The Woman Who Gave Birth to Her Mother: Seven Stages of Change in Women's Lives [Hardcover]

Kim Chernin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1998

With the "eloquence of a poet and the gifts of a born therapist" (San Francisco Chronicle) Kim Chernin offers a new paradigm for women's development as mature, creative, and free adults. "Giving birth to one's mother" is a symbolic act of self-creation that opens the door to autonomy and achievement; it is a model for breaking the pattern of the endless cycles of blame and forgiveness of mothers within which many women live out their lives. Tales from Chernin's clinical practice vividly illustrate this model. One client's question, "If I tell you that a daughter is looking for me, a daughter who died when she was born, can you make sense of that without thinking I am crazy?" is the beginning of her journey. Another woman, adopted into an abusive family, embarks on an unlikely--but ultimately life-changing and successful--search for her birth-mother. Chernin's work is groundbreaking and necessary; this is a book that belongs on the shelves alongside Hope Edelman, Mary Pipher, Carol Gilligan and Mary Catherine Bateson as a major contribution to how women understand their lives.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Kim Chernin, author of The Hungry Self and In My Mother's House, has already written extensively about her own mother. She has also collected countless mother stories--stories that have the force of myth that are told by women about their mothers. In this intriguing book, Chernin asserts that in order for daughters to become complete individuals, they must, in some sense, psychically "birth" their own mothers. In explaining this provocative theory, she presents characteristic elements of the mother story, including idealization, blame, guilt, forgiveness, and letting go ("giving birth"). She then challenges the reader to trace these elements and identify the themes in six "real but invented" portraits of women and their mothers. During this moving and sometimes confusing process, readers will eventually come to a new level of understanding about the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship--leaving any candy-coated, romanticized vision far behind. The Woman Who Gave Birth to Her Mother--beautifully written and often painful to read--generates more questions about mothers and daughters than it answers, but you'll never look at a mother-daughter story in the same way again. --Ericka Lutz

From Publishers Weekly

Drawing on accounts of mother-daughter conflicts that she heard about as a practicing psychoanalyst, Chernin (Reinventing Eve) provides a method for resolving the problems that can dominate this relationship in her perceptive and creative study. According to the author, many women are locked into a cycle of blaming and forgiving their mothers for any difficulties they have experienced. To transcend this pattern, Chernin recommends that a woman learn to "give birth" to her mother by changing the destructive dynamic that has existed between them through the healing power of storytelling. Telling and retelling the story of this relationship is supposed to take a woman through the seven stages of idealizing, revising, blaming, forgiving, identifying with, letting go of and finally giving birth to a new vision of her mother. Chernin recounts the compelling stories of several women for whom this process, she claims, has fostered self-development, including a woman who brought her mother home from a 30-year stay in a mental institution and another who extricated herself from a stifling mother-daughter relationship. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1ST edition (August 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670880965
• ISBN-13: 978-0670880966
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,298,859 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars very eye-opening, April 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Woman Who Gave Birth to Her Mother: Seven Stages of Change in Women's Lives (Hardcover)

i loved what chernin had to say about the importance of telling your mother-story over and over until you reach a place of understanding with your idea of your mother as a person. i feel like i am doing this now and this book was a wonderful guide - great stories by all the women.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars important for every woman who is a daughter and/or a mother, August 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Woman Who Gave Birth to Her Mother: Seven Stages of Change in Women's Lives (Hardcover)

Chernin describes a way to unravel the knot that binds mothers and their daughters. The first 46 pages are the guide...the rest are stories of women who collectively speak as Everywoman. Chernin's listening skills are apparent on every page, as is her warmth and empathy.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insight leads to greater inner peace, March 10, 2006

By 

E. Lewis (Purchase, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Woman Who Gave Birth to Her Mother: Seven Stages of Change in Women's Lives (Hardcover)

I used this book in a course I taught for college students in a women's prison. I was amazed at how the case studies unfolded to a resolution that was both realistic and inspiring. The author's style has a poetic, almost mythical, quality. The advice the author gives is sound: learn to change yourself and your perceptions of your mother, and then the relationship may change for the better. There are no false promises here, but there are intriguing and hopeful possibilities.