Mother-Daughter Conflict among 18 - 21 Years Old Adolescents: Structure, Causes and Management

This research examines mother-daughter conflict in freshmen/first-year female students (18 - 21 years) enrolled at the Faculty of Social Sciences (FSS), University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine, Trinidad. The concentration on mothers in full or part-time paid employment is reinforced by Pickhardt [1] who argued that mothers are more comfortable than fathers in family conflict. The purpose of the study was to describe the structure of a typical mother-daughter conflict by examining its causes and management. Using a sample of 23 (sociology and psychology) students, 10 open-ended questions were posed. The major questions were: Why do you get into conflict with your mother? What or who is to blame? What is a typical conflict like? What effects does conflict have on you? How are these conflicts resolved or managed? A phenomenological approach was adopted. Purposive sampling was employed by recruiting only females (18 - 21) involved in at least one family conflict in the last month (September, 2014). First the findings indicate five (5) features of mother-daughter conflict: Conduct (act or speech), Response, Reaction, Intensification and Containment (CRRIC). The second is that issues of home and school are the main sources of conflict and that at the end daughters fare less well compared to mothers. Future research includes mother-son conflict and the parenting adolescent/young adult children.