WATCH the trailer for Snatched, the mother-daughter comedy movie in which Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn head off on a trip together to Ecuador, get kidnapped, and then get tough, and there’s no doubt this is a movie of our times.
It’s not just that Amy Schumer is starring in it, though the actor is so on-zeitgeist, she could breathe and it would say something about what it is to be a white American woman today. The film is
also very “now” because of the nature of the mother-daughter relationship. Schumer and Hawn seem to be buddies, co-bitches, battling against a world that’s out to get them. When Schumer turns up after having been dumped by her boyfriend, Hawn declares: “You look awful. We’ll get through this.” Later, when in Ecuador, Schumer suggests to her mother: “Let’s go out tonight. Hair and make-up. Boobs. We’re going out.” Snatched is all about that “we”.
We’ve seen those mother-daughter buddies in films and television shows before. Many, for instance, tuned into US comedy series The Gilmore Girls, purely to see the relationship between young, self-involved “cool mom” Lorelai, and her precocious, and infinitely more mature, daughter Rory, play out.
Yet But almost every celebration of mother-daughter closeness provokes some carping that this isn’t how things are meant to be. Mums aren’t meant to glam-up and go out, or go on holiday with their daughters. They’re not meant to be the ones who comfort them once they’re grown-ups. They’re not meant to share clothes – though in fact they have done for generations. They're not meant to go out partying, drinking or clubbing together – partly because, in spite of the changing patterns of our romantic lives, older women are still not really meant to be sexual. And, most important of all, it is absolutely forbidden that mothers and daughters refer to each other, using that familial f-word, “friend”.
Though I find it hard to foresee a time when I might describe my own sons, still young, as best friends, and I can’t imagine feeling very differently if they were girls, I'm troubled by the way the parent-child friendship is slammed and shamed. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard or read some vaguely superior-sounding parent declare that they are not their daughter or their son’s friends – as if the word "friend" were slightly dirty or embarrassing. I find this perplexing because it seems the most successful parents I know are the “friendly” ones who invited their children’s pals into their lives and homes – and who therefore knew, for the most part, what their youngsters were doing.
And the accusation isn’t just levelled at mothers of daughters; it’s sweepingly thrown at all parents of all children. Former Harrow head teacher, Barnaby Lenon, recently blamed the phenomenon of boys falling behind girls at school on fathers attempting to be friends. “Sometimes dads are trying too hard to be boys’ best friends," he said. "Because boys particularly need firm discipline, they have become more disadvantaged.”
Similar sentiments were voiced a couple of years ago by Jenny Brown, head of St Alban’s High School for Girls, Hertfordshire, who said: “Girls who have BFF mothers can be girls who are not as well equipped to deal with things they do not like or that they find difficult.”
These critics often yearn for a return to the kind of patriarchal authority of the past. But that power has now faded. We need to look forward; to find new ways of creating authority. Properly connecting with our kids, fostering a relationship in which we matter to them and what we think and ask of them counts enough to be compelling, is part of that. Some might even call it a form of friendship.
That’s not to say that some mother-daughter friendships aren’t a little messed-up. The Gilmore Girls clearly did not present a model for anyone to emulate. Theirs was a dysfunctional, enmeshed relationship, best summed up in the following exchange:
Rory, to her mother: “I think you’re acting a little immature.”
Lorelei: “I’m not acting.”
But there is more than one way to be a BFF to your child, just as there is more than one way to be any kind of friend. There’s the friend who’s emotionally there, who listens, guides, is willing to confront some of the hard stuff; and the other friend that’s simply out for his or her own kicks.
There have always been narcissistic mothers and fathers who have enmeshed their children. Rewind a few decades and think of Edina and Saffron in Absolutely Fabulous. And as narcissist mothers go it’s hard to beat Mrs Bennet in Pride And Prejudice – egocentric, childish, fickle, frivolous.
But whether we call it friendship, or something else entirely, the phenomenon of daughters and sons who want to spend time with their parents, go on holiday with them, offload their problems, ask for advice, and ultimately reciprocate with support and companionship, can hardly be such a terrible thing. Rather it’s something to be celebrated. True independence, after all, is only an illusion.
We are all interdependent, on our friends, communities, and family. There’s a “we” in everything.
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