Are You And Your Mother BFF?
Posted by Michelle Moquin on July 22nd, 2012
Good morning!
So, I am posting later than usual. I wanted to write something today but I have been having internet problems this morning, not to mention a visit from AT&T. All resolved, so I am just going post a write that I thought was good for a Sunday morning post.
Why Moms and Daughters Can Never Really Be Friends
Be honest: What mother-daughter pair among us hasn’t watched reruns of Gilmore Girls (or the more current tween smash Pretty Little Liars) and wished — at least a little bit — that we, too, could be just like Lorelai and Rory? Exchanging witty banter, enjoying each other’s company for days on end, chatting on the phone three times an hour? Or maybe you have that sort of relationship. These days — much more so than when I was growing up — many moms and daughters do. They act less like parent-children than old college roommates. A friend once told me she and her 20-something daughter went halfsies on a subscription to Teen Vogue. “I like the fashion,” she told me, though I think there was more to it.
Indeed, this generation of moms and daughters has more in common with one another than ever before. They share clothes, they share secrets. In some cases, giving rise to the notion of cougars and MILFs, they even share men. And now they’ve got their own reality show: VH1′s in-the-works Mama Drama will chronicle Dina Lohan-types who “share drinks, wardrobes, and social lives with their daughters, and occasionally need to be reminded that they’re the parent.” In a recent New York Magazine story, mother and daughter Julie and Samantha Bilinkas have matching t-shirts, catchphrases, and workout routines. At 50 and 19, respectively, they’re such good friends — and so physically similar — that they’re often mistaken for girlfriends, both in the friendly and the romantic sense. I don’t know which is worse.
Let’s put aside the more commonly-asked question these days — that is, should you be Facebook friends with your children — and get down to a much more basic quandary: Can you be real life friends with them? Can mothers and daughters ever be friends, truly? More — should they be?
I understand why it may seem perfectly harmless. The mother-daughter BFF trap is an easy one to fall into. (And yes — I do mean trap.) We have come to believe that treating children as adults has benefits. There’s the sense that befriending our children — and especially our daughters — will cause them to behave better, rebel less. After all, the reasoning goes, teens are less likely to spout off to their friends (if only slightly) than to their mothers; why not approach mothering more like friendship? If we treat our kids like “one of us,” will they respect us more? Will we have more control over them? Will they like us better?
At any age, but especially as girls grow into young women, mothers like to feel connected to their daughters and, in many cases, their daughters’ friends. At a time when there is so much societal pressure to stay young, this helps keep us feeling youthful. It also helps us feel appreciated long after our children stop “needing” us to survive. And it’s a form of validation: We’re cool enough that our children actually want to hang out with us! Maybe we even look closer to their age than to our own, thanks to Botox and all the other cosmetic enhancements now available at our fingertips. Which, of course, begs the question: If we’re so afraid to be mothers, why did we do it in the first place?
The fact is that the mother-daughter best friendship doesn’t leave much room for the traditional role of being a mom. Or, for that matter, being a daughter. For one thing, when the best friend role trumps the mother role, a competitive dynamic can emerge. Take Alexis and Mimi. Twenty-three-year-old Alexis has always been very close to her mom, though sometimes Mimi “is a little… intense,” says Alexis. “When I was a teenager I couldn’t buy anything without my mom’s approval — and it wasn’t about money,” she says. “She loves fashion, and just wants me to know her opinion.” This need for Mimi’s approval has been tough to shake — for both of them. Sometimes, when Alexis comes home to her parents’ house for the weekend, Mimi will question something her daughter is wearing, or her haircut, or her color eye shadow. “I guess she’s looking out for me, but now I’m nervous to pick things out for myself,” says Alexis. “Like I think, should I be wearing this to work? Sometimes I can’t tell. I don’t think things look that bad. But, I don’t know, maybe she’s seeing something I’m not.”
