I feel certain reactions Within Me toward my mother and then I look at my daughter and wonder if the way I hold my head or move. My hands is creating a certain response in her and that's when I realized that this relationship going. Both directions is very complicated. I am a woman in the middle a woman between Youth and old age pulled in One Direction toward my daughters and in the other direction toward my mother frequently overwhelmed by these relationships and wanting to understand them more. Clearly. I talked with some friends who are also women in the middle. We talked about our mothers and our daughters and ourselves. I've come to understand her. In a way that I haven't before the characteristics about her that used to be a problem for me. I'm now finding to be strengths. And I'm enjoying them. And I've also gained enough distance from her emotionally to not to not personalize. Many things well as a parent a single parent my I moved into my parents home and at the time my daughter was eight or so and we lived there for five years. So it was probably a unique relationship and during this time my mother and I I think changed in our perceptions of each other because she had she tried consciously very hard not to treat me the way that she had regarded me when I was the daughter at home. It was quite different when I was living actually in their apartment and had children of my own and you mean you were three generations that we were three generations living together for about five years. How did that work from the perspective of your daughter? I think it was very strengthening for her because she had two different Role Models two different Generations. Was your mother your role model? For a certain kinds of roles. She never had any ambition to be anything but a homemaker. But I regarded her very highly in that capacity. How about the rest of you? My mother has never stopped treating me as the daughter who grew up in her house and I think it's only because of our geographical distance that I we really are able to have the strong relationship we have now and I suspect that there would have been some. Some real frictions with my daughters also had we been closer together as it is. They're able to chuckle over many of her what they would consider to be her eccentricities, which are her very different values very different value system. But these would have been much more in Conflict had we been closer together. Yeah. I don't think we could have sustained much of a relationship my mother and I either because I am still a daughter. There's no question about that. And so I'm sure that had we lived as you did Helen there would have been a great deal of friction. That's a very interesting Dynamic that's coming out in a lot of the literature now whether the daughter Remains the daughter all of her life or if it's possible for a woman to become a friend with her mother my relationship with my mother was not an oppressive relationship at all. It was a very free thing and open thing and to always remain the daughter. Is not a real problem. It would be I guess if we had live under the same household, that would be a problem. That's something we would have to face and work with do you think our mothers have needed to be our mothers because they had invested so much in our lives. Now none of your mother's worked outside the home my mom did she did so she had something else going for her besides raising children, but her children were her whole life. and we realized that there was a great deal of we filled a very very great need of hers. That's interesting because I never got the feeling from my mother that we were her whole life. We were a very important part of her life, but I think that when the last child went away to college she just said well, that's it. Now I can go about being myself and she she is sentimental, but she never had that gave us at least that feeling that she was dependent upon being able to serve us or really needed that relationship in order to exist as a person herself. You know that kind of interest me because I had never felt that with my mother either and I felt that she had many many things that she was even more interested in but The one thing that runs through my mind Diane is is it possible that because your mother worked she had this feeling that she had to do to impress you with the idea that you were them were the most important person are you were the most important persons and the the job is second and and you family our first I don't think so. I don't think it was that I think it would have been present even catching up and working. I just felt I think that she just felt that that was her role in life to be a mother to be a mother and my mother never interpreted her role as mother as one of being in control or trying to impose her will upon us. She regarded herself as maybe the director of the show giving up. Eat a good diet and so on but once the time for that kind of teaching had passed and she no longer assume that role. She let us grow up and be ourselves very definitely and I think that my one of their both my parents one of their big problems maybe when I came and was children and my mother's relationship to the granddaughter. He had to be how to be a grandparent and I was going to school and quite often she was doing some of the mothering kinds of things too. And she was always very careful not to try to impinge on my role not to take away the mothering part from me, but she was there when she was needed so she's really conscious of dependency and independency and change of roles and all of those things. Well, I suspect so I may be not in a conscious way either because I don't recall that we ever sat down and articulated these things did your I have high expectations for you. We know I never pick that up from my mother expectations. Either that I would then other than that, I would be a passable housekeeper and good cook and the one that I picked up expectations that I would be what I think was Unwritten that I would be a decent human being you know, and but the one that had expectations for me that I picked it up from was was my father. What kind of expectations did he have that I would be accomplished some kind of social social usefulness be active in church work maybe galaki. Well, he actually wanted me to go on to have a career and that wasn't any of my mother's concerned. My mother was very surprised I think to discover that I wanted a career and couldn't understand it. Was it disappointing to her? Oh, I think it didn't really matter a lot is long as as up until the time. I had children then it was very wrong for me to have a career the children were to be first and only and I think she was probably feeling