Book summary for Literature review

Friday, N. 1994. My mother/my self : the daughter’s search for identity. London: HarperCollins.

Chapter 1: Mothers Love

PP20

Friday challenges the conventional wisdom that motherhood is inherently free of mistakes and contradictions, revealing it to be an illusion. She shows how mothers may indeed love their children, but not necessarily like them, and that the sacrifices mothers make every day can breed resentment. Mothers also pro often project their own unfulfilled ideals onto their daughters, expecting them to be the perfect women and mothers that they cannot be.

PP21

Friday explores the deep, often subconscious, emotional legacy that mothers pass on to their daughters, who inherit not only their mother's traits, but also her anxieties, fears, and anger. This emotional legacy influences the way daughters interact with others, replicating the patterns of relationships they first established with their mothers.

PP35-37

Friday emphasised the initial emotion a mother feels towards her newborn as a type of self-love, viewing the child as an extension of herself. The societal glorification of motherhood demands that mothers suppress their own emotions and preferences, focusing solely on the child, which can erase their emotional past and personal identity. This becomes particularly problematic when a daughter is born, as it reawakens the mother's past fears and vulnerabilities, causing her to retreat into a protective but limiting maternal role. This role, often rooted in fear, stifles both the mother's and the daughter's sexual and personal identity development. As a result, the mother defines herself primarily as a protