It is amazing how many mothers talk to me about daughters they no longer recognize. Angry, depressed, distracted strangers who used to hold their hands and smile with their whole bodies. The most common thing I sense from mothers is helplessness. "I’ve tried everything. She just won’t listen." And fear. "She seems to hate me. I don’t want to lose her." And frustration. "I’m not a bad parent. Why is this happening?" But most importantly, absolute love for and faith in their daughters. "I’ll do anything. What can I do?" And this is what we build on.

The work of researchers such as Carol Gilligan, Annie Rogers and Lyn Mikel Brown of the Harvard Psychology of Women and Development of Girls Project, has helped to shed light on the story of many American teenage girls. They described a world in which girls experience intense social pressure to put aside their authentic selves, to become someone they are not so that they will be liked and accepted—in response they become depressed and evidence many of the issues we now commonly see among girls, such as eating disorders, promiscuity, drug use, early pregnancy, and suicide attempts. While this experience has been found to vary in regard to the cultural, racial and ethnic backgrounds of different girls, the broad spectrum of areas in which girls can be judged as less than perfect—appearance, intelligence, athleticism—and the intense pressure at the same time to be perfect, means all girls may live with or in response to these unrealistic pressures.

Mary Pipher tells us in Reviving Ophelia, a compendium of adolescent girls’ stories that brought this issue to the forefront of the nation, that three factors make girls particularly vulnerable to societal pressures at adolescence. The first is their developmental level. Everything is changing quickly: their relationships with themselves, their friends and their bodies. Hormones are flowing. Girls are becoming more self-aware. This transition makes them feel ungrounded and uncertain and turns their focus outward. The second is American culture and its heavy emphasis on perfectionism and the value of appearance, which is particularly damaging due to its basis on an unrealistic ideal. Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the pressure that girls face at this age to distance themselves from their parents, especially mothers, right when they need them most. Instead they turn to their also unsteady and unsure peers for guidance. Who often guide them right into the grips of consumerism, looksism, and sexism.

Mothers too have been handed an impossible task and asked to be perfect at it. They are held responsible for the happiness and well-being of their daughters. They are expected to protect their daughters, while at the same time helping them fit into a society that is increasingly more dangerous. Mothers struggle to find a way to keep their daughters safe while still allowing them enough freedom to explore themselves and the world that is being offered to them for the first time: to begin the process of becoming adults. At the same time, as girls become aware of the cultural expectation of perfectionism, mothers’ every imperfection seems to come into girls’ focus, yet again forcing moms to strive for perfection even harder. These pressures and many others can distance mothers and daughters at this vulnerable time.

This suggests the most damaging and dangerous aspect of this situation for girls, as well as a possible solution. In a society based on individualism, separation from family is essential and adolescence is when the bonds are expected to begin breaking. This is in direct conflict with what Carol Gilligan and other researchers have come to realize is the primary organizing concept for women: connection and relationship above all else. The great pain this expectation and resultant loss causes in girls, leaves her stumbling to recover her sense of rightness in the world, sometimes for the remainder of her life. Therefore many girls live in constant conflict between a society that tells them to individuate and an internal drive to hold relationships sacred and create community.

Conventional wisdom and traditional development theory both tell mothers that they can best support their adolescent daughters by allowing girls to separate from them. By resisting that advice, however, mothers have an opportunity to stand by their daughters and support them through this struggle. Connection, not separation, will keep girls strong and whole. Through love and tenacity, mothers can stay in relationship with girls through adolescence, while gently guiding their growth toward adulthood.

Programs such as the Passages Northwest mother/daughter program provide an atmosphere for women and girls to step away from cultural expectations and pressures and to focus on their relationship. In the safety of an all-female group, mothers and daughters are encouraged to explore themselves and their relationship and to build skills they can take home to support healthy interactions. The program’s curriculum works to improve communication, strengthen trust and recognize and build competency, while giving permission for each person to identify their limits and say no. This is essential to breaking the hold of perfectionism and the cultural responsibility to say “yes.” The communication building focuses on speaking and listening openly and honestly. Trust building is essential, as it at this stage that the tendency to develop false selves, lie to parents, and hide truths from daughters to protect them can eat away at the foundation of a relationship. The program also creates a space where mothers and daughters can watch each other develop skills they feel good about. Research has shown that developing and recognizing competency is the foundation of self-confidence and esteem. Most importantly, mother daughter pairs have an opportunity to realize they are not alone in their struggles as they hear the stories of other families. The ultimate goal of the mother daughter program is to provide girls with the one support they need most to successfully navigate their teenage years: their mothers.