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by Lucy Corry What does your mother really mean when she asks why you're growing your hair? US author Deborah Tannen turns the spotlight on mother-daughter communication for her new book, You're Wearing That?. She offers some tips on navigating the mother-daughter minefield - and opens up about her own relationship with her mother.
"If you'd asked me even a few years ago, I'd have said I'd spent my life trying to escape my mother," American linguist Deborah Tannen says with a wry smile. "If you asked me now, I'd say I have spent it trying to find her." The author has turned the spotlight on mothers and daughters in You're Wearing That?, a study of this often volatile relationship. "The mother-daughter relationship is definitely more fraught than that of father-son," she says. "That's not to say there aren't conflicts between fathers and sons, but the mother-daughter relationship in general is more fraught because there's more talking. "We talk more and we talk about more personal things, so there are more chances to say the wrong thing." Nearly all the women she interviewed spoke of the same problem - mothers feel their daughters are super-sensitive, while daughters feel they are being subjected to constant criticism. "It's a mother's job to help her daughter improve and be the best she can be - and your mother is the one person you most want to think you're perfect," Tannen explains. MY MOTHER, MY SELF
Writing the book gave Tannen a chance to explore her own relationship with her mother, who died aged 93, before it was finished. "I had always intended to write a book about my father, but once I started writing about mothers and daughters, it was fascinating. She was dying and I was spending more time with her, so our relationship was changing." While she includes many of her own frustrations with her mother's criticism in the book, Tannen says the pair enjoyed a close bond. "I wrote about the problematic aspects but my mother was such a cheering squad. She was always telling me, you're wonderful, so fabulous... she was great in that way." She laughs when asked if she is like her mother. "I think we're pretty different - well, maybe we're emotionally similar, intellectually different. "I'm 5ft 9 and blonde, she was 5ft 2 and dark; I have a PhD, she didn't graduate from high school; I'm very analytic and contemplative, she was about as unanalytic as you could get. I could count on my mother to miss the point of anything I was trying to do, I could count on my father to get it. "But my mother was completely unselfconscious about talking to absolutely anybody - she was who she was. I think I got my ease with people from her."
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