Everything mother said might have been true. I should not have freaked every time my boyfriend had looked, spoken, breathed toward another girl. Yes, I definitely looked better with black eyeliner. And true, journalism and writing was my forte. But it was how she said it that probably made me buck and want to do the exact opposite. From the other side of the fence today, I see my friends struggling with their daughters, challenge and spat-ing with their mums and unable to deal with the barrage of ‘feedback’ meted out to them.
The movie Black Swan set me thinking about obsessive mothers commonly known as the ‘helicopter mothers’ that mastermind their children’s every move, living their frustrated and thwarted dreams through their children, imposing and obsessing over their every move and achievement that the mother had failed to achieve. The suffocation of a dominating parent causes protagonist Nina to react suffused with rage, desire and yearning for a freer life. Like many young women emerging from a ‘parent-pleasing’ girlhood, she is overwhelmed by and terrified of her real emotions, which emerge in chaotic and unregulated behaviour basis the precarious mother-daughter bond that then begins to crumble when Nina wants to access her inner self and break away from the ‘bondage’.
The helicopter mother is a pushy parent who hovers over every aspect of their adult child’s life and does not know when to let go with a suggestion.
When mothers offer advice or suggestion for improvement too forcefully it becomes more like judgmental criticism. The mother however feels there is injustice when the child may rebel as she sees it as her way of caring deeply. If a mother cannot hold her tongue and sometimes becomes insulting with her criticism to drive home a point, then a daughter must learn to take it with a pinch of salt and a sense of humour.
The seesaw feelings between mothers and daughters cause daughters to feel guilt when they rebel against a dominating mother and this then leads to a traumatic maladjusted adulthood for the girl child.
The complex emotions of anger, resentment, and love find echoes in other relationships of both the mother and daughter.