Help, My Mom Won't Stop Criticizing Me

how daughters can respond to criticism

Welcome to Good Enough, a weekly subscriber newsletter where I help you work through your family drama to create more meaningful adult family relationships. We’re starting a new series this month about Mother + Daughter Relationships.

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This Email Is For:

• daughters who feel criticized by their mothers

• any mother/parent/loved one who wants to understand what criticism might feel like for daughter(s)

What’s In This Email:

• Some data that implies mothers do criticize their daughters more than their sons

• Signs of a critical mother

• Reasons why mothers criticize their daughters

• Why it seems to hurt more when your mother criticizes you

• How to respond to your mom’s criticism

• An invitation to join me for a live + recorded Q&A on April 24 at 11:30 AM ET about Mother Daughter Relationships.

read time (10m)

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I am a mother and I am a daughter. I deeply relate to the stress on both sides. It’s so challenging as a mother to feel like it is your job to help and fix, only to be rejected. It’s so challenging as a daughter to feel like your every move is under a microscope.

If you’re reading this as a mother, you may feel like everyone is always so critical of mothers. We do it all and we get nothing in return. And I would say yes, you’re right and I understand why you would feel that way. I love this quote from Beth Bruno that illustrates this dichotomy in healthy mother-daughter relationships: “The message from our mother’s heart is, “I love you so much and I never want to see you struggle. I want to do what I did when you were younger — I want to smooth the way for you so you don’t have to suffer.” What our daughters hear is, “You aren’t smart enough to do this on your own. You are doing this all wrong. You need me to tell you how to do it.”

I would also argue that we are extremely hesitant to point out the ways that mothers can be abusive and harmful to their own children. Some mothers are overly critical and it is not coming from a place of love. Some mothers are inflicting real and serious harm on their daughters through their excessive criticism.

We have to strike the delicate balance between addressing how absolutely challenging it is to be a mother, how the lack of support for mothers makes it so challenging to be a good mom, and the many ways that mothers can negatively impact their daughters. This is an email for daughters who have felt overly criticized by their mothers. It may also be helpful for anyone who loves and supports someone with a critical mother. This is not the best email for mothers who are not ready to look at the ways they might be being critical. I will be writing a email specifically for mothers this month for Week 3.

Are Mothers More Critical Of Their Daughters?