An intergenerational community study in Islington, north London, has considered psychiatric disorder in mothers and their adolescent and early adult daughters and the role of parenting in any link between the two. The results indicate that daughters are more likely to have disorders at a case level when their mothers have chronic or recurrent episodes of disorder at this level. Such conditions in the mother relate to the daughters' reports of adverse family experience involving maternal antipathy and neglect and physical and sexual abuse, most usually at the hands of a father or stepfather. These adverse experiences are associated with disorder in daughters independently of any disorder in the mother.