ABSTRACT
The early mother-child relationship forms the root of the process of becoming a human subject. Individuation and separation from the loving, caring, nurturing and powerful relationship with the mother are seen as necessary steps in the developmental process. Physical birth, in which mother and child are physically separated, is followed by a psychological birth in later years and decades. I will argue that the main developmental task of the daughter is to acknowledge the mother as a situated mother/woman, and the main developmental task of the mother is to acknowledge the daughter as a situated girl or ‘woman-in-development’. This developmental process of mothers and daughters leads me to four different topics.
