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Loading... My Mother My Self: The Daughter's Search for Identity (original 1977; edition 1977)by Nancy Friday
Work InformationMy Mother, My Self : The Daughter's Search for Identity by Nancy Friday (1977)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. At first I felt like the book was a big blamefest on mom. Everything is mom's fault - our relationships with men, our attitude towards sex, our treatment towards our daughters, the whole inauthentic life which is womanhood. It is obvious that Nancy Friday had real issues with her mom. She admits it and many of her examples come from her own life and upbringing (and sessions with psychiatrists where she tries to hash out why her mom didn't love her). But underneath it all, it is an indictment of societal mores and attitudes that create a family situation which is detrimental to all involved and self-perpetuating. Though the style may come across as harsh and bitter at times, Friday does a good job of analyzing behaviors and attitudes which seem so ingrained in the relations between men and women that we often overlook them. Sometimes the book is out of date, but nevertheless worth reading -- together with Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. ( ) Terribly outdated. Don't think it has much to say to the younger generation now, for whom all mommies are expected to be "yummy mummies" and be hot and sexy days after giving birth. The Madonna/whore choice seems to have swung in the opposite direction since the time Friday wrote this. Probably was a seminal work (ha ha) at the time, but now it's just not relevant. I am surprised there are no reviews of this book. I read it when it first came out back in the 70s and it truly helped me get through some very difficult years. I have read it again and it is still a favourite book on my shelf. I think it helped me work through the mother/daughter issues and honestly I needed that book... it has remained a book I would recommend and treasure. I believe Nancy Friday did a great job with this book and I still have the original from 1976 - it actually is comforting to see it there on the shelf. no reviews | add a review
Distinctions
Nancy Friday shows that the key to a woman's character lies in her relationship with her mother - that first binding relationship which becomes the model for so much of women's adult relationships with men, and whose fetters constrain her sexuality, independence and very selfhood. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)158.24Philosophy and Psychology Psychology Applied Psychology Interpersonal relations Interpersonal relations with family membersLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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