a considerable amount of guilt for the time that she'd had to spend away from us because she had had to work. It was not by choice should worked out of necessity. And she really thought it was wrong for me to work when I had children in my case. My parents my parents had a perfectionist streak in them and everything had to be done perfectly. You're not at all if it was worth doing it was worth doing. Well, you know that old line and I determined that I wasn't going to lay that heavy trip on my children. So I think as we look backward and as we look forward, we take some cues from our own our own parents as to how we raise our daughters. The big difference for me has been in the area of academic achievements and career. I'm the youngest of four children and I'm the first of my family to go to school Beyond High School. The others didn't even all finish high school and my family has never really understood. I don't think why I felt any desire to go to college. And I've always felt that their lack of expectations. For me academically have affected my expectations of myself. Hmm the fact that they had very little expectation in that area made me question whether I had the ability and it was only when I was in graduate school. If you're you few years ago when I began to make that connection and realized how my own image of myself had been affected by that and I'm very grateful that I'm able to set a different kind of model for my daughter's how would you describe that? They see me as a person of achievement and that that achievement is important to me. So they see that they can be that kind of person to they assume it. They it's there's never been any question whether they would continue in school Beyond High School. I am sure my parents had expectations of me, but I sort of my childhood. I sort of remember just being a delight to them. The only time I disappointed my mother was when I didn't go to the Junior/Senior prom and I I didn't want to go and I that's the only real disappointment. I remember it was an under written expectation that I would go to college and and I guess that's why it's been with our children when I visited with my own daughter. She said that that if she were to choose a role model model between me and Grandma she would choose me because I did have a career. And she said that that career has helped her to set goals for herself, and I'm pleased about that. But you know as I look back on my own mother and she was not really very good cook and know and she didn't really put a lot of we value in that. Well, yes, but she didn't have great expectations for me in any of those ways. So maybe I was fortunate. I don't know the expectation that came through to me is that you would always try to be considerate and she used to work on us to not just lash out at people and how our and strikeout but to try to be calm and reasonable and it didn't always work but that was the expectation I grew up with the expectation that I would be a peacemaker in the family. Oh and that I Would be the one that would smooth Troubled Waters would sell the wounds both psychic and physical the only girl in the I was the only girl in a particular family and that I would always Endeavor to give my I think this was my mother's expectation. I would Endeavor to give whoever I was with one at least one good physically nourishing meal a day at which there was also stimulating conversation and it was a pleasant relaxing time for the family to be together. I think of their sort of one family living expectation that was drilled into me. That was it because I know that I had a hard time coping with the age when my own children started wanting to go here at five o'clock and there at 6:30 and and that supper together time became very increasingly difficult to achieve that bothered me more than Almost anything else about family life. I have a problem that I wonder if any of you have every once in a while, I think in my mind whether my mother would approve of what I'm doing or not. And I remember once when we had a foreign exchange student living with us and I was setting the table and out loud I said, oh my mother wouldn't like it. If she could see me doing this and this girl from Sweden said what's all this about your mother? She isn't even here. I say that often and I think of it even more often that oh mother would be proud of me. If she could see me doing this or mother would be horrified if she knew that I was thinking this and am I the only person who feels like that, well, he had the feeling and some things like that too because we're my mother had some definite standards. She had worked her way through school by being a household worker in the home of the president of the college. And coming from a peasant Farm background her social knowledge and awareness does wind up six notches right there and she definitely expected that I particularly as the daughter would absorb this knowledge of how our betters you might call it our high society lived and so it was very important to her to and when you say setting the table, I learned exactly which way you turn the knife blade and exactly how far from the edge of the table at silverware went and how to lay the perfect cover, you know, because that was to her important social knowledge and the circle sort of made its it's round the other day when my daughter called long distance on the phone and was telling me about things that she had done that the way I did them and oh mother you would have been very proud of me because I didn't just believed it. And so I suspect that she's perhaps also feeling the same. Way I do about my mother that I'm sort of a hidden presence in her life. That's right. I remember my daughter when I was there visiting. She's in California expressing our she showed me her linen closet and she said no mother. I'm afraid you won't approve. I don't keep my sheets is ironed is you did I just fold them. I never iron IG. I didn't tell her that I don't anymore. What did your mother think of herself? Well, I think that my mother gives mixed messages in this area. I think she has always been very secure in herself, but she doesn't talk that way. She will always say well I feel guilty about this or I feel guilty about that, but I don't think she really does. She's been in a relationship with my dad that has been very supportive and the the interesting thing she wants to do he's always supported and so she's had a I think I think she has a good image of herself. If a child senses that a parent a mother in this case does not have a real good self-concept does that does that make the child have since the need to fulfill or to fulfill the mother or I don't know. I just throw that out as a possibility because I always