The mother is the first object of love of a daughter or son, and it is the first bond, a very intense relationship full of ambivalence that can last a lifetime. However, it is said that before the mother, the breast is the first source of satisfaction for a child. With this function, the baby’s needs are met, not the demand for love, in which the maternal role, which the father can carry out, the mother, society, a guardian, an institution, etc., is aimed at providing the child with the nourishment, security, affection, and protection necessary to develop as a subject.
The mother has only sometimes exercised the maternal function. In the past, this task was carried out by wet nurses, and in other cultures or countries, the maternal function is also exercised by other close people, such as maternal uncles and aunts or other close relatives. Also, society or some institutions exercise this function, which contributes, together with the paternal process (not necessarily the father), to the child’s development and their constitution as a subject.
Both the maternal and paternal functions can be performed by a single person (many families today are now single-parent families or are composed of two persons of the same sex). And the maternal function, in addition to the mother, can be exercised by the father, just as the paternal function can also be exercised by the mother or the father indistinctly. It is important to clarify that the father and mother are parts and that it does not depend on the sex that performs them.
The point is that the paternal figure, whether exercised by the father or the mother, is important in separating the mother-daughter duality as long as he/she is present and accepts to be the third party in the relationship. The paternal figure introduces the symbolic castration necessary to invest the subject and puts the break in the mother-daughter relationship, opening the possibility for something beyond the grasping to be constituted, giving rise to the desiring subject.
Accepting that mother-daughter will never be friends is already a step towards understanding that a devastating relationship between them is a condition of the relationship, never a symptom to be cured, this devastation being understood not as a bad relationship between mother-daughter because of a bad mother. Both daughters and mothers have experienced at some point in their lives this impact, devastation due to suffocating closeness or excessive absence, of a boundless love incapable of satisfaction and doomed to disappointment.
In adulthood, it is no longer time to idealize the mother’s love, but to accept the relationship, avoiding competing with her, not positioning ourselves in the role of mother, but occupying that which as daughters belongs to us, ceasing to respond reactively, giving answers that make us feel better about ourselves, or opting not to give any answer at all. This is the only way to break the toxic bond with the mother and not repeat this pattern in the future.
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