Before going on to fathers and brothers, I’d like to say something.  I have two purposes with these posts.  One is to try to provide insights that may help mothers of daughters in successfully parenting their daughters.  

But the other is to help with insights that may help adult women (whether they are mothers or not) to successfully resolve their issues with their own mothers.  As hard as it may sometimes seem to be a good mother, it can seem even harder to try to fix one’s relationship with one’s own mother.  After all, she is much more formidable than a child.  But resolving one’s relationship with one’s mother is *exactly* what is needed most in the effort to be a good mother to one’s daughter.  Unless this is done, the hurts and wounds and disappointments of the past will continue to be visited upon the next generation.  And so, don’t just work on being a good mother – work on your relationship with your own mother so that you *can* be a good mother.

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Fathers are very important in the mother-daughter relationship.

Under the best circumstances, a girl’s father can represent a healthy kind of freedom from her mother, an escape from feeling enveloped and enmeshed by her mother.  And, as a buffer between them, he can take the heat off the mother-daughter relationship.  He does not use his daughter to fight his marital battles for him, and he does not allow himself to be a conduit for the mother’s or the daughter’s unresolved issues with each other.  Instead, he encourages them to sort it out together.  

It is when daughters are with their fathers that they begin to experience the possibilies of feminine identity outside of their identification with their mother.  Being feminine doesn’t just mean being a mommy.  She learns something of what it means to be loved by a man in a kind of rehearsal for her heterosexual relationships as an adult.

So when Dad is at his best, he can – without being disloyal to his wife or undercutting her authority – become his daughter’s safety valve, her male mentor, her safe port in her emotional storms with her mother.

But too often, fathers instead contribute to mother-daughter hostility.  They do this in two ways.  First, by becoming a nearly invisible presence in the family – avoiding upset at all costs, and not coming to the daughter’s defense when she is being mistreated by her mother.    Or second, by making her “Daddy’s Little Girl”, which makes her into her mother’s rival.

Sons are sometimes favored by mothers (and certainly by fathers too) over their daughters, and this contributes too to mother-daughter issues.  The “sainted son” who can do no wrong in his mother’s eyes will certainly grow up to have his own issues, but his early role in the dynamic between his sister and their mother is to create hurts and resentments.  The wrongness of favoring sons over daughters can have lasting effects.