Intergenerational inter-dependencies: Mothers and daughters in comparative perspective

SynopsisThe lives and relationships between mothers and daughters in three different European cities are discussed in this article to explore the negotiations of inter-dependencies between the generations. Despite the fact that the wider contexts of the women's lives are very different, particularly with reference to family culture, the pattern that emerges is one of remarkable similarity in the ways that the mothers and daughters mutually support and ‘depend’ on the other. The empirical data are used to explore how conventional approaches to independence in young people’s lives fail to account for gendered experiences of (in)dependency, and how these are shaped by political discoursers that stigmatise dependency.