Mothers and Daughters: Loving and Letting Go (Plume)

For a mother, a girl's adolescence - her emerging womanhood and increasing desire for independence - dramatically changes the once-exclusive mother-daughter relationship. It is a change that often creates in mothers profound feelings of anxiety, rejection, and loss. In this groundbreaking book, written from the mother's perspective, Dr. Evelyn Bassoff, a practicing psychologist, shows mid-life women how to handle these confusing feelings. She emphasizes that just as daughters must separate from their mothers to grow, so must mothers modify their caretaking roles and separate from their daughters in order to pursue their own lives, in order to continue their development as individuals.