The Mother-Daughter Project: How Mothers and Daughters Can Band Together, Beat the Odds, and Thrive Through Adolescence

This book is so informative and practical and gives help to mothers who want to stay connected to their daughters through the teen years. It is useful to have it when your daughter is 8-10 years old, but just as useful as when she is a teenager. The authors write so personally and with insight that is truly helpful. It is the best book on the subject that I have read, as it comes from a place of understanding and how to be a support for our teenage daughters while teaching them about the challenges they will face. Highly recommended!

My daughters is still an infant, but I plan on using this book as a guide to better communicate with my daughter with hopes of either surpassing the teenage anger years, or at best to make them smoother. I was a very troubled teen and I know had my mother taken the steps that are outlined in this book, a lot of my issues would have been resolved.

The Mother-Daughter Project is a most practical, theoretical, and hopeful guide to dealing with our predator culture -- a culture that expects and even thrives upon mothers and daughters becoming separate during the daughter's adolescence. My mother-daughter group, just begun with help from the book contains 11 & 12 year old girls and their mothers and is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic group who have various economic backgrounds. We did one of the exercises ("our perfect day") from the book and it elevated us to a surprising new level, created an introduction to community within the group and highlighted some marvelous differences and similarities between the generations. My own 11-year-old daughter said, "I noticed that everyone in our group had something going for mangoes AND liked climbing...also that we all wanted to get up really early so that we could really live large during the day!" This is an incredible book for anyone interested in women, girls, psychology, spirituality and community. The extremely readable information about our culture's approach to girls and women and the valuable stories about the mother-daughter pairs in the authors' M-D Project make "The Mother-Daughter Project: How Mother and Daughters Can Band Together, Beat the Odds, and Thrive Through Adolescence" truly a book to read, re-read and USE.

I think "The Mother-Daughter Project" is a terrific book. I have recommended it to parents that I see in my practice as a child psychiatrist, to friends who have daughters, and to anyone whom I meet who has daughters! I believe this book is a rich tool, from the perspective of understanding and, most beneficially, from the perspective of practice: on how to foster strong, nurturing, and enjoyable bonds between mothers and daughters and between mothers and mothers. The common experiences and challenges that different generations of females encounter in our society, and life itself, as well as the resources needed to meet those challenges, are richly explored in this book through the discussion of the evolution of the mother-daughter group. With detail and humor, the authors share with the reader the journey of this group of mothers and daughters over 10 years, as they start meeting monthly when the daughters are seven years old and continue up to the time of college. We learn about the very rich array of activities that these very thoughtful and intentional mothers used to educate their daughters about the tasks they will encounter in each coming stage in their development. Age specific challenges to mothers and daughters, together and separately, are covered in an overview level and in the very rich detailed activities the mothers and daughters used to prepare for, practice, and develop the skills and abilities to deal with all that is involved in moving from protected childhood into adulthood. This book is a wonderful resource to all parents-whether or not they are in such groups.

I bought this book earlier today and am over halfway through it. I am the mother of two daughters, age 9 & 12. While I wish I had this book five years ago, it doesn't feel like it's too late. A great resource for years to come, with positive self, daughter and relationship building ideas.