Aging mothers and daughters: Relationship changes over time

Abstract

In the midst of health care crises involving older mothers and their adult daughters, health care professionals must attend to the significance of past roles and relationships of aging women. This article explores two concepts that influence aging mothers' and daughters' management of a health crisis. The two concepts, Internalizing Female Lineage and Evolving Matriarchs facilitate understanding of the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship over time. These concepts emerged from a grounded theory study of six older mothers who had experienced an acute hip fracture and their adult caregiving daughters. The purpose of this article is to highlight the experiences of these elderly mothers and their adult daughters prior to a health crisis. These aging mothers and daughters reported that understanding who they were as women, their history, their relationship, and sources of strength during health crisis was essential in order to understand their situations during a health crisis. Study findings are presented in the context of the literature about healthy motherdaughter relationship, mother-daughter transition to caregiving, and future direction of research related to multiple generations negotiating a health crisis.

Understanding informal carers’ experiences of caring for older people with a hip fracture: a systematic review of qualitative studies

“…Building on Meleis's theory of transition [65] Byrne's study [31] identified several patterns within carers' transitions. Meleis et al's [65] notion of transitional experience was also helpful to explore aspects related to the patient-carer relationship after a hip fracture in Shawler's studies [34,35,37].…”

“…Some carers experienced a positive feeling of closeness to their elderly parent through spending more time with them which allowed them to renew their connection and redefine their relationship with the awareness that they were in the last phase of life for example "it's a real gift that we have this time together" [35 p.162]. For others overcoming a health crisis together was a positive experience [35,36]. A sense of filial responsibility could also create anxiety for example: "if anything happens to him there's a little part of me that says 'You know it'll be your fault if you didn't ask those questions and deal with that.'…”