Mothers, daughters and the uncomfortable truths of love

This has been a season of mothers. But while Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me unveiled around the world, I have had a rough time getting some daughters to write about their mothers for an edited volume in Bangla. “I cannot do this while she is still around,” explained one writer in unexpected edginess. “I am sorry,” said simply, another.

Idolised, worshipped, immortalised — mothers are stuff of legends. Brave and unvanquished, stories of their unconditional love are aplenty. But I did not want those. As a daughter I live the reality of a complex relationship with Ma which is joyous yet fraught with predicaments. Our values, choices in life and manifestations of emotions diverge wildly, as does our ability to accommodate those differences. Among my friends with their mothers and Ma’s friends with their daughters, I witness as much discord and conflict as I do empathy and sisterhood. So I wanted the invited writers to share stories that complicate the supposed bonhomie of the mother-daughter relationship — and realised how overwhelming it is for most of us. 

Motherhood stereotypes

While it works brilliantly for patriarchy to burden the mother with boundless and unqualified responsibilities, the everyday mother struggles. With keeping her home afloat, her employers satisfied, her children safe, and the world generally happy — she is a tired mess of nerves on most days. Often her only option is to play into the ‘sacrificing mother’ stereotype to survive a severely dysfunctional system loaded heavily against her. Unfortunately, this makes it impossible for children to see their mothers as human — with limited abilities, time and energy. In communities where she is equated to the Devi, it escalates pressure, inflates expectations, and deepens misery. Daughters, who are constantly measured against this ‘greatness’ of their mothers, grow up resenting this seemingly irrefutable fate and the impending failures. But ironically they also feel responsible — a nemesis to their mother’s destiny — obliged to make up for all the injustices done to their mothers. These relationships mired in years of emotional blackmail and the tyranny of compensatory appeasement leave incurable wounds on both lives — difficult to write about.     

“I didn’t like my mother using lipstick”, a friend had once confessed, “She looked slutty”. Children are often unable to reconcile with the sexuality of their parents, but a daughter’s reaction to her mother’s expression of desire is at best denial and at worst violence. There is a particular phase in life when the daughter enters her youth, nervous with excitement at the onset of spring, and a mother leaves hers with a sense of regret and the anxiety of the winter ahead. In that terrible twilight, I have seen mothers and daughters become each other’s cruelest rivals, fierce competitors for attention and affection. This is heartbreaking to write about — unless the mother is much older and the daughter wiser still, and some form of reparation has taken place. 

Feeling ‘unmothered’

And then there are also those with no experience of a mother’s love — not because they had no ‘mother’ but because their mothers were incapable, unavailable, or simply did not want to be mothers.

“I can’t write about the scars of feeling totally un-mothered,” said another potential writer, adding, “I have spent too much money in therapy to open wounds again.” Memories of mothers can carry experiences of abuse and feelings of abandonment.

Where motherhood’s sanctity is indisputable, narratives of being destroyed by mothers are unspeakable secrets. 

But often women have no role in deciding to be a mother. Those unable medically are judged with stigma, blame and shame as incomplete women, even inauspicious. But those who don’t want to be mothers even after society doggedly embeds the desire for motherhood deep in their hearts are treated more severely. They are labelled selfish, lacking the very essence of womanhood. Viewed not as a matter of will and ability but duty and obligation, this destiny of motherhood is endured by women accompanied by confusion, often regret, and they may become inaccessible, distant, hard mothers.

If only the glorification of motherhood could be restrained, making space for agency of women and mindful consideration for motherhood, we may yet have more fulfilling relationships. 

But Mary Oliver wrote in her poem, Oxygen, “…It is/ your life, which is so close/ to my own that I would not know/ when to drop the knife of separation…”. 

So as Ma ages and her vulnerabilities become more acute, we come closer in our mutual need to be needed. The aging body has no room to hide anger, anxiety, hurt. I can see her vividly now as I also watch reluctantly how inevitable similarities creep into me. Both of us struggle to renew our efforts at truce, our practice of compassion. On some days we fail but on others we survive. And the mother figure remains for her daughter as uncomfortable as truth and just as inescapable. 

(This column navigates the various worlds of entangled relationships attempting to celebrate, cope with, and reimagine the meanings of our connections. The author is a writer, cultural practitioner, social activist, and traveller. ‘All Our Loves: Journeys with Polyamory in India’ is her first book in English, published by Aleph in 2025.)