My Mother/My Self

The Daughter's Search for Identity

By: Nancy Friday

Narrated by: Raquel Harris, Phil McCraken

Length: 19 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

When Nancy Friday began her research for My Mother/My Self in the early 1970s no work existed that explored the unique interaction between mother and daughter. Today psychotherapists throughout the world acknowledge that if women are to be able to love without possessing, to find work that fulfills them, and to discover their full sexuality, they must first acknowledge their identity as separate from their mother’s. Nancy Friday’s book played a major role in that acceptance. The greatest gift a good mother can give remains unquestioning love planted deep in the first year of life, so deep and unassailable that the tiny child grown to womanhood is never held back by the fear of losing that love, no matter what her own choice in love, sexuality, or work may be.

Through candid self-disclosure and hundreds of interviews, Friday investigates a generational legacy and reveals the conflicting feelings of anger, hate, and love that daughters hold for their mothers - and why they so often “become” that mother themselves.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

©1977 Nancy Friday (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

Worth it

This is a long book however I found it to be worth it. The beginning chapters feel like they repeat themselves but they do grow and change and are important. The last 3 chapters I found to be the most useful for myself.
The author is attempting to bring the intangible into the tangible world for the readers to understand. Because of that at times it can be slightly confusing but I found if I stuck with it all the pieces came together and made sense.
Definitely recommend this book!

attention all

I feel that every human being on Earth should read this book. If you had a mother at any point in time you should read this book. If you hope to parent children you should read this book. and if you hope to have any dealings with women whatsoever you should read this book.

Blameful and victim-oriented

I really wanted to learn from this book. The mother-daughter relationship is complicated, and as a woman with both an elderly mother and a young daughter, I was hoping to get useful insights and perspectives that could benefit all of us. Alas, the author seems unwilling to take any responsibility for her own life, and keeps blaming «Mother» (it’s often unclear whether this refers to her own mother or the more archetypal mother in general) for everything from her own perspectives and life-choices, to feelings of self-worth and how she relates to her own vagina(!) The theory is dated, and the book seems full of fatalistic perspectives: If your mother (or you, as a mother) wasn’t perfect in the first 1-2 years of your life, you’re doomed to be fucked-up forever and locked into perpetual victimhood. I gave the book several chances to develop into something else, and maybe it gets better, but with 6 hours of listening I just can’t finish the remaining 11 hours of this blame-fest. I gave the performance 2 stars only because the whiny reading seems to correlate with and emphasize the story.