Existing research suggests that illness can have profound implications for the family. The purpose of this thesis is to explore mothers and daughters experiences of the mothers breast cancer in order to determine how their lives were affected by the illness. In particular, I focus on shifts that occurred in their family roles, responsibilities, and relationships. Twelve qualitative interviews were performed with four mother-daughter dyads. Each mother and daughter participated in an initial interview together, as well as a separate follow-up interview. Interview data was analyzed thematically using a blended feminist-interpretive approach. The major themes emerging from the analysis pertained to: shifts in family roles and responsibilities, coping with breast cancer, and growth in family relationships. These themes identify specific aspects of mothers and daughters lives that were affected by breast cancer. Specifically, the findings contribute to the overarching theme that mothers and daughters experienced biographical disruption as a result of the mothers breast cancer, in that the illness required the women to re-assess their everyday lives and expectations for the future. However, the range of experiences described by the mothers and daughters suggest that the degree to which biographical disruption occurred varied depending on the extent to which their lives were altered by breast cancer. Therefore, I conclude that mothers and daughters experienced varying degrees of biographical disruption as a result of the mothers breast cancer. This conclusion indicates that the breast cancer diagnosis has an array of significant implications for mothers and daughters, some of which continue well beyond the completion of acute care. Recognizing that mothers and daughters family roles, responsibilities, and relationships were affected to some extent by the breast cancer experience will help to improve the types of support offered to women in the future.

Existing research suggests that illness can have profound implications for the family. The purpose of this thesis is to explore mothers and daughters experiences of the mothers breast cancer in order to determine how their lives were affected by the illness. In particular, I focus on shifts that occurred in their family roles, responsibilities, and relationships. Twelve qualitative interviews were performed with four mother-daughter dyads. Each mother and daughter participated in an initial interview together, as well as a separate follow-up interview. Interview data was analyzed thematically using a blended feminist-interpretive approach. The major themes emerging from the analysis pertained to: shifts in family roles and responsibilities, coping with breast cancer, and growth in family relationships. These themes identify specific aspects of mothers and daughters lives that were affected by breast cancer. Specifically, the findings contribute to the overarching theme that mothers and daughters experienced biographical disruption as a result of the mothers breast cancer, in that the illness required the women to re-assess their everyday lives and expectations for the future. However, the range of experiences described by the mothers and daughters suggest that the degree to which biographical disruption occurred varied depending on the extent to which their lives were altered by breast cancer. Therefore, I conclude that mothers and daughters experienced varying degrees of biographical disruption as a result of the mothers breast cancer. This conclusion indicates that the breast cancer diagnosis has an array of significant implications for mothers and daughters, some of which continue well beyond the completion of acute care. Recognizing that mothers and daughters family roles, responsibilities, and relationships were affected to some extent by the breast cancer experience will help to improve the types of support offered to women in the future.

Amy Tan¡¦s The Joy Luck Club and Cristina Garcia¡¦s Dreaming in Cuban propose the matrilineal narrative of woman suffering and spiritual growth. Multiple narrators tell personal stories about the past events to cope with their current concerns and coming difficulties. Their storytelling functions as a way of making sense of experiences and fashioning identity. The first chapter explores how the narrative activity enables the del Pino and Joy Luck women to construct a preferred version of personal experiences. They not only tell stories to create idealized self-images but also live their lives to justify the images. Though they portray themselves as capable women in personal stories, they often appear vulnerable and mentally unstable in reality. Such contradiction results from the traumatic events the women leave untold, and they resist telling partly because of their madness and partly because of their repudiation of the events. The second chapter will examine their traumatic experiences to understand how their emotional problems determine the representation of their personal narratives. Due to the early traumatic experiences, the women develop maladaptive schemas to cope with their negative emotions. The schemas, however, undermine their interpersonal relationships and prevent them from fulfilling the basic needs. While wrestling with their emotional problems, they unwittingly transplant schemas into the next generation. The third chapter examines how certain crucial moments in their lives enlighten the women to have awareness of their schemas at the core of their suffering. The death of the family members and serious mother-daughter disagreements provide the opportunity for the women to move beyond the limited way they used to perceive themselves and others. With an open and positive attitude, they relate the traumatic experiences to understand how their early suffering contributes to their present difficulties and outgrow what has troubled them before.

This thesis sets out to explore Sara Suleri¡¦s memoir Meatless Days in terms of trauma, memory and writing. The first chapter traces the historical background and Pakistanis¡¦ trauma framed in nostalgia. The second chapter probes into the teaching of Suleri¡¦s mother: the performance, the unplot and the identity, in which I resort to Julia Kristeva¡¦s critique essays to replace Suleri¡¦s mother¡¦s position in Pakistani society since she exists there with ¡§heterogeneous¡¨ cultural and national identity. The third chapter, focusing on Benjamin¡¦s theory on history and memory, deals with Sara Suleri unique writing style. Suleri¡¦s Meatless Days uses her allegorical writing to open herself to the possibilities of silence, introspection, isolation and loneliness in the memoir. Suleri¡¦s writing shares some of the single-minded self-absorption with her mother and has somehow been channeled in to her memorized and lost beloved. The memoir then develops into a story that seems to involve synchronicity, but actually involves our need for synchronicity when synchronicity is simply the way coincidence indulges itself in wish-fulfillment.