More likely, it’s that Mimi — consciously or not — is living vicariously through Alexis. Or maybe she likes the control and sense of purpose. Because if whatever Alexis does is never quite up to snuff until Mimi steps in, her role as mother will never be diminished. But the sad side effect for Alexis is that she’ll have a hard time believing that anything she does on her own is good enough.
Thirty-year-old Julie tells her mom, Kat, everything — mostly. Growing up, Julie would bring her friends home to get advice from Kat on “just about anything: boys, makeup, whatever,” says Julie. “She was the ‘cool mom.’” Since she got married, though, Julie’s moved towards more of a “need to know” model, especially when it comes to her husband. “I used to tell my mom everything about Billy, like when we first started dating,” she says. “But at one point, he was like, ‘You don’t tell your mom about our sex life, do you?’ He was furious, and mortified, and I saw his point. Obviously I wouldn’t have wanted him to talk about me with his dad!” Julie’s closeness with Kat had caused trouble in other ways. Whenever she and Billy argued, she’d turn to Kat for advice, like she always had — until she was unable to react without her mother’s input. “I’d have to call her up and be like, ‘This happened. Should I be mad?’ It was almost like there were three of us in the relationship.” That’s because there were.
As mothers, we want our daughters to grow up to be, at least in theory, independent. We want them to feel loved, and we want to feel love ourselves. But when we’re over involved, even if our girls actually like telling us all their deepest and darkest secrets, at some point, they’ll lose confidence in themselves. They’ll question their ability to make their own decisions. They’ll remain children, indefinitely — and not in a good way. Like in the case of Julie and Billy, being “married to Mom” can interfere in a daughter’s ability to form close relationships with anyone else but her mother, including her husband. Or she won’t learn how to parent her own kids. Why should she? Mom’s right there doing it for her. Like writer Lena Dunham, creator of HBO’s Girls, has said of her parents, “I feel like I’m constantly asking them to please stay out of my work life but also to please bring me soup.” She’s being funny, but that’s not a relationship. That’s a service agreement.
But perhaps most importantly, unlike a best friend, a mother and daughter relationship is permanent. This makes it naturally more intimate — and more intense. There’s a hierarchy that exists — or should — between moms and daughters that doesn’t exist between friends. You’re not equals and you’re not supposed to be.
This doesn’t mean that mothers and daughters shouldn’t enjoy each other’s company. They can even tell each other secrets, once in a while. Just remember to honor the boundaries. The mother-daughter relationship is special enough in its natural form. Breaking away won’t make your bond with each other weaker. In fact, it’ll make you both stronger.
*******
Readers: My mother and I are not BFF, and I am perfectly fine with that. I was never one to call my mother everyday and chat on the phone for hours on end…and quite frankly, I like it that way. I like the relationship my mother and I have…we each have our independance and we both enjoy our company together. She has her best friends and I have mine. Again, I like it that way.
What do you have to say?…Anything? Blog me.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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July 22nd, 2012 at 12:07 pm
I like it that way too with my mother, Michelle.
July 22nd, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Popcorn: Even Better Than We Realized
My mom has a passion for popcorn that she indulges almost daily…and it could be one reason that she’s still going strong in her 80s.
How so? A new study has revealed that this high-fiber, low-fat favorite has more healthful antioxidants than was previously recognized—even more, in fact, than fruits and veggies.
Researchers analyzed four commercial brands of popcorn, two air-popped and two microwavable, using a new method that simulates part of the digestion process to extract and measure the popcorn’s polyphenols.
Like other antioxidants, polyphenols are thought to protect cells against damage from environmental exposures and wear and tear, thus helping prevent cancer and other diseases.
Findings:
Per serving (about two tablespoons of unpopped kernels or about three to five cups popped), popcorn provided about 300 mg of polyphenols, depending on brand—nearly double the amount in a typical serving of many fruits and vegetables.
Another surprise:
The hull of the popcorn kernel—the annoying part that gets stuck in your teeth—actually had the highest polyphenol concentration.
