Relationship Between Mother And Daughter example essay topic

"I hate you! I hope you die!" were the words that escaped my mouth at the age of sixteen; words which concluded the argument I was having with my mother for the previous 2 hours about why I wasn't allowed to go out like other "normal" teenagers. The relationship between a mother (especially a traditional mother) and a daughter (especially an American-born, teenage daughter) can be at times complex, volatile and unconditional. Amy Tan's "Two Kinds" [Interactions] and Joyce Maynard's "Generations" [Interactions] reflect upon two very different mother / daughter relationships and yet still convey the unconditional love that a mother has for her child and vice versa.

In "Generations", Maynard describes her grandmother as being possessive of her mother which made her mother furious and resentful of her grandmother although she felt guilty because she knew "she owed so much to her mother". In turn, Maynard was the one who impressed her grandmother with good report cards and kisses, until she too "ceased to visit". Because her grandmother was so possessive of her mother in the beginning and because her mother resented her own grandmother and caused Maynard to bear the burden of making her grandmother happy, Maynard stopped visiting her. In my opinion, she too felt the resentment of her own mother putting that pressure on her, pressure that a daughter should not be made to endure from her mother. In "Two Kinds", Tan also writes about a mother pressuring her daughter to be successful and to not have to endure the hardships that she experienced in the past.

Ni Kan's mother time and time again told her that she needed to try hard to be a "prodigy", to be successful and to never "give up". Although, her mother wanted the best for her, she didn't realize how much resentment Ni Kan was building up because of her mother's constant pressure for her to be a prodigy. Although in the story we get the impression that Ni Kan hates her mother throughout her childhood, Ni Kan still had respect for her, because if she didn't she would not have allowed herself to be under the kind of pressure her mother put on her. In her adulthood, when revisiting her mother, Ni Kan had her piano reconditioned and then played the song that she had butchered at her recital many years before. She realized that she had played it all wrong; there were two parts to the song and she had only played one half. Here Tan uses a metaphor, "I realized they were two halves of the same song", to describe the relationship between mother and daughter.

Although relationships between mother and daughter will continue to be difficult and stressful no matter what society they are raised in, there will always be a connection: There will always be the unconditional love that a mother and daughter have for each other when they realize that they truly are "two halves of the same song.".