How a Mother's Choices Can Make Their Daughters Feel Inauthentic

“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.” ― Aristotle

Authenticity is a key developmental achievement, since ancient times considered a virtue and marker of the well-lived, “eudaemonic” life, according to Aristotle. Especially since the middle of the last century, Western psychotherapeutic approaches, notably those grounded in psychoanalytic thinking, have highlighted the central role of authenticity for satisfaction in relationships, in work, in relation to oneself as the sine qua non of a meaningful, engaged existence¹.

Without authenticity, we feel cut off from our true self (or selves for those of us with multiple sides to who we really are), lost in doubt and questioning our own actions. This "bad faith" in oneself is associated with a poor sense of self, lack of integration, and susceptibility to depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, and existential struggle.

Clinical research on authenticity meshes with cultural expectations

Research supports the intuitive and philosophical recognition of authenticity’s critical role in human happiness and suffering. For example, authenticity was shown to be a significant predictor of mental health (Grijak, 2017): inauthenticity was associated with higher rates of anxiety and depression and authenticity with mental health and psychological well-being.

Similarly, authenticity blunts the impact of stressors, including loneliness, alcohol misuse, body symptoms, and depression and anxiety (Bryan, Baker & Tou, 2015). Finally, a study of cancer patients found that greater authenticity was associated with reduced anxiety about death (Nazari et al., 2021)².

Given how authenticity is core to development, nurturing the sense of “true” over “false” self (Winnicott, 1960) is key. Reporting in the journal Psychoanalytic Psychology, researchers Goldner and colleagues focused on the mother-daughter relationship in the development of young women’s authenticity. They looked at the impact of maternal “parentification” and consequent “self-silencing” by daughters on their sense of authenticity.

Especially in distressed homes, parentification is a process by which parents are unable to keep proper roles and boundaries with children; they seek emotional and material support from their children rather than rely on their own resources and those of other adults and the community. Prior work has shown that parentification of children is associated with poorer mental health and relationship function when they are adults.

Parentified children often feel gratification, proudly self-sufficient, both special and resentful if aware of ways they may have missed out on developmental opportunities available to others. Furthermore, parentified children often cope by “self-silencing,” keeping thoughts and feelings to themselves in the face of caregivers who respond poorly to their wants and needs.

Parentification in the mother-daughter relationship

To research how parentification and self-silencing influence authenticity in mother-daughter relationships, Goldner and colleagues surveyed over 200 adolescent girls, average age 15. The adolescents completed questionnaires measuring:

• Parentification (Parentification Questionnaire), via response to statements such as “I help my brothers or sisters a lot with their homework”, “I often feel more like an adult than a child in my family”.
• Separation-individuation (Separation-Individuation Test of Adolescence), which looks at how much anxiety and distress are associated with loss of connection with significant others and fears of being lost or “engulfed” in others.
• True vs. false self (True/False-Self Questionnaire), examining to what extent participants hide who they believe themselves to be in order to adapt to others, in this case the mother (e.g. “I’m afraid they won’t like or understand the ‘real me’”, “I act that way to please them”).
• Authenticity (Authenticity Scale), looking at three aspects including self-alienation, accepting external influences, and authentic living.
• Silencing the self (Silencing the Self Scale), examining four factors including silencing the self, externalized self-perception (focusing on what others think), care as self-sacrifice (related to compulsive caregiving), and divided self (the sense of having two or more parts of oneself in conflict, for example dissonance between taking care of others versus honoring one’s own needs and wishes).

The researchers found that greater parentification predicted increased self-silencing. Furthermore, the impact of parentification on self-silencing was amplified by greater separation-individual distress, presumably because keeping quiet about real needs would keep the relationship together by averting conflict. Difficulty with separation-individuation from mothers was associated with reduced authenticity and increased false-self behaviors of daughters in relation to mothers.

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Overall, self-silencing was the sole predictor of reduced authenticity, highlighting the critical role of one’s relationship with oneself and capacity for healthy self-dialogue as represented by openness to one’s own valid feelings, thoughts, desires, needs, and aspirations.

Overcoming parentification to cultivate healthy self-parenting

Ultimately, parentified children tend to develop self-critical inner dialogues, are unable to recognize or articulate their own needs or desires, and are unable to hear the voice of their “inner child”—or respond to that child with healthy self-parenting.

Without the capacity to recognize and pursue one’s own needs, and with the interpersonal strategy of preferencing other’s needs, parentified children suffer diminished life satisfaction, diminished mental health, and diminished authenticity. It's unclear whether the findings apply with other parental relationships, although it seems likely that factors including parentification and self-silencing generally affect authenticity for both adults and children.

The research has important implications for parenting, family, and individual therapy, and personal development in general³. Recognizing the impact of parentification both for adolescents as well as for adults is necessary for therapeutic growth. Grasping how problems with enmeshment lead to excessive self-sacrifice, including the tendency to use false-self strategies in relationships, is a useful first step.

Most clearly, stopping the silencing of oneself by oneself is crucial. Listening fully to oneself is a skill grounding robust self-awareness, fostering authenticity, and repairing internal divides to achieve greater function and satisfaction in many different spheres.

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