The power of the ‘little comment’ in mother-daughter relationships
“ANOTHER theme park? My goodness!” reads the text from my mother. She is referring to the desperate outing that I’m about to embark on with my three boys, aged 8, 5 and 10 months, in order to avoid spending one more minute listening to them arguing in the house.
A close reading of my mother’s message reveals a rich and multi-layered depth of meaning. The “my goodness!” keeps the tone light, while the use of “another” neatly undercuts that levity, conveying disapproval. The overall message: I spoil the kids.
This text is a classic of the genre I call the “Little Comment”, the signature mode of communication of a certain type of close relationship between a mother and her adult daughter, especially when that daughter has children of her own. The Little Comment is the product of the female socialisation that insists that we be the ones to handle the emotional busywork of life, but prevents us from tackling any of it directly. Both loving and barbed, it uses a kind of weaponised casualness to criticise, but with complete plausible deniability.
You know you are dealing with a “Little Comment”, as opposed to just a comment when, on hearing it, you feel a stab of either irritation or self-loathing (or, more often, an uneasy blend of the two). But at the same time, a perfectly reasonable response to any objection or hurt feelings would be an innocent, “What do you mean? I’m just saying …” and then repeating the same statement in an entirely different, newly de-fanged tone.
The Little Comment is really the recourse of the powerless. People say that being a grandparent is all of the fun parts of parenting with none of the grind. But the flip side is that grandparents also have all of the adoration
with none of the agency.
My mother loves my kids just as much as I do, is every bit as invested in their happiness and success, yet she has no genuine say in their upbringing. She can’t decide how many theme parks they visit, or whether they wear a coat, or how much television they watch. At best she can hope only to influence from the sidelines.
My mother understands me better than anyone, and I crave her approval more than anyone else’s. I can recite her entire value system: every meal needs a salad, music is good, sport is suspect, children should learn a stringed instrument, sleeping late is a moral failing. She doesn’t actually need to criticise. She did her job so effectively 30 years ago that now she need only raise an eyebrow and I fill in the blanks on auto-complete.
In our case, all this is intensified because we live over 9 000 kilometres away from her, having moved to California from Britain when our oldest son was a baby. Her visits are highly charged, for both of us. For her, staying with us is a once-a-year opportunity to spend time with her beloved grandchildren. For me, it’s my chance to prove to her that I have a handle on parenting, to get her to provide the answer to the questions that claw away at me. Am I a good mother? Can I ever be a mother like she was?
As soon as she arrives from the airport, I’m on edge waiting for things to unravel. It doesn’t take long. Solly’s haunted Lego spy-base doesn’t conform to the ambitious picture in his head, and he hurls it across the room in fury. His brother Zeph calls him an idiot, enraging him further. The baby starts crying. “I see everyone is getting very angry,” I bleat. Solly storms off. “Oh dear,” says my mother. I’m crushed. The uncomfortable truth is that my defensiveness comes not from disagreeing with her assessment of my parenting, but from the painful shame of agreeing.
Whatever the elusive balance of indulgence and firmness, love and limits, that makes a great parent, my mother knew it instinctively. She had the invisible sorcery of quiet authority, always kind, never needing to shout or threaten. I’m furious with her because I want to be her.
I try not to think about the unbearable day when she’ll be gone, and I’ll have to come up with my own answers, and no comment will ever be Little again.