In research for a recent book, Communication among Grandmothers, Mothers, and Adult Daughters: A Qualitative Study of Maternal Relationships, I studied grandmother-mother-daughter relationships over the course of eight months. The study compared women’s interactions in relationships where adult daughters had a documented history of alcohol and other drug abuse, with women’s interactions in relationships where daughters had no history of use or abuse. The results revealed a relational communication pattern that might function to increase women’s risky behaviors, such as drug use. Necessary Convergence of Meaning (NCM) is a theoretical model that illustrates a dominant/submissive relational communication pattern that appears to affect the submissive partner’s sense of self and-in this study-was linked with participant’s drug use and other self-harming behaviors.

The mother-daughter relationship and sense of self
Sense of self refers to who I perceive “I” am and how I identify myself; it is really the unfolding of the self in the midst of retaining relational ties. Personal selves are constituted and managed through relationships, not to their exclusion (Adams & Marshall, 1996). From this perspective, the self is conceptualized as inseparable from dynamic interaction in relationships, with each transaction contributing to both self- and relational knowledge. Early work by Mead (1934) identified the importance of message exchange in personal identity management. Yet, more recent work in relational communication points out that both personal and relational identities are co-created communicatively within the context of a relationship.

As we broach the 21st century, identity theorists are moving away from the paradigm in which individuals are cast as islands loosely connected by relational threads toward a paradigm of the embedded self, or self in relation (Wilmot, 1995). Embedded selves are co-created within the context of relationships. This is critical to understanding the development of “sense of self,” especially among women. Recent feminist psychologists have argued that instead of viewing separation from mother as a daughter’s fundamental developmental goal, we must begin to view separation and connection as both basic to the mother-daughter relationship across the life-span (Cooley, 2000). The goal in growing up and developing a sense of self is not to achieve total separation, but instead to manage the dynamic tension of toward an autonomous self while remaining connected to the relational partner. In that connection, we influence each other’s sense of self. It is this powerful influence in mother-daughter relationships that is at the heart of the theoretical model of necessary convergence.

Necessary Convergence of Meaning
The NCM model addresses dominance and submission in relational communication interactions whereby there is a pattern where a dominant communicator (in this case, the parent) “hijacks” interpersonal meaning in his or her relationship with a submissive communicator (the child), ultimately dictating the submissive partner’s sense of self.1

In the Miller-Day (2004) study, maternal communicators were dominant or considered high-status within the family system and adult daughters (whether they were 20 or 60 years of age) were submissive or considered low-status communicators within the family system. Dominance refers to the degree to which a person can influence and impose their will on the other; its counter term, submission, refers to the degree to which a person gives up influence or yields to the wishes of the other. When necessary convergence occurred in these relationships, the dominant communicator tended to dictate not only what meanings the submissive communicator should assign to events in any given situation, but dictated the personal identity the submissive partner should embrace as her own.

As an interviewee in the Miller-Day (2004) study stated, “I don’t know who I am anyway. I’m who and what everyone else wants me to be.” Lower-status women in the study settled into a pattern of allowing higher-status women to define them, not just seeing their selves in relation to their mothers, but as maternally defined selves. In NCM, necessary infers that convergence with the dominant member’s meanings is perceived as essential to achieve a certain result, and convergence indicates a tendency toward one point. For these women, to obtain maternal approval and avoid rejection, there was a necessary convergence of meaning toward the higher-status woman-the dominant woman’s-meaning system. In these relationships, convergence was necessary to maintain the relationship. There are times when we all perceive that it is just easier, necessary, or politically correct to adjust our interpretations to others’ view of the world. However, this study suggests that extensive accommodation by lower-status women may obliterate personal frames that constitute one’s sense of self.

Antecedents to NCM
This kind of interaction pattern does not occur in a vacuum. The antecedent conditions for NCM among the drug-
abusing women in Grandmothers, Mothers, and Adult Daughters were enmeshment, impeded differentiation, and manipulation of emotional resources.

Enmeshment. The phenomenon of necessary convergence appeared to occur only within enmeshed maternal relationships. Relational members were expected to conform to relational norms and were highly involved in each other’s lives, and boundaries between individuals tended to be permeable. In these dyads, relational identities were fused with personal identities. When this fusion occurred, the lower-status woman’s attention was often focused on pleasing her partner in order to feel a sense of self and the higher-status woman often perceived her partner’s behavior as directly threatening to her own sense of “face.” In these enmeshed maternal relationships, the women’s personal identities were highly dependent on a reflected sense of self, with each woman needing continual validation from the other woman in order to feel valuable.

Impeded Differentiation. NCM occurred in relationships where there was low tolerance for differentiation — the process by which a lower status woman moves toward an autonomous self while remaining emotionally connected to higher status women. In the enmeshed maternal relationships, the process of differentiation was perceived as threatening to the relationship and thus emotional autonomy was discouraged and differentiation was actively impeded.

Manipulation of Resources. Higher-status women in these enmeshed relationships tended to assert their dominance by manipulating resources of support, regard, and inclusion. As a form of psychological control, these higher-status women would offer and withhold these resources contingent on evaluation of the lower-status women’s “performance.” Convergence was an expectation and thus was considered the only acceptable performance. Manipulation of emotional resources provided a compelling motive for lower-status women’s convergence and this produced a kind of intergenerational intimidation.

NCM and women’s problem behaviors. All women in the Miller-Day (2004) study who abused drugs exhibited NCM in their mother-daughter relationships. It is speculated that degree and chronicity of convergence in the mother-daughter relationship might be consequentially related to daughter’s negative outcomes. Degree refers to the relative intensity or amount of convergence with a higher degrees of convergence perhaps associated with more negative outcomes for the lower status woman. Chronicity refers to when there is a long-term pattern of convergence behavior across time and contexts, increasing the potential for negative outcomes. Thus, chronic episodes of high degrees of convergence across time and contexts might place women at higher risk for problem behaviors such as substance use, abuse, or other self-harming behaviors.
The NCM theoretical model provides a starting point for researchers and practitioners to explore the connections between communicative interaction in relationships and risky behaviors such as substance use. C

Footnote
1More information on NCM or this study is available by contacting Dr. Miller-Day at the Pennsylvania State University at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

References
Adams, G. R., & Marshall, S. K. (1996). A developmental social psychology of identity: Understanding the person-in-context. Journal of Adolescence, 19, 4

Michelle Miller-Day, PhD (mam32psu.edu) is an associate professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State University. She is the author of Communication Among Grandmothers, Mothers, and Adult Daughters: A Qualitative Study of Maternal Relationships (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004).

This article is published in Counselor,The Magazine for Addiction Professionals, February 2005, v.6, n.1, pp.70-71