In recent research body dissatisfaction has been identified as an important risk and maintenance factor in the development of eating disorders, and studies in adolescent girls have shown a relationship between body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. Sociocultural theories have highlighted the maternal influence on body dissatisfaction and weight concerns, however, contemporary research reveals contradictory results regarding a mother’s influence on the body dissatisfaction and eating concerns of her adolescent daughter. This study investigated whether a significant relationship existed between body dissatisfaction of mothers and body dissatisfaction of their adolescent daughters in a private Johannesburg high school. A convenience sample of 97 mother-daughter pairs completed a demographic questionnaire and the Body Dissatisfaction scale of the Eating Disorder Inventory-3 (EDI-3). The daughters also completed the three scales of the EDI-3 which measure disturbed eating directly in order to screen for the presence of disturbed eating attitudes and behaviours among the adolescent girls in the sample. No significant relationship was demonstrated between the body dissatisfaction of mothers and their adolescent daughters. Among both the mothers and daughters positive relationships were shown between body dissatisfaction and body mass index (BMI). Based on the results, a mother’s own body dissatisfaction does not influence her daughter’s body dissatisfaction and disturbed eating attitudes and behaviours. Based on the screening for the presence of disturbed eating attitudes and behaviours (measured by the Body Dissatisfaction, Drive for Thinness and Bulimia scales of the EDI-3), there were girls in the sample who demonstrated disordered eating attitudes and behaviours. Higher levels of disordered eating were associated with having a higher BMI. Girls with a higher BMI tended to perceive themselves as overweight and showed more disturbed eating. The findings of the study conform to the findings of other South African studies on high school girls regarding the presence of disturbed eating attitudes and behaviours. / Dissertation (MA (Counselling Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Psychology / unrestricted

Master of Science / Department of Family Studies and Human Services / Karen Myers-Bowman / Female adolescent sexual behavior has several potential negative life consequences including: pregnancy, sexually transmitted infection, and HIV/AIDS. Educating parents on how they play a role in the decision-making process regarding the sexual behavior of their adolescent daughters has important implications for Family Life Educators. This thesis explores maternal influence on the risky sexual behavior of female adolescents related to age at first sexual intercourse, contraceptive use, and number of partners. ANOVA was used to explore the relationships between a variety of aspects in the mother-daughter relationship. Findings show there are associations between time spent together, perceptions of closeness, and communication in mother-daughter relationships, and contraceptive use at first and most recent intercourse and total number of partners.

Diary of a Gay Bride is a memoir about an artist planning her multi-cultural gay wedding in hopes her dying mother will be able to attend.

The purpose of the study was to examine the relation of mother daughter relationship to well- being of the daughters with respect to self-esteem and life satisfaction. The sample was consisting of 426 female university students from Ankara and Kirsehir with a mean age of 21.62 (SD= 2.35). The scales which were used in that study are Adult Daughter Questionnaire (MAD) (Rastogi, 1995), The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965), The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, &amp / Griffin, 1985). Adult Daughter Questionnaire (MAD) (Rastogi, 1995) has been used to measure the current mother-daughter relationship. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) has been used to measure global self esteem, and The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin, 1985) has been used to measure the global life satisfaction. The canonical correlation analysis was utilized to examine the relationships between the mother daughter questionnaire&rsquo / s subscales ( connectedness, interdependency and trust in hierarchy) and the two indicators of well being namely life satisfaction and self-esteem. The results of the study showed that the three indicators of the mother-daughter relationship (connectedness, interdependency, and trust in hierarchy) and the two indicators of well being (self-esteem and life satisfaction) were interrelated. In other words mother daughter relationship is positively related to life satisfaction and self esteem of the daughters.

