Daughter vs. Mother

I am 21. I agree that most women choose to stay for d sake of their children. In my case, I’m a daddy’s girl and I’m closer to my dad. My mom, I HATE HER. Right now n wla pera dad ko, xa nagttrabaho and guess what? She always brags on her capabilities and how she works for d family. And this weekend I just found out her infidelity with my dad. And she denies it, of course. And she still lives with us. I am an ugly duckling and as a child, she never made me feel beautiful. Today, as a woman, men say I’m beautiful but I don’t believe them. I can say I’m strong. And I hope I will find that self-confidence. Thnx!”

Of course, she is not the first child who hates her mother. There are many more whose characters are so different from their mothers they claim the same thing. My own mother had — in my view — her own lapses. When I was 10 years old, I remembered picking up my mother at the office one Saturday afternoon. I wore a new sailor dress that day. Her friends greeted me and said, “Your daughter looks so pretty.”

In the elevator, my mother asked me if I believed what her friends had said. I looked at her, I guess, with a question in my eyes. “Don’t believe them,” she said. “They’re only being nice because they are my friends.” When the elevator doors opened, I ran away quickly from my mother and almost got run over by a car emerging from basement parking. In my view, I had passed the car when it emerged but not in my mother’s view. She panicked and punished me.

So you see, you are not alone. I think that highlights the difference between generations. My mother was brought up to think that if she told me I was pretty I would grow up to be vain. That’s the way their generation was brought up. One of my aunts had a beautiful older daughter and a rather plain, much younger one. One day, early in our teens, my beautiful cousin and I were laughing at her little sister who had put a gumamela behind her ear. “Don’t laugh at her. Make her believe she’s pretty,” my aunt said because, in fact, the little girl was not. That’s the way they used to think and that is passed on from generation to generation until it changes. It changed with me, I’d like to think, but maybe my daughters don’t think so. I have three beautiful (not just pretty) daughters.

You don’t seem to know it so I am telling you: At 21, please outgrow that hatred of your mother because she did not tell you were pretty. Understand it and believe in yourself. To the mothers out there, tell your daughters they are pretty. It builds their self-confidence. Later, let them discover the truth on their own. Of course, if they are ugly they will blame you for telling them they were pretty. As mothers we have to be prepared to accept much hatred from our children. The way we sometimes secretly felt about our parents is the way our children will feel about us, plus a lot more. It happens naturally at puberty, at the beginning of the point in our children’s lives when they start to break away from their parents to become adults. By 18, they should realize that they may dislike their mothers but there’s a part of them that loves her and will continue to do so beyond death.

Mothers, fathers, and children should accept one basic truth. We each have our own lives therefore we each have to make our own happiness.

So you are a daddy’s girl. Your daddy has been jobless. Your mommy is working for the family and you’re wondering why she still lives with you? Because her salary supports all of you, that’s why. She feels responsible for the family or she would have thrown you and your father out — you for hating her and your father for being jobless. Both of you useless people, out. You waste the money I work hard to earn. Either both of you earn some money to contribute to the house or both of you get out. If she has not said that then you should be grateful to her for working to feed all of you.

So she talks about her capabilities. Apparently she has them or she would not find a job. Maybe nobody tells her so she says it herself. You resent her for not telling you you’re pretty? She resents you for not telling her she’s capable. You are even. You live off the money she brings in. It’s time to show some gratitude. The very fact that you wrote to me to tell me you hate her shows a lack of awareness and a lack of gratitude. In my opinion, if you genuinely feel that way about your mother, then find a job that can support you, pack up your things and leave. Take your father with you. Let’s see how quickly you can afford to do that.

Until you can afford to do that, I suggest you keep quiet. I don’t want to hear about your mother’s infidelity because most likely it’s just a suspicion born out of your mixed-up feelings about her and stories you’ve been told. Also, I don’t think children have any right to comment on their parent’s fidelities or infidelities. Those are their parents’ lives and should be kept between man and wife. If it is true and your father can handle it, then you must accept it. If he cannot handle it, you may commiserate with him but you have to accept your mother because she is your mother.

Once you are over 60 — like me — you see everything clearly. Everything I have written is what I see. You are 21, you say. You should have grown up by now. You should be over your hatred for your mother, your petty intrigues against her. In fact, in my opinion, you should have a job and should either be helping your mother with money to support the family or living on your own and supporting yourself. Then you are entitled to your own opinion, your own hatreds, and hopefully, you will not share them with total strangers, with columnists like me.

This column should show everyone that even I, too, have my hatreds. I hate receiving text from young adults that show me how much they need to be straightened out because I cannot resist the temptation to straighten them out immediately.

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