About Rebecca Eckler
Since becoming pregnant with her daughter Rowan, Canadian journalist and author Rebecca Eckler has penned three hilarious books, including the best-selling Knocked Up. Catch Rebecca’s weekly unique perspective on motherhood and single parenthood.
Mother/Daughter Relationships
eckler plus one canada
(Nov.12.09)
I’ve been quite frank, from the moment I learned I was pregnant, I was only interested in having a girl. Never in my life have I prayed so hard for anything.
This entirely had to do with the fact that I grew up with three brothers. “What will you do if you have a boy?” my mother once asked.
“I’ll just pass him off to you,” I answered. Of course, I was joking. Sort of. In any case, God heard me and I got my girl.
But I’ve started to worry about having a daughter. This is because I’ve been on a memoir kick, and the two books I’ve been reading feature and focus on daughters and their complicated relationships with their mothers.
The first book, by Deirdre Kelly, is called Paris Times Eight: Finding Myself in The City of Dreams. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. I couldn’t put it down. The book actually makes me want to move to Paris and find myself. Kelly also writes about her complicated relationship with her mother throughout, which is just as fascinating as her career trials and tribulations and her adoration with Paris.
The second book, by Jane Christmas, is called Incontinent on the Continent: My Mother, Her Walker, and Our Grand Tour of Italy. Again, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. Both authors took their mothers on trips in hopes of improving their relationships. Obviously, this is a trend in the publishing world: I love this city! I don’t get along so well with my mother! Let’s see what happens when we travel!
Apparently, Complicated Relationships + Travel Guide = Good Book!
Like I said, I loved these books. But I was also left thinking, “Sh*t. Is it inevitable that my daughter is going to have a love/hate relationship with me?” (For example, I haven’t read any books by men who take their mothers on exotic trips to fix, or figure out, their relationship with their mothers.)
Do any of us mothers with daughters have to look farther than Tori Spelling and her mother, Candy, to see a mother/daughter relationship turned INSANE?
Christmas doesn’t exactly know why her relationship doesn’t “gel” with her mom, who isn’t a touchy-feely kind of mother. Kelly’s mother, however, is a larger-than-life character, and only too willing to tell her daughter what she thinks she’s doing wrong with her life. (Although, for the reader, she does seem like she’d be a “fun” mother. Why is it that sometimes the women who dislike their moms, other women would love to have as their own mothers?)
What can us mothers of daughters do to ensure that our daughters always love us? Why are mother/daughter relationships, unlike mother/son relationships, so complicated? I have no friggin' clue. Do you?
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