La dyade mère-fille est traversée par quelque chose tenant de l’ordre du désir et du sexuel. L’idée d’un même, d’un identique rapprochant la mère et la fille ainsi que la notion de répétition qui englobe certaines de leurs relations dans un contexte de violence sexuelle intrafamiliale nous interpellent dans notre pratique en tant que clinicienne. A partir de l’apport des travaux de Sigmund Freud et de ceux de Jacques Lacan – particulièrement sur le ravage concernant ce dernier – nous souhaitons savoir quelle place peuvent subjectivement occuper les filles du point de vue de leurs mères quand ces dernières sont elles-mêmes issues de familles à transactions violentes et/ou incestueuses? Dans ces situations, nous nous interrogeons et nous penchons sur la nature de ce qui est transmis entre mère et fille. Nous ne faisons pas simplement référence à l’inceste père-fille, nous nous employons à observer aussi d'autres formes d'inceste impliquant d'autres personnes de l'entourage ainsi que ce qui est appelé l’inceste de deuxième type (selon Françoise Héritier) et l’incestuel (comme décrit par Paul-Claude Racamier). Ainsi, cette étude prend en compte ce qu’il y a derrière la confusion des rôles, des générations et de « langue » entre mère et fille dans le contexte d’inceste. Notre recherche s’articule dans le champ de l'anthropologie psychanalytique, tel qu’il est développé par Paul-Laurent Assoun et Markos Zafiropoulos (2002), qui prend en compte l'Autre social pour comprendre le sujet de l'inconscient chez Freud et Lacan. Aussi, la relation mère-fille et ses résonances sur les plans social, symbolique et psychique, ainsi que la question de l’inceste et de l'incestuel seront les fils conducteurs de notre travail. Nous proposons de parcourir la relation mère-fille dans un contexte incestuel avec ou sans passage à l’acte à travers la clinique psychanalytique en nous appuyant sur des études de cas. L’ambivalence entre l’amour et la haine, déjà présente « naturellement » dans la relation mère-fille, s’amplifie dans le contexte d’inceste. Nous tentons d’analyser en profondeur les racines de la mise en acte violente des mères lorsqu'elles « échouent » dans leur fonction protéctrice, perturbant le lien mère-fille d’une manière encore plus ravageante en reprenant ce terme au sens lacanien du mot ravage. Ces circonstances où la mère et la fille sont dans une véritable impasse témoignent d'un lien d’emprise qui nous amène à nous interroger sur le travail de transmission entre elles. / The mother-daughter dyad is crossed by something from the order of the desire and sexuality. The notion of a double, an equal, a repetition that encompasses some relationships between mothers and daughters in a context of intra-familial sexual violence is one question that challenges us in our clinical practice. From what Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan teach us - the latter specially about the devastation - we ask ourselves what is the place that daughters occupy in the subjectivity of mothers from families with history of incest ? What will be passed from mother to daughter ? We do not refer only to the father-daughter incest, but also to other forms of incest, involving others in the family circle, as well to what we call incest of second type (according to Françoise Héritier) and the incestual (as descibed by Paul-Claude Racamier). Thus, our research deliberates on what is behind the confusion of roles, generations and « language » between mother and daughter in the incest’s domain. The work is linked to the field of psychoanalytic anthropology as developed by Paul-Laurent Assoun and Markos Zafiropoulos (2002) which approaches the social Other to undestand the unconsciouns subject in Freud and Lacan’s theory. The mother-daughter relationship and its resonance in the social, symbolic and psychic arenas, in conjunction with the question of the incest and the incestual are the core os this work. We propose to investigate the mother-daughter relationship in a incestuous context with or without passage to the act through psychoanalytical reference supported by clinical case studies. The ambivalence between love and hate, which is « naturally » present in the mother-daughter relationship, is amplified in the incest situation. We try to analyze in depth the roots of violent action when mothers « fail » in their protective role, disturbing the mother-daughter relationship in an even more devastating way, as per the Lacanian term devastation. These circumstances in which mother and daughter are in a profound impasse reveal a relationship of domination and make us question how the transmission works between them.

This study is focused on the relationship between mothers and their daughters, and the ways in which this relationship serves as a critical site from which black women (specifically from rural Venda area in Northern South Africa) construct their identities. Within the broad framework of qualitative research, this investigation employs a hybrid theoretical model rooted in black feminist epistemology incorporating standpoint feminism, feminist social constructionism, and intersectionality theory. The study draws on 18 interviews with mothers and daughters aged between 35-55 and 18-25 respectively. Using thematic narrative analysis, various themes, i.e. perceptions of femininity, intersectional nodes of femininity, and tensions between normative and counter normative constructions of femininity are explored to showcase shifts and changes in gendered narratives of femininity. The research finds that the multiple and varied ways in which identity is constructed is a complex relational process mediated by various social factors such as class, gender and location; and are consistent with the traditional conception of women as respectful, resilient, „silent‟, and nurturing. Furthermore, findings showed that most mothers played an active role in enforcing patriarchal ideologies of femininity, whereas most daughters actively challenged traditional conceptions of femininity to construct an empowered sense of femininity drawing from their mother‟s own lived experiences. The study further illustrates that the critical triangle of the self, motherhood and social location is a messy one that demands complex and dynamic understanding. This highlighted the need to use socio-cultural and socio-economic frameworks to investigate the multi-layered, complex process of femininity construction for women in rural areas, and how mothers and daughters in interaction with each other can become agents of social change in relation to gender relations. / Dissertation (MSocSci)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development / Sociology / MSocSci / Unrestricted