Victoria Secunda - When You and Your Mother Cant Be Friends: Resolving the Most Complicated Relationship of Your Life

Many authors say that writing is a lonely profession. In my experience, it is anything but. This book could not have been accomplished without the help and involvementintellectually, professionally, and personallyof others.

I owe an enormous intellectual debt to those researchers, social scientists, and clinicians who have studied patterns in how and why people behave as they do. These authorities include:

Alexander Thomas, M.D., and Stella Chess, M.D., professors of psychiatry at New York University Medical Center, who have studied temperament in children since the 1950s and who coined the terms easy child, difficult child and slow-to-warm-up child;

Virginia Satir, a pioneer in family therapy who, in her book Peoplemaking, cited patterns in how people deal with rejection;

Sharon Wegscheider, whose landmark book about the impact of alcoholism on families, Another Chance: Hope and Health for the Alcoholic Family, brought the terms Enabler, Hero, Scapegoat, Lost Child, and Mascot into the lexicon;

Lucy Rose Fischer, Ph.D., who described patterns of mother-daughter relationships in her book Linked Lives: Adult Daughters and Their Mothers;

Tessa Albert Warschaw, Ph.D., who described styles of behavior in her book Winning by Negotiation, and with whom I collaborated for Winning with Kids, which discussed behavioral styles in children as well as in their parents.

Inspired by their work, and drawing from my own journalistic experience, I discovered constellations of behavior in the hundred women I interviewed for this book. I found these women through two sources: first, through friends who graciously and enthusiastically gave me dozens of names. Second, through an ad I placed in the Pennysaver, a publication of classified advertisements that is delivered to most of the homes of people in Westchester and Putnam counties in New York.

The adwhich said, Author seeks interview subjects for a book on difficult mother-daughter relationshipsdrew more than 150 responses, many from women in other states whose friends or relatives had sent it to them. There was no dearth of interview subjects: indeed, I was still receiving calls from women eager to describe their relationships with their mothers and/or with their grown daughters and sons long after my research was complete.

Through these sources, I was able to find a cross section of women, aged twenty-two to seventy-nine, from every socioeconomic level. There is no way to thank them adequately or to convey how deeply they all moved me. Their candor was stunning, sometimes shattering. The trust they placed in an author they had never met was extraordinary, and I will eternally be grateful to them. To protect their identities, I have changed their names and identifying characteristics.

I am grateful also to these authorities who generously and patiently shared their expertise in interviews:

Jane B. Abramson, Ph.D., psychologist, faculty member of the National College of Education in Evanston, Illinois; Jill Cannon, A.C.S.W., C.A.C., addictions family specialist; Ann F. Caron, EE.D., developmental psychologist who conducts mother-daughter workshops; Christina Crawford; Adele Faber, coauthor of Siblings Without Rivalry; Judith M. Fox, psychoanalyst; Elizabeth Fishel, author of Sisters: Love and Rivalry Inside the Family and Beyond;

James Garbarino, Ph.D., president of the Erikson Institute for Advanced Study in Child Development in Chicago; Judith Gerberg, M.A., art therapist and authority on change management and career development; Marianne Goodman, M.D., psychiatrist and associate clinical instructor in adult psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York; Ann Gordon, M.A., psychotherapist who conducts mother-daughter workshops; Michael D. Kahn, Ph.D., professor of psychology, University of Hartford; Michael Kerr, M.D., psychiatrist, Director of Training, Georgetown University Family Center; Harriet Goldhor Lerner, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and psychotherapist at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas; Elaine Mazlish, coauthor, Siblings Without Rivalry; Lilly Singer, director of the Bereavement Center of Westchester Jewish Community Services; Allan Stempler, M.D., psychiatrist, instructor in clinical psychiatry, Cornell University at Northshore University Hospital and adjunct instructor at New York College of Osteopathic Medicine.

For research help and valuable leads, I wish to thank Liz Smith; Stephen L. Isaacs, director of the Development Law & Policy Program at the Center for Population and Family Health at Columbia University; Danielle Clarke, director, Lee Stark, reference librarian, and the staff of the North Castle Public Library, Armonk, New York.

I am grateful also to Lazarus Secunda, M.D., psychiatrist, assistant professor of psychiatry at UCLA (retired), for his careful reading of the manuscript and for his knowledge.

The encouragement and support of my friends were incalculable. These people cheered me on in the long months of my hibernation, clucked over the snags and occasional hairpulling that accompanied it, and gave me extremely helpful suggestions. I wish to thank especially Kathleen Beckett-Young, Judy Chriss, Barbara Coats, Sherry Suib Cohen, Eileen Prescott Drape, Janet Elder, Ava Swartz Isaacs, Mary Alice Kellogg, Enid Moore, Laurie Nadel, Margaret B. Parkinson, Jane Bryant Quinn, Nancy Rubin, Ann McGovern Scheiner, Peggy Schmidt, Jane Snowday, Judy Tobias, and Stephanie von Hirschberg.

My thanks go also to Mary Anne Sacco of Delacorte for her unflagging patience, intelligence, and good will.

However, there are six people who were of particular and immeasurable help to me, and to whom I owe the greatest debt:

Donna Jackson, editor-at-large of New Woman, is the godmother of this book. It is she who first gave me the courage and impetus to write about mother-daughter disaffection, and who assigned me the article Should You Divorce Your Mother? that ran in New Woman, parts of which appear in this book. Donna has been my professionaland in many ways, personalmentor since we met in 1984; she is a woman of consummate editing skill, insight, brilliance, and compassion, whose friendship I cherish and count upon.

Janet H. Gardner, another treasured, talented, and admirable writer, editor, and friend, read the manuscript and gave me invaluable comments in countless meetings. Janet saved me from my hapless penchant for mixing metaphors, among other egregious editorial atrocities (including an excess of alliteration). Her part in the smoothing of the manuscript, to say nothing of her hand-holding, cannot be overstated.

Bob Miller, editorial director of Delacorte and my editor on this book, is its godfather. He hasin his solicitousness, availability, enthusiastic and immediate responses to chunks of manuscript and phone calls, professionalism, good humor, and sensitivityspoiled me forever. His belief in this project and gentle and extraordinary guidance were boundless. He is a gentleman of the old editorial school, and I cannot thank him enough for his advocacy and confidence in me.