Communication Among Grandmothers, Mothers, and Daughters

In this book, I draw on a year’s worth of field observations and interviews with women to examine intergenerational mother-daughter communication. I follow the lives of six adult daughters, their mothers, and their grandmothers for nearly a year and discover that three of the maternal sets experienced high levels of self-harming behavior, suicidality, and higher levels of conflict than the other three maternal sets.

After comparing, contrasting, and exploring the intergenerational communication patterns within and across these families I learned that there was a clear pattern of communication occurring in the families with internalizing behaviors. This pattern called “necessary convergence communication” is described and a grounded theory of submissive communication and behavioral health is proposed and discussed.