Study Says Mother-Daughter Bonds Are The Strongest Of All Relationships

There's definitely brain chemistry at work between mummy and daughter!

Mothers — the ones who always have their daughter’s back, no matter what. Mother-daughter bonds are like no other relationship in the world. A mum just knows her daughter so well… it’s almost like she can read her girl’s mind. But did you know there’s actually a scientific explanation to these intriguing healthy mother-daughter relationships?

Healthy Mother-Daughter Relationships: More Powerful Than You Think

The one who knows you when something goes wrong. (Picture: Pixabay)

It is said that mother-daughter relationships are the strongest of all parent-child bonds. But this is not just based on general observations.

It all boils down to the common ways their brains process emotion, according to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

In the same study on 35 families, the part of the brain that regulates emotions is found to be “more similar between mothers and daughters than any other intergenerational pairing”.

Mums, because your brains process emotions similarly to your daughter, you are more likely to understand matters from her viewpoint. When she faces a problem, you are just able to “imagine” yourself in her shoes.

And that could explain why both of you could be at loggerheads, sometimes (okay, often if you have older girls!). All this is because you understand her situation too well at a brain-chemistry level.

Mother’s Influence On Daughter’s Mental Health

Image source: iStock

The study showed that apart from the brain’s examined corticolimbic system that is responsible for the regulation of emotions, it is also associated with the “manifestation of depressive symptoms“.

Simply put, a mother’s mental health experiences could potentially serve as predictors for her daughter’s own mental health.

According to Fumiko Hoeft, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, brain patterns inherited from both mothers and fathers have an impact on mental health conditions.

“Anxiety, autism, addiction, schizophrenia, dyslexia, you name it,” said Hoeft. But even so, these symptoms are “more likely to be passed down from mother to daughter than from mother to son or father to child”.

There’s no doubt that mothers and daughters influence each other — whether for better or for worse — in different ways than other relationships.

Source: The Journal of Neuroscience, UPMC, Researchgate

Jia Ling

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