"Mother-daughter bond" I hear that phrase and I wretch. I think that they should call it Mother-daughter bondage. It's not just that I am an angsty teenager hating my mother because it's popular, that was never my goal. It just happens, I hate her. It's not that I have an Electra complex either, I have no desire to sleep with my father (though he is the parent that I like), It is simply that we can't see eye to eye. I understand her, I know her up and down, I can even predict what she is about to say, and I still hate her. The complete comprehension of something you hate simply makes you hate it more.

I was watching "Everybody Loves Raymond" and it is an interesting example of Mother-daughter relationships. Deborah and Marie have what I would call "mother-daughter bondage" the two parties are totally competent adults and will not "grow out of it." Their personalities simply don't gel. The mother (Marie) who is actually Deborah's mother-in-law is over-critical and condesending, while the daughter party has grown irritable and intolerent. Marie enjoys being a mother so much that she wants to belittle everyone in her family to the point of being children again. The son figure (Raymond) is tolerant of Marie's advances and so is his brother (Robert) because Marie has never allowed her children to grow up. This causes many hurt feelings which are the basis of the show.

Another kind of mother-daughter relationship is displayed in the case of Deborah and her actual mother (Louis). Louis has caused Deborah to grow up too fast by never playing the mother role. She has caused Deborah to take up the role of the housewife and to an extent be her own mother.

There are also some amazing examples in "Gilmore Girls". Lorali Gilmore was a rebel teenager and her mother was a prim and proper person. Lorali's mother was generally patient with her but Lorali insisted on leaving her family life, especially when she became pregnant out of wedlock with her daughter Rori. In my valueless, passing opinion that is an example of the unecessasary mother hating mentioned in the first paragraph. There is also a fairly common relationship which has always seemed amazing to me; the bond between Lorali and Rori. Those two are friends, Lorali seems to have been very careful to be sensative to her daughter's feelings. Even though it is slight, it is still rather apparent that Rori is looking for family structure. Rori is always trying and hoping against hope that Lorali and her mother will come to peace with each other. Even though this relationship is not perfect, it seems to be the best one of the above-mentioned.

I wonder if there is a good way to handle having parents. Perhaps there is no way of coming out of childhood unscarred. It may also be that hostilities grow in the later years because teenagers want to grow and exercise their rights but they have custodians who are always watching. (Themselves, their schedules, their money, their grades, ect...)