Grandmothers, Daughters and Granddaughters

A friend of mine once remarked that she had to fight hard not to tell her children that their grandmother – her mother, was not the kind, fun, cuddly person they thought she was but actually a cold scheming manipulative witch. My friend couldn’t understand why her mum was putting on this act.

Having heard all the tales of the relationship between my friend and her mother, it was difficult not to conclude that she was indeed a scheming manipulative witch - but why the cuddly grandma act.

After coming across this phenomena many times over the years I’m convinced that it’s no act. The question then is why do some women find it so incredibly difficult to be close to their daughters and yet have no difficulty at all in being close to their grandchildren? You might think that the birth of a grandchild can be a new beginning in a relationship between a grandmother and her daughter – it can be. More commonly, it seems to cement the pre-existing relationship in place.

Over the years the grandmother and her daughter have arrived at a means of being in the same space and just so long as they both follow the rules all will be well… as well as it’s ever been.

One or both players, if asked, may describe the relationship as “close” – it isn’t.

Outwardly, they may seem to enjoy each other’s company – though grandma will set the terms of engagement and, if asked, the daughter would describe a barrier between them like the one you get when you put similar pole magnets together.

The daughter can make changes but she often needs an excuse; the demands of work, or Bob (the partner) or school have gotten in the way of meeting Grandma’s needs. Grandma will acknowledge the dilemma her daughter is in but both players know that in some way the daughter will have to make amends at some point – to bring things back into line.

Grandma and her daughter’s children will seem to share the unconditional positive attention and mutual joy in their interactions that somehow always seemed conditional when the daughter was growing up and still seems that way now. It’s this that puts an invisible barrier between them and this is what the daughter struggles to understand. Me too.

Here is my understanding of the mechanics of it so far.

On a shelf in my office, I have set of Russian dolls. They’re there as a sort of physical metaphor, suggesting that we all carry around with us the different ages and stages we’ve been through. This metaphor can be extended to suggest that some of the software written for these versions of us is left on the hard-drive and is never completely overwritten as we adapt to new circumstances.

There’ll be elements of these programmes that hang around – just in case. The effect can be that we often end up dealing with the world as it was rather than as it is.

My hunch is that the flaw in the relationship between grandma and her daughter was in place before the daughter was even conceived.

Grandma’s relationship with her own mother won’t have been good; lacking in approval, not close or accepting.

People are often faced with a choice of replicating the experience they’ve had or doing the opposite.

To replicate a negative experience it requires you to cut yourself off from the emotional hit of it – but it’s what you know. If you replicate it, at least you’ll be safe from criticism – in theory.

For some women, their new child, especially a daughter, is somehow a threat. I suspect that the threat is that others may see that child as a reflection of the mother – a mother who doesn’t feel too confident about herself. So, in essence, the child reflects these anxieties back on the mother.

It’s often assumed that there’s some sort of magic motherhood dust that filters in through the window as the baby is handed over to the mother – it is, thank God, often like that. But you can’t assume it to be true in every case. Nor can you predict when it will be there in abundance or pretty much absent.

Some are amazed at how they can be so in love with the child; some amazed that they’re not, most muddle through.

For the grandmother, there is no threat offered by the daughter’s baby girl. The baby is a reflection of her mother, so the grandma, who takes leave of her daughter by leaning in for a kiss like the two sides of a letter A, is somehow free to have the baby Velcroed to her. Whatever the barriers to closeness between grandma and her daughter, they’re simply not there between grandma and her granddaughter.

I never see grandmas telling me such stories and asking for help to resolve these problems. They don’t acknowledge any problems. And on the rare occasions when these things get an airing, the grandma will ask why the daughter would voice such nonsense.

My approach is to discuss with the daughter the possibility of acceptance. Acceptance as in Niebuhr's prayer about the courage to change those things that must be changed, to accept those things that can’t and the wisdom to know which is which.

If the daughter aspires to get grandma to understand or change then the resolution of her problem is in grandma’s hands.

If the aspiration is to accept that, for a host of reasons, that’s how it is (for now) and she and grandma may never have the closeness that she hopes to have with her own daughter nor the closeness that grandma will have with her granddaughter then the open wound may start to close.

She can choose not to pass the baton on, melt into her daughter, observe her daughter melting into grandma and be glad that it’s so. The baton has been thrown into the crowd.