Understanding conflicts between mothers and children

One day, a blood test, a positive result and a life is changed forever. A woman has added to the range of social roles she plays – girlfriend, wife, daughter, aunt, godmother, friend – the role of mother.

In approximately nine months she will give birth to another life, and she should have all the answers to questions she was never asked.

You will have to know how to decode cries and smiles, you will have to learn to observe, you will need to develop patience and accept the fact that for the next few years, your life will revolve around another being.

She will be half doctor, half psychologist, half teacher, and she will try to do it without ever losing her composure.

He will have to love his offspring unconditionally and forget his own ghosts and shortcomings to give his best in creating this new being, who arrives in the world under his responsibility. All this is implicit in the role of mother.

But how and when did all this come about?

Some people assume that every woman is born to be a mother. We learned that we are all born with the maternal instinct inscribed in our genetic code and the appearance of a pregnancy is enough for that instinct to be awakened and, with it, the good mother’s instruction manual to come into action.

In this manual we find, among other things, the myth of maternal love, a pure and genuine feeling that places the mother above all things and leads her to place her child above all things.

The myth of maternal love naturalizes and universalizes this feeling. as innate to human nature, rejecting its true essence: that of human feeling and, like any other, uncertain and fragile.

The myth of motherhood

Like any and all myths, this one was also created by a social need. Until the 18th century, children born in France were handed over by the mother to the nurse, who became responsible for their physical survival, emotional support and humanization.

But often, handing over to wet nurses was “infanticide” in disguise: the children were lost forever and very few parents ever recovered their children.

At the end of the 18th century, however, the State realized that children were, potentially, an economic asset, since, in the future, they would move the economy, generate manpower and resources, helping the State to assert itself as a power.

It was at this moment that the myth of motherhood was instituted as an instinctive vocation of women and of the mother as immaculate, sacred and unconditional.

With the aim of interrupting this delivery of children to nannies, the State created a social mobilization using arguments to convince women that being a mother is inherent in their nature, extolling the benefits of exercising motherhood and the harm when one chooses not to exercise it. there.

Thus, an idea was created that the exercise of motherhood requires sacrifice and seclusion from women, which they must perform with love and bravery.

The nature of the relationship between mother and children

Undeniably the most important relationship for the psychological constitution of the human being, the relationship between mother and child is, contrary to what is propagated socially and by the media, a constructed relationship and not an innate one.

The love that a mother feels for a child is sometimes born when she learns of the pregnancy. Others, from birth, through care and living with the baby.

The baby, on the other hand, is born genetically programmed to love and become attached to this figure who has taken care of him since birth, be it his biological mother, godmother, nanny, nanny or employee, for example.

The human being, like some animals, is totally dependent on human contact and affection to develop physically and emotionally.

At the beginning of the last century, mortality among babies living in orphanages in Europe and North America was almost 100% of the population.

These children had all their physical needs taken care of, but no physical contact with them was allowed because people thought it could transmit disease. So they died by the thousands.

When in 1920 Dr. J. Brenneman made affectionate contact between anyone entering the ward and the babies present there mandatory, death rates dropped dramatically.

From this it was concluded that human beings at an early age need to have their physical needs met, and that without affection they are not able to survive either.

Despite being a relationship idealized since antiquity as sacred, in general, it is not easy to be a mother or a child.

It is common for us to hear since we were little that we will only understand our parents when we are parents, which is usually true.

As children, it’s hard to put ourselves in our mother’s shoes and evaluate her decisions when we’re growing up, especially when they go against what we want.

On the other hand, mothers need to stop being daughters to their own fathers before they can be mothers to their little ones.

This idea seems complicated, but it is not. In a nutshell, this is equivalent to saying that we cannot carry our needs as children into the relationship with our offspring and hope, in some way, that that relationship is an improved re-enactment of our own childhood.

What does it take to be a mother?

As we assume the role of a mother, we need to put ourselves in the role of donors, while our children will be the receivers: of our love, our guidance, the education we give them, the rules, our understanding, as we once were from our parents , or as we should have been in his time.

