A passionate affair

Mothers and daughters often feel they have a love-hate relationship. Kate Holmquist meets the socio-linguist who can explain it

From the moment you give birth to a daughter, you are completely, passionately in love with this little woman who, as she grows, becomes so much like you that it's terrifying. You share interests, laughter and cuddles until one day - somewhere around the onset of adolescence - she starts to hate you as much as she loves you, often simultaneously.

"You don't understand me!" she shouts, even though you know full well that you do understand her better even than you understand yourself. Conversations that begin innocently can within seconds combust until your heart is breaking and your brain is on overdrive as you try to think of ways to quench your daughter's towering inferno of angst. If you think I'm exaggerating, you probably haven't got a daughter. And if you have, the realisation that this love-hate relationship is actually normal comes as a relief.

In her new book, of You're Wearing THAT?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation, renowned socio-linguist and author Deborah Tannen explains that these arguments usually start out with what the mother intends to be supportive advice about the Big Three: hair, clothes and weight, though study skills, social life and money are near the top of the list, too. Some mothers try to avoid conflict by refusing to discuss the Big Three. They may avoid blistering arguments, but in later years, their daughters are likely to turn around accuse their mothers of having been "not caring".

You see, our daughters want us to talk with them about their appearance, even though they can be unintentionally hurt by our advice. So if you don't talk about weight, clothes and hair with your daughter, she thinks you don't love her, but if you do talk to her about them she thinks you're hell-bent on giving her an inferiority complex.

It's a no-win dilemma that makes Tannen smile, as she sips a cappuccino in the courtyard of Dublin's Merrion Hotel, because there is the tiniest ray of hope: "If it's a no-win situation, that means it's a no-lose situation too."

This is the way these no-win/no-lose conversations tend to go. Your daughter comes in wearing a new top. From the way she's lingering slightly longer than usual in the kitchen, you know that she expects you to notice. So you say, "lovely top". Daughter says, "It makes me look fat." And you say, "Actually, it's quite slimming." Daughter says, raising her voice, 'So you do think I'm fat." You lower your voice, to compensate for your daughter's shrill tone, and say, "You're not fat. You're thin. And the top looks nice on you."

Your daughter answers more loudly, "You would say that. You' re my mother." So you lower your voice to a whisper and, as you're leaving the room, say, "I may only be your mother, but in my opinion you look perfect. Well to wear." And then you leave.

Your daughter follows: 'See? You're walking away from me. You don't care!' At this point, you either shout back: "I've cared for you since the moment you were conceived! How dare you say I don't care! You need to show some respect!" Or, alternatively, you say softly, "Let's talk about this later when we're both feeling calmer." So she says, "Are you saying I'm losing it?"

The script is familiar to most mothers and daughters, even if the details change. As the daughter's insecurity makes her more strident and loud, the mother compensates by becoming even quieter and more reserved, culminating in the "you don't care" line. This dynamic actually has a name: complementary schismogenesis. As one person becomes more passionate in her attempts to communicate, the other withdraws, resulting in an escalating spiral of mutual misunderstanding.

Tannen, who is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in the US, has analysed hundreds of such conversations and reckons she has them pegged. Yet she's the last person who would ever give anyone advice on handling these situations. Her intention isn't to solve the problem for us, but to help us see it more clearly. And it's an approach that's got her on Oprah (twice!), among her many media engagements.

"The reaction I've got to the book from mothers and daughters has often been, 'it's so good to know I'm not alone!'," she says. Some callers to radio shows on which she has been interviewed have said that they can't stand the "grouching" between mothers and daughters because they have lost a mother or daughter of their own and would do anything to get her back.

The relationship between mother and daughter is a passionate love affair, Tannen believes, and like all love affairs, it is by definition painful and ambivalent. "[ The conflict] is a set-up built into the relationship. The one person in the world who you most want to see you as perfect - your mother - is the same person who is most likely to see your flaws and tell you about them. A mother's job is to be helpful, but any offer of help implies criticism."

