Dealing with daughter envy

It is one of life's little ironies that when you look in the mirror and see a slightly decaying woman past her sell-by date, and realise it's you, your daughter blossoms out of spotty adolescent awkwardness into a beautiful young woman in her prime

So-called 'daughter envy' is a common phenomenon among middle aged women and with two stunning and confident daughters myself, aged 18 and 21, I know all about it.

I gave my younger daughter, Jessica, a copy of my first novel, The Mother and Daughter Diaries, to read and was taken aback by her reaction. 'I'm envious of you,' she said, 'doing what you've always wanted to do.'

'What?' I almost screamed. 'You envious of me? How do you think I feel?' For standing before me was this tall, elegant girl who had her life in front of her while I looked faded. For her, a spare tyre is something you keep in the car boot and the menopause something as far into her future as the first house on Mars.

My friend Nancy empathised: 'My daughter told me she'd got a line on her face and pointed to a barely visible faint laughter line at the side of her eye. Well, if she's got a line there, I've got a crevice!'

'It's not just what they look like,' says mother of seven, Beverley, who has every excuse to have a few lines. 'My daughter is 21, beautiful and living with her gorgeous boyfriend in St. Lucia. At her age, I was married with two kids. You look at your daughters and think: what if?'

Gina agrees. 'The world is their oyster,' she says. 'Harriet has opportunities we just never had.' And has Harriet got that youthful beauty as well? No need to ask really. At least Harriet borrows her mother's clothes, which has to be a compliment of sorts.

My daughters would never be seen dead in anything of mine although one of them admitted my clothes were 'suitable for someone your age.' Why do they always have to bring age into it? I may be 50, but don't they realise I still feel 25!

Daughter envy can get more serious. Single mum Geraldine admits that it started to get her down. 'I asked my daughter to come out for a meal for my birthday and she wanted to bring her boyfriend, David. I was jealous because she had a boyfriend and I didn't.

'Then I realised that she had pretty well everything I wanted and the envy got greener. A few sessions of counselling later, and we've sorted it out, but there's no doubt about it, daughter envy can ruin your relationship of you don't nip it in the bud.'

When I wrote The Mother and Daughter Diaries, I tapped into another of nature's little ironies. As your daughter hits hormonal changes, so do you, and suddenly there's enough hormonal imbalance to tip the house over. I made the daughter in my book 16 years old and still full of stroppy adolescent behaviour.

I'd been there and coped with that well enough, mainly because I had been an awkward adolescent myself. But can I cope now when I walk down the street feeling totally invisible as heads turn to look at them (I only get stared at if I inadvertently go out in my slippers)?

Of course I can, because stronger than any daughter envy I may have, I am incredibly proud of them.

Psychiatrist Dr Gail Salz, writes: 'Parents can have mixed feelings towards their children's success, with pride and envy co-existing.'

So, there it is. It seems that daughter envy is perfectly normal as long as you feel pride as well. So on those days when you feel particularly creased and flushed, just remember to steer clear of any mirrors, avoid thinking about that ambition you never quite fulfilled, and proudly look at what you, very cleverly, managed to produce.

Clare Shaw's is author of The Mother and Daughter Diaries, a story from the perspective of a mother and a teenage daughter who is suffering with anorexia.