Fair or not, all the responsibility now rests on our shoulders and the relationship we will have with our children in the future will depend on it.

Any and all affective needs need to be resolved in another way, in another environment, so that we can donate ourselves and create a solid relationship with our children in a clean way, without remnants of a past that they did not live.

Unfortunately, however, we often carry the marks left by the wrong relationships with our parents into every other relationship in our lives, and our children are no exception.

This is where most problems start.

As children, we grew up watching our mother model and using it as a reference, either of what we want to copy or avoid.

Sometimes we copy things that we always criticize, unintentionally. Others, the keen observers that we are, take what we believe worked and correct what we think should have been done differently.

Anyway, our mother (or the one who plays the role of) is our first and main reference model. We want her approval, her affection and her admiration, so we unconsciously believe that copying her is the best way to get it.

We listen carefully to what they say or seem to expect from us, and we try to achieve those goals, even when they are not ours.

Despite that, at some point – usually towards the end of adolescence – we feel that we need to find our own identity and break with that almost mirror relationship.

Here, conflicts arise because, many times, when we try to find our own identity by doing everything different from what we learned, we go down the wrong path.

But we don’t necessarily worry about that: as long as we can confirm to ourselves our ability to be different, we’re satisfied.

As mothers, we don’t realize that we can smother the children with our expectations for them.

We receive under our care beings that do not know the world at all, we try to teach them everything we know or think will protect them and, one day, they tell us that none of that will do, and that they will do things “their way”.

This attitude often drives us to despair, when it shouldn’t: with this breakup, they are usually able to find their own way, which tends to be a middle ground between our desires for them and theirs. natural vocations.

Time to give wings to the children

As parents, it’s hard to accept the release of children from our dominion and care. We want them not to make the mistakes we did, so we interfere more than we should.

Sweet illusion: they won’t make the mistakes we made. They will make their own mistakes and learn from them, no matter how much we want to protect them.

Our babies grow up and demand independence over their own lives, over their own families, and offer us a place to watch their lives from the sidelines. we feel excluded.

Little do we know that we never stop being present. covertly, they are always watching us for our assessment of what they’re doing.

Are we approving? Are we disapproving? Even if we are silent and without interfering, our gaze, our facial expression, our gestures, everything is seen as hints about the path they are taking.

Because, although it is true that yes, we can go on with our lives and make our decisions regardless of our parents’ opinion, we feel much safer and more confident when we do it with their approval.

Because, as little as we want to accept it, few things are as important to a child as a father’s or mother’s approval.

Few jobs are as difficult in Psychology as releasing a child from this need, or minimizing the influence of it in their lives. Regardless of age, gender or marital status, we all need our parents’ approval.

The difficult art of coexistence between mothers and children

Sometimes parents’ disapproval of their children’s attitudes, who they are, or what they are like becomes intolerable.

Here is where the cuts in relations take place: children who stop talking to their parents, who have to exclude them from their own lives in a desperate attempt to allow themselves to exist as a different person than the one their mother expects of them.

One of the most difficult acts for a human being, sometimes the mother’s presence is so oppressive and imposing that we don’t feel entitled to be.

We cannot or do not want to meet the expectations you have for us – as children, parents, etc. – so we use an extreme feature: we exercise our right to leave.

Sometimes, the opposite also happens, for different reasons: parents who break contact with their children as a last attempt to assert their own word and will, refusing to change their place in their child’s life, rejecting the supporting role when he was a leading actor.

The most difficult part of this relationship is found in the process of individualization of both beings.

Because it is a relationship that begins in an absolutely symbiotic way, as one being part of the other’s body, it is difficult especially for the mother to understand that the being she gave life to is a different being and independent of her.

Often, this simple idea sounds like an offense: “how independent if without me he would not even have existed?”.

It’s hard for a mother accepting the change in your role in a child’s life – from protagonist during the early years to supporting character in adulthood. It’s hard for her don’t try to solve through her own maternity the flaws brought from the relationship with his own mother.

It is difficult accept the limits imposed by the children in their participation in their lives. AND…