In fact, about 90% of polyphenols come from the hull!
Nutritional gold:
Popcorn also is packed with cholesterol-lowering, appetite-appeasing fiber. Unlike many other grain products, which are processed and diluted with other ingredients, popcorn is a minimally processed whole grain.
Just one serving of popcorn provides more than 70% of a person’s recommended daily intake of whole grains.
Caveats:
Popcorn’s health benefits can be vastly reduced by unhealthful preparation or serving methods, such as cooking it in a lot of oil, pouring on the salt or drenching it in butter (or even worse, the fake butter used on movie theater popcorn).
To get the greatest nutritional bang from your popcorn, stick with air-popped…for extra flavor, sprinkle on some spices or stir in some nuts.
Source: Joe Vinson, PhD, is a professor of chemistry at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania who has analyzed healthful components in chocolate, nuts and other common foods.
His research on popcorn was presented at a recent meeting of the American Chemical Society.
July 22nd, 2012 at 12:32 pm
I’m one of the lucky ones. My mom and I are very close and sometimes I admit we talk sometimes several times a day even though we are in different states. She was the last person I came out to though, I was so afraid to disappoint her.
/SB
July 22nd, 2012 at 3:02 pm
I work in Histology and we use large amounts formaldehyde for processing and preserving surgical human tissue specimens and biopsies.
It is absolutely not something that you want to be in prolonged contact with, the vapours are eye wateringly strong and it causes a lot of irritation, even the slightest little splash but this article doesn’t surprise me at all.
Chinese production is largely unregulated, well, atleast not to the standard it should be. I dread to think how many chemicals are added for one reason or another.
But don’t rule out the British. Their clothing is so polluted with different chemicals that one in three of the United Kingdom develop an allergy in their life times.
================
But formaldehyde isn’t the only concern. In August last year, Greenpeace published a report, Dirty Laundry 2, revealing it had detected traces of toxic chemicals — specifically nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs) — in products made by 14 big-brand clothing manufacturers, including Adidas and H&M.
=================
Adidas and H&M said they were committed to removing hazardous chemicals from their supply chain by 2020. That means that in the meantime, welcome to the poisons we subject your body to when you buy our clothes.
E.
July 22nd, 2012 at 3:10 pm
Just so you know when you buy that expensive furniture. It also turns out that the nice expensive shelves use urea formaldehyde to stick them together, this actually turns into a Volatile Organic Compounds(VOC) at room temperature. Search and learn, you will be scared witless. –
Also the covering of a lot of modern office furniture contains a substance that keeps the fabric clean ie., dirt doesn’t sink in to the fabric a sort of Teflon type stuff.
This stuff is almost lethal. It kills you slowly. Just slow enough so the users can’t be tried in court for the connection to the various ailments and cancers it gives you.
Robert,rt
July 22nd, 2012 at 3:29 pm
Michelle, this is my first write in. I have been loving your blog for almost 5 years. I kind of know you. Well, I know people who went to school with you.
Your mother is beautiful. One can easily see where you get you good looks from. I have to say that some of the people I know that went to school with you sometimes say the worst things about you, like “she wasn’t that attractive when she was in school”.
Or “if you knew her in high school, you would never suspect that she could write like that”, or the “I wonder who writes her blog for her”?
The green-eyed jealously is so apparent as to be scary. I wonder what they say about me behind my back.
Recently one said that all the congratulations you received surely added to your big head, and that she would never give you the satisfaction by mentioning your blog to you.
When I asked how you demonstrated that you had the big head, she said that you always waltz in to their group get togethers as if you are all that.
I have been to a few of those in which you were present. I have never seen you do that so I racked that claim up to jealousy too.
Just thought you’d like to know.
Sandra
July 22nd, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Thanks for this article Michelle. I have been considering my mother my BFF for 11 years now. We used to be at odds at almost everything.
I used to think that she didn’t respect the way I handled the men in my life. But about 11 years ago she opened up to me and said that all her life she had been afraid to be alone.
