And fathers love their daughters, young or old, for similar reasons.
The relations of aging mothers and growing daughters, however, are almost invariably tinged with a certain hostility, overt or concealed, according to the women's habits, training, manners, etc.
Girls at the Flapper Stage who resent the attraction which their mothers still wield over younger men, constantly remind them of their age and bid them to behave in a way more in keeping with their mature years.
The flapper's mother on the other hand, who sees her daughter gradually monopolising the attention of men callers, reminds the girl with monotonous regularity that she is only a child and bids her to behave as befits her tender years.
The mother resents her daughter's fresh beauty, the daughter, her mother's experience in dealing with males.
Both watch each other closely, protecting each other's modesty and virtue and trying to make each other's life as uninteresting and uneventful as possible.
The girl becomes an ethical critic on her mother's smoking or gowns. The mother blossoms into a puritan who allows her daughter no freedom and seems to have entirely forgotten her own girlhood years.
The strife lasts until the daughter is old enough to have her own circle of friends and no longer needs a chaperone. After which mother and daughter, if matched intellectually, may once more become friends.
Repressed Hatred. I have treated a number of neurotic mothers who seemed to be obsessed by their adoration of their children. That exaggerated tenderness was, as I mentioned in another chapter, a cover for death wishes directed toward those children.