felt kind of like I please them. No, I never did. I never had never played. No, I never please my parents either whenever I felt that I did in my parents. Let me know they were always praising me for my accomplishments. And if I didn't they would say well, you know, you'll do better next time you need. This is just a temporary setback now in my message was all that was fine. But you know, it could have been a little better. I didn't even hear the that was fine. All I ever heard was criticism until now one of the first words of Praise I've gotten from my mother has been recently when she's talked about my being a good mother and she thinks that I've done a very good job raising my daughter's and that's been and I consider that to be the highest praise that she could ever give anyone because she holds that role in such a steam but she's always had very poor self concept and I feel That that is affected me drastically. Yeah that my self-image was really tied up in hers. And and a lot of my coming to terms with myself has been through coming to understand her if we could fantasize and think about the future down the road. Let's say 15 20 years and it's our daughter sitting here instead of us. What would they be saying about their relationship to us as mothers? Do you think our daughters can look back and say that we enjoyed our life as mothers. I know my daughter wrote recently that she thinks she's starting to like me a lot better. Now, I understand me a lot better. And now that she's home with two small children. She can understand how a woman needs to be out of the home part of the time and that made me think that she probably been resenting that the fact that I wasn't there a lot of time and it was out of necessity to but I didn't feel guilty about it. I just felt what was the thing I have to do. There's no choice in it. So I never made my children feel that I was feeling guilty about it or acted to try to make up to them. It was just a matter of fact kind of thing. But I think she missed coming home to have cookies baking in the oven. So when we lived at Grandma's she would come home from school and the my mother always made it a point to be if she baked if it was baking day. The cookies would be just fresh out of the oven when school was over and the milk glass was there, you know, and he'd sit and talk for a little bit and then when we moved out of there and that didn't happen anymore. Well, she never told me that she missed it. But I think in the bigger maybe more pervasive kinds of things that she would say, I'd been a good model and some things and not such a good model in others. She doesn't think that I'm kind enough to a lot of people, you know that my lifestyle is too selfish. And I think this is something that my parents think too that I don't know what their expectations were that a lot of their a lot of their time and I think they expect a lot of their children's time would be devoted to serving others. You know when I when my time was fully devoted to the family, I've got the message from my daughter's that they wish that I would get out and do something interesting and not just do housework all the time. Now that I've gotten out and done something interesting been on my own a little bit more. I sometimes get the message that they wish they could come home to the bread baking again. So maybe it's a case of never really being able to live up to the expectations that are coming at us from both sides our parents and our kids. Yeah, I think I wonder if our children are not seeing us as Women in Transition. Yes, and I think that my daughter is going to have an easier time with her role as a woman. Then I have had because of the transition and I would assume that that my daughter will be more sure of her role. She will carry less baggage with it. Right? She will have more options. She is told me that she plans on a career and there's no question about it that that's part of her planning and that's the right thing. So, I think that that our children my daughter will probably react to some of the transition that I've gone through some of the pain and the agony of making role changes and that isn't it has not always been an easy thing for a family to absorb. I think that's a generation. Thing that's right. You know those of us we are the generation in transition point between the pretty much full-time house wife before they were even called Homemakers with any regularity they were Housewives or and now my daughter is having some struggle embracing the career of Homemaker after working in a medical service profession, but she has made the decision that until the last child is in kindergarten. Although it's a real Financial sacrifice for them. She's going to stay home and be a full-time mother. Yeah, except that she felt free to make that decision where when I had children that age I didn't feel I had that choice I felt it was my job to stay home right now. We've talked a lot about our relationship to our mothers, but we haven't talked so much about our daughters. I can analyze my role as daughter much more easily than my role as mother. Mmm-hmm. You agree much more. Yes. Yes. I sometimes sit back and think oh my goodness. My kids are thinking of me as their mother because I feel certain reactions Within Me toward my mother and then I look at my daughter and wonder if the way I hold my head or move. My hands is creating a certain response in her. And that's when I realize that this relationship going both directions is very complicated. More than anything we are women in the middle of changing times. We are a part of the continuity of the ages Our Heritage from the past feeds our daughters energies for the future. Tamsen Donner is a part of our heritage in 1846. She and her husband and five daughters crossed the Prairies to establish a new home in California as they neared the end of the journey George Donner became very ill his wife refusing to leave him sent her daughter's on ahead with friends the poet Ruth Whitman writing of mrs. Donner's Journey gives her this moving speech if my boundary stops here. I have daughters to draw new maps on the world. They will draw the lines of my face. They will draw with my gestures my voice they will speak my words thinking they have invented them. They will invent them. They will invent me I will be planted again. And again, I will wake in the eyes of their children's children. They will speak my words. This program was produced at radio station Casey CM by Maryland price. With a lot of help from her friends Barbara Diane and Helen and Bridget Shea Who provided technical assistance the poem was from the book tamsen Donner a woman's Journey written by Ruth Whitman and published by Alice James Books 1977.