She that when our father left her she thought that she would never make it. So she did not want me to experience that type of loneliness that is why she always insisted that I give the men in my life second and third chances.
Understanding was everything to me. I told her it was a much different world for women now and that we could live quite happily without a man hanging on our arms are waking up in our beds.
I introduced her to your blog about 3 years ago and she has been a really different woman ever since.
At 72 she is a staunch advocate for women’s rights. She said that if our father was still alive she would give him a real piece of her mind for all the cheating on her that he did.
Yes, we are very close now.
Chloe
July 22nd, 2012 at 8:55 pm
Hmm, not very close, I call her weekly though bc I love her, she gave me life. I have a BFF I call mom/ma, she’s older and when she hasn’t heard from me in a few weeks, she always texts me and asks, ‘Lilliiii, WAT have you been up to?’ – & I spill the beans. I have to admit that I like that she acts like a mother to me, mine was a bit absent after age 12, too much tweenie/teenie to handle apparently, now, she’s just old in age and attitude so if she asks questions and I just say everything is great, usually it is so it’s not a major lie : ).
I have a much closer relationship with my girl, though I like that she understands my deal, mother first/no BFF – though when she’s older, it could happen.
I think some women want to relive their teen/early twenties and I’m ok with that for them though sharing too much with a teen daughter is odd to me (travel your own stages of development that were missed alone or with another pal), the ‘vicarious’ experience through your kids is just too much pressure for them, just my opinion.
If your 50 and want a tattoo, getting drunk with your 18 yr old kid and doing it together is not my idea of a quality night, lol, to each her own though…I like the idea that I teach my girl how to assess a situation and she trusts her own judgement, I won’t always be around.
I do facebook with her bc I think it’s my job to check what she’s saying to who, she’s a kid, and this way she knows I’m checking in from time to time, I don’t stalk daily, just enough so she knows I’m around. Sorry, but that I consider my job.
Larry, you here in LA?
Al (a’mode’) is that you commenting above?
Luv, Zen Lill
July 23rd, 2012 at 5:38 am
I work at a retail clothing store on the lower end of quality in the USA. Some items I can’t touch for very long or my skin starts to turn red.
Recently we got in some rain boots and I had to step away from the shipment box the chemical smell was so strong. Over the holidays when we get our fleece clothing in I can’t touch them because my hands break out in hives.
They also get a weird feeling to them as if my hands are being coated in something that won’t go away until I wash my hands thoroughly. The store itself when you walk in has a weird chemical smell to it.
Thankfully it doesn’t bother me enough to have to quit, but I worry about the long-term effects sometimes. I ALWAYS wash my clothes before wearing now, no matter where I buy them from.
July 23rd, 2012 at 5:54 am
Zen Lill:
It was nice to hear that you remembered that I was to be in LA about this time. Without giving away, just yet, what I do, I will tell you that I was re-assigned to Palermo, Italy.
The war in Syria is getting so hot that all personal working in connection with the events there have been called from vacation or leave and assigned to locations close to the action.
I drew Palermo because it was necessary for the division I work with to be available to reach the Syrian border with Turkey or use sources I can’t name here to be on stop of the events in Israel should the violence spill over there.
I was very much looking forward to meeting the famous Zen Lill. I hope you will not have forgotten me by the time this is resolved.
Larry
July 23rd, 2012 at 5:59 am
Hafa adai:
I know that many of you off Island are as upset with the government of Guam for not returning your tax returns on time as we are here on the island.
Finally, we have had enough:
====================
Tax Refund Plaintiff’s Seek Permanent Injunction to Force GovGuam to Reform
Last Updated on Monday, 23 July 2012 19:51
Written by Kevin Kerrigan
Monday, 23 July 2012 16:20
Guam News – Guam News
Guam – The plaintiff’s in a lawsuit filed last year over GovGuam’s failure to pay tax refunds in a timely manner, are now asking the District Court for “Summary Judgement” seeking a permanent injunction to compel GovGuam to reform its administration of tax refunds.
