the attention she would get from guys...she is ver cute. Her mom would even try to wear her clothes(out to night clubs) andsay i that she looked better in them than her....it was crazy!

i ve seen this a number of times with others friends, but his is by far the weirdest and worst ive seen...
idk how common it is with men, i assume not common. i mean there are instances inwhich a father is jealous of their child(boy or girl) b/c the mother is focusing all of her attention on the child...but idk how common tha is...

-chai

Answer 9

It is not nearly as uncommon as it SHOULD be - and, YES, it DOES happen with fathers and sons, also.

My mother really disliked kids and I just barely got along with her most of the time, but she absolutely could not stand my younger sister. So much so, in fact, that she tried to kill herself when I was about eight years old and my sister was only about two.
There could have been some extra jealousy there, since my father (who all but completely ignored me) totally adored and doted on the little sister. She took full advantage of that situation and made a nasty game of playing our parents against eachother. She would ask Mother for something and after being told "No," she'd approach Dad, and he would invariably give her almost anything she wanted. Then she would walk right by Mother, waving it under her nose - and the fight would be on! It was almost like we were two separate families living under one roof - my mother and myself in one and my dad and sister in the other - and we didn't get along very well.

My late husband grew up without a father, but was resented by his mother as an extra, unwanted, responsibility. My boyfriend, however, was highly resented by his father because, even as a child, he was smarter and more resourceful, worked harder and earned more than his dad, but he was also handicapped and couldn't always do the hard physical labor his father wanted him to do.

It is a complicated issue, and my spiritual beliefs lead me to think that there are causes for it that most of us - even (or should I say ESPECIALLY) orthodox psychology and psychiatry - are not aware of. I happen to believe that when there is such a strong level of negativity there, from the start, that it stretches back further than just the present lives of the people involved. There is NO doubt in my mind that my mother and sister were past-life adversaries who had to live a life in peace with eachother to nullify previous bad karma between them.
I firmly believe that this factor (reincarnation and karma) accounts for the majority of disfunctional family situations that are "out there" today.
One of your other responders mentioned that we do not choose our children, but the fact is, we DO! We choose THEM and they choose US, but not necessarily for positive reasons. People generally reincarnate in GROUPS. This is because of unresolved karma - which I believe manifests itself as negative charge in our energy fields.

I have theorized that THIS is what accounts for the majority of cases of what they call "post-partum depression". (That is, when a new mother goes into a deep depression after the birth of a new baby - sometimes so extreme that post-partum-depressed mothers have been known to kill their babies!)
These women have realized - on a purely SUB-CONSCIOUS level, of course, - that they just brought an old enemy into their new life.

It would be interesting if someone would do a study to see how women, who have experienced this, relate to their OTHER children if they have more than one, and how they relate to the child whose birth upset them so much, as that child gets older.
The answers provided by a study like that would give us some valuable clues to some very interesting questions!

Answer 10

The only women who actually do hate their daughters are ones who hate women in general.
The reason why they hate women so much is because they hate their mothers so much!
If they hate their mothers so much then they would hate themselves because everytime they see themselves in the mirror they see their mothers since they got their looks from their mothers.
So if they did have daughters then they would also see their mothers in them because their mothers genes given to them have passed down to them.
As for hatred of other women?
They hate them because they are jealous of them for being much better than them.


It could also be between fathers and sons.
Why? Most likely because they never had good relationships with their own fathers so when they think of their sons they think of themselves as boys when they were still living with their fathers.


If fathers hate their daughters then it's because they hate their mothers, which of course results in hating women in general so looking at their daughters is like looking at their mothers.

If mothers hate their sons then it's because they hate their fathers so looking at their sons is like looking at their fathers.

Or they couldv'e been raped by rapists or men they knew and got pregnant from that rape so if they did have sons fathered by these rapists, then of course looking at these sons would be like looking at these rapists especially if these sons looked just like their biological fathers.