One anecdote in the book concerns a university student who came home with two new pairs of socks, one pair navy and the other pair black. The first time she wore one of the pairs, her mother said, "are you sure you aren't wearing one black and one blue?" The student was enraged that her mother would think her incapable of wearing matching socks, yet who else on the planet, other than your own mother, is going to care whether or not your socks match? From this new perspective, the student realised that her mother was expressing her love, even if her query was annoying.

A book on socio-linguistic analysis shouldn't by definition be able to make its readers cry, but Tannen's own mother was dying while she was writing the book, which she thinks has given it a certain emotional depth that readers have been relating to, resulting in the book topping the US best-seller lists.

Tannen despised her mother for many years and idolised her father, a Polish immigrant, who supported his family by working in a factory from the age of 14. A quiet intellectual, he eventually became a lawyer by studying in night school while continuing at the factory until mid-life. When she talks about her father, who is now 98, Tannen's eyes light up. She has always been able to converse with him about intellectual matters - he "gets her" in other words. Her more practical, down-to-earth mother remained in the background, calling out "what are you talking about?" Tannen says that her mother was interfering, jealous of Tannen's friends and never understanding her daughter's need to pursue the intellectual life, which included her decision, at 30, never to have children.

Tannen was one of those daughters who sided with her father and belittled her mother and even when father and daughter tried to hide it politely, this interaction was never far from the surface.

Tannen had her Georgetown students help her to record mother-daughter conversations. The bitterness in them often makes for shocking reading because the broken-record arguments that spin around and around ring so true.Yet even though the mother-daughter relationship can be fraught, mothers never give up. One of the most touching stories in Tannen's book is an account by a mother who received an e-mail card from her daughter, expressing the daughter's thanks for all the things her mother had done for her. The mother nearly cried, saying, "I've been waiting 35 years to hear that!" Daughters and their mothers eventually find equilibrium in adulthood.

Whenever Tannen appeared on Phil Donohoe, Oprah or at an academic conference while her mother was alive, her mother would be in the audience and was always first at the microphone to make a public comment. It became something of a party piece, with Tannen introducing her mother.

"It was only in later years that I realised that my father's quiet intellectual approach was important in my personality, but it wasn't enough for me to succeed. My mother was out-going and could talk to anyone, which is a gift that she gave me.I'm glad that she lived long enough for me to appreciate it," Tannen says. "The longer my mother lived, the more I realised that I cherished and sought her love. I didn't think about this earlier because I took it for granted."

From a linguistic point of view, she has learned compassion for parents' verbal failings and when her students complain of something awful that a parent has said, she urges them to keep it in context: "Your parents have said millions of words to you, so they said the wrong thing half-a-dozen times."

Tannen produces evidence that e-mails, mobile phone calls and text messaging have enhanced relationships between mothers and daughters. An electronic message that allows a considered response holds none of the landmines inherent in a face-to-face conversation.

"I was talking to a mother who said that she could never turn her phone off because her daughter needed to reach her at any time. The mother was 50 years old and the daughter was 30." This mutually engrossing love affair never loses its intensity, even as mother and daughter grow with age. She tells of a 60-year-old woman who carefully organises her wardrobe every time she visits her mother. She rifles through the clothes in the hotel room closet, anxious to choose the right thing. And every time she sees her 80-year-old mother, the mother says: "You're wearing that?" Yet if her mother didn't comment that way, her daughter could be disappointed.

A daughter's quest to discover where she ends and her mother begins means that, perversely, she loves precisely the things she hates about her mother. A daughter may not like her mother's words, but she wants her to say them anyway. "If you'd asked me a few years ago, I'd have said I'd spent my life trying to escape my mother," Tannen adds. "If you asked me now, I'd say I have spent it trying to find her."

You're Wearing THAT?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation is published by Virago, £9.99 UK