The original case was filed in April 2011. GovGuam moved to dismiss it last August, but following a hearing in January of this year, the Court issued an Order granting Class Action status and allowing the suit to move forward.
Summary Judgement is a decision from the Judge granted when there is no genuine dispute over the material facts in a lawsuit. The motion filed Monday argues that GovGuam does not dispute that for years they have failed to provide tax refunds in a timely manner, leaving island residents waiting years before getting their tax refunds.
READ the Motion for Summary Judgement HERE
Monday’s motion for Summary Judgement was filed in District Court by Attorney Ignacio Aguigui of Lujan, Aguigui and Perez.
Aguigui notes that GovGuam borrowed money to reduce its tax liability in December 2011 and again in June 2012, but GovGuam “still owes $30 million in refunds, and will owe over $100 million next year, with no money set aside to pay the mounting debt.” And he argues that GovGuam has ignored laws that require that reserves be set aside so that funds are available to pay the refunds.
The motion is also critical of Rev and Tax’s policy for expediting refunds calling it “arbitrary” and “ripe with favoritism.” And it accuses the Department of Revenue and Tax of expediting “refunds to the named plaintiffs in an attempt to moot the case, even though the named plaintiffs never requested expedited refunds.”
Aguigui argues that all of these “essential facts” are “undisputed,” and as a result “this matter can be decided as a matter of law.”
The Motion asks for the Court to:
* declare that GovGuam has violated the Organic Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment
* order GovGuam to set aside revenues on an ongoing basis to pay income tax refunds
* issue a permanent injunction that compels defendants to fundamentally reform their administration of the tax refunds
The case is set for a hearing on August 21.
==============================
It is a shame that we have to resort to a lawsuit to get the government here to respond to the needs of its people.
Peter
July 23rd, 2012 at 6:22 am
I have a very close relationship with my daughters. They are in their mid 40′s. I’m glad you printed the above article. It gave a chance to introduce to them your blog.
I discovered it about a week ago. My friends have been sending me back issues. It is great! You have a new fan.
Melanie
July 23rd, 2012 at 8:26 am
Personally since all the victims were white, I’m okay with it. This may seem like a racist statement, but it is not.
The way I look at it is this is a white boy law designed to make them feel better about their small dicks. Only white america can defend allowing the ordinary person to buy a gun which has as its only purpose the ability to kill 10 or more people in less that a minute.
Who are the people that look you in the face and say it is a 2nd amendment issue, I love to hunt. What is anyone hunting with a rifle that can fire 200 or more rounds a minute. What kind of ignorance must the speaker have to make the claim they need that kind of fire power to hunt defenseless animals.
I kinda wish for more of these kinds of mass senseless killings by white people against white people will continue. Let them kill each other until they get a clue that it is stupid to let people buy weapons designed to kill a bunch of people at one time in a very short period. Or let them perish by the gun.
Who will really miss these gun crazy idiots? So for me, I’m all for you crazy bastards killing each other. Get on with it.
Paul
July 23rd, 2012 at 9:01 am
Paul, you are a bigot. There were a lot of OTWs hurt both physically and mentally by the maniac.
July 23rd, 2012 at 9:07 am
I agree with you Paul. Our north American brothers don’t usually find their white citizens as culpable as they do their OTW citizens.
I am visiting a cousin here in the US. Watching the events, already I noticed that the white media is being conciliatory, it is being speculated as to whether he is regretting what he did. Even to the point of suggesting that he saved some police lives by telling them about the bombs in his apartment.
If he were an OTW, he would be just an evil being. Whites would be advocating the need to profile the OTW’s race.
But now that is a white boy, no such idea would come up because it would a violation of the white races’ right.
Eduardo
July 23rd, 2012 at 9:46 am
If the Colorado killer were muslim, he’d be considered a terrorist. But since he’s white, he’s just considered crazy.
/SB