Mothers and Adult Daughters: A Complex Relationship

As a grandmother, I'm fascinated by relationships between adult women and their mothers. Did you know that there are significant differences in the way different cultural groups regard this relationship?

A study by Mudita Rastogi and Karen S. Wampler compares relationships among three groups: Asian Indian American, European American and Mexican American. Here's what the study shows:

• Asian Indian American daughters trust the family hierarchy and want support and advice from their mothers. They score higher on measures of closeness and connectedness than women in the other two groups.

• Mexican-American women want to be dependable rather than dependent and are more interested in giving than in receiving in their relationship with their mothers.

• Euro-American women desire closeness with their mothers but reject a dependent relationship, scoring higher on measures of differentiation.

The full article isn't readily available on the Web, but you may be able to access it through your library. Look for "Adult Daughters' Perceptions of the Mother-Daughter Relationship: A Cross-Cultural Comparison." It's scholarly but intriguing reading.

The Asian Indian American women in the study lived geographically farther from their mothers than the other groups, which would seem to hamper closeness. They also tended to have higher incomes and more education, which would seem to foster differentiation. But the results were exactly the opposite. Apparently where the mother-daughter relationship is concerned, culture and nurture are more important than money or miles.

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Source: http://grandparents.about.com/b/2012/07/26/mothers-and-adult-daughters-a-complex-relationship.htm

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