Mums are there for everything; from watching us take our first steps to helping us get through adolescence and into womanhood – and perhaps to motherhood ourselves.
Anyone who’s ever lost their job or endured a hideous break up knows the feeling: sometimes you just want your mum and no one else will do.
Turns out there’s a good reason for that: mother-daughter relationships are the strongest of all parent-child bonds, according to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
The research found that that mothers and daughters are more likely to understand and relate to the emotions of each other than anyone else.
That’s why so many mums involve themselves in our problems – she’s the most able to put herself in your place.
The researchers showed that the part of the brain that regulates emotions is more similar between mothers and daughters than any other immediate family relationship.
“The association between mother-daughter was significantly greater than mother-son, father-daughter, and father-son associations,” said researchers in The Journal of Neuroscience. “Our study’s uniqueness is that we’re the first one to get the whole family and scan both parents and offspring to look at how similar their brain networks are,” added lead author Fumiko Hoeft.
The study also found that the mother/daughter bond may influence our lives in ways we may not even realise.
Dr Christiane Northrup, author of the book Mother-Daughter Wisdom, says: “The mother-daughter relationship is the most powerful bond in the world, for better or for worse. It sets the stage for all other relationships.”
She added, “How a woman sees herself, how she is in her adult relationships with partners, and how she mothers her own children, is profoundly influenced by her relationship with her own mother.”
If this doesn’t prompt you to give your mum a ring tonight, what will?
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