Unloved Daughters and the Problem With "Mother Wounds"

Source: Zahre Namati / Unsplash

Google the term, and while it’s not quite as everywhere as “narcissism,” with over 191 million possibilities, the phrase—which is not a psychological term—is definitely making a mark. It has a homecourt advantage because of its vividness—the imaginative among us can see the “wound” glistening, perhaps red, in the light—and it’s especially evocative because, yes, the wounds produced by maternal neglect, hypercriticality, combativeness, and the like tend to be invisible. Plus, as a term, it’s a rallying cry of sorts which, despite the cultural mythology that all mothers love their children and that maternal love is instinctual, places the blame on a single pair of shoulders. Not surprisingly, social media sites promote the term, often soliciting visitors to share their “mother wounds,” and promote adult-child estrangement as the answer to the problem. The term does, additionally, facilitate a feeling of being a victim, which has its own effects. If you doubt this, take a look at the list of grievances posted on various sites.

So, why am I against the term? It’s one-size-fits-all and lacks nuance and understanding. Yes, I get its appeal, but, honestly, there are very real reasons it doesn’t serve, rallying cry or not.

For one thing, there is no single “mother wound.”

Mothering as a Spectrum of Behavior

The last almost 50 years of psychological research have brought real understanding of what an infant and child need to thrive and develop optimally and what good mothering looks like. Human infants are hardwired to need their mother’s attuned attention; optimally, a mother responds to her baby’s vocalizations, makes eye contact, and uses touch as a way of communicating. This isn’t to say that this happens perfectly—no mother can be on 24/7, and everyone experiences occasional frustration or burnout—but, in the main, the good mother is emotionally present.

If you imagine the spectrum of maternal behavior as a line stretching from left to far right, you’ll find the good-enough mothers in the center. But migrate to the far left and you’ll find those mothers who are emotionally unavailable, incapable of attunement, and prone to dismiss, marginalize, or ignore their children. They neither listen nor tend, and the child is left to cobble things together as she can to self-protect.

A term like the “mother wound” encourages us to think of these daughters as having pretty much the same problems and being affected in similar ways, but the reality is that there are meaningful nuances and differences. The child of an emotionally unavailable mother may do what she can to somehow garner her mother’s affection (resorting to constant pleasing, trying to “fix” whatever problems come up in the day-to-day, etc.) or she may simply give up and do what she can to feel as little as possible. The dismissive or marginalizing mother is often far more active than the emotionally MIA one; she may criticize the daughter for being too “sensitive” or make fun of her emotional responses. It is true that generally all of these mothers communicate the message that “You don’t matter,” but talking about the “mother wound” in this context gets you nowhere. (For a more detailed understanding of how different maternal behaviors affect a child, go here.)

The More Aggressive Types of Maternal Behavior

Going back across the spectrum, this time to the right past the center where attuned mothering resides, we encounter children who are effectively “disappeared” by their mothers but for reasons that are very different than those displayed by the absentees on the left. This is the domain of the over-present mother—one high in criticality, control, combativeness, and, yes, narcissistic traits, or, more rarely, the enmeshed parent. There are no boundaries here—invasion of a child’s personal and literal space is the name of the game—and whatever damage is done (“wounding,” if you will) is different with varying outcomes. What do these mothers have in common? On a most general level, they see their kids as extensions of themselves, not as individuals in their own right, but as people in whom they have a proprietary interest. But, once again, the differences matter.

Living with a combative mother—always ready to pick a fight and predisposed to set siblings against each other—yields different results, depending both on the personality of the child and whether she has support elsewhere. Some of these daughters will move to deal as the dismissed or neglected kids do—flying as low under the radar as possible and pushing off from the hurt. Others will put up a fight, taking their mothers on and, perhaps over time, becoming her ally. Remember that these maternal behaviors are not set in stone, and a parent may display several over time.

Both the controlling mother and the one high in narcissistic traits tend to rule the roost with an iron fist—it’s a fiefdom with a single rule: “My way or the highway”—so the daughter will, once again, adopt behaviors that allow her to cope with the turmoil of the environment. The forms of verbal abuse these mothers use vary as well—gaslighting, hypercriticality, mocking, and the like—and also shape the daughter’s responses and behaviors in different ways. Scapegoating is also often a part of the abuse, and it matters as well if the scapegoat role is a fixed or a rotating one.

While there are some generalities we can make about what “wounding” by a mother entails, both recovery and healing lie in the understanding of the details and the specific responses of the individual.

Estrangement and Watering Down Its Effects

Many of the social media sites that focus on the “mother wounds” also tout estrangement as a one-size-fits-all solution, which, to be blunt, is incredibly reductionist. Parent-child estrangement is complex with many ramifications, and most estranged adult children do so after years, if not decades, of trying to set boundaries and other strategies.

The term “mother wound” may be evocative, but, in the end, I do not think it serves us.

The ideas in this post are drawn from research for my books, Daughter Detox and Verbal Abuse.

Copyright 2024 by Peg Streep

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