You know, they are trying to figure out who they are, and they are looking at their mothers who are supposed to be this role model and they are seeing what their mothers are doing and not doing and they are getting very critical.
And oftentimes they think everything they are saying is so wrong, you know. So mothers end up feeling very rejected and very upset and take everything very personally so that's where the challenge starts.
Roni Cohen-Sandler says when daughters go through adolescence, mothers usually remember their own and want their daughters to benefit from the mother's experience.
Daughters typically reject that. Their common complaint is "Mother is just not listening to me. "
Sociologist and author Victoria Secunda says she has never been able to have a cordial relationship with her mother.
Ms Secunda, who wrote a book titled When you and your mother can't be friends says her research shows that conflicts between mothers and daughters are much more wide-spread than it is believed.
Victoria Secunda says her research and her own experience show that many mother-daughter conflict start much before the daughter's puberty.
They include the mother's early criticism of the daughter's looks, clothes, behaviors or friends.
She says many mothers expect their daughters to follow in their footsteps and a generation or two ago it meant getting married, having children and staying at home.
For many of the women I interviewed, it was, this is mothers as well as daughters, it was a stake in the maternal heart if the daughters didn't follow the mother's domestic example, i.e. marriage, children, you know, food, meal planning. So that they felt in a sense betrayed.
The mothers often did, because they felt as if their daughters, by living a very different kind of life, were somehow betraying the mother.
According to Victoria Secunda, another factor in the mother-daughter relationship is the role of the father.
She says despite the new trends, childcare and upbringing are still traditionally a mother's role in the United States, as well as in many other countries.
Roni Cohen-Sandler agrees that the father's role is very important. Among other things, fathers can defuse some of the mother-daughter tenson and serve as mediators.
Both authors agree that as daughters mature, mothers have to learn to let go.
Roni Cohen-Sandler says both mothers and daughters can benefit from viewing conflict as a good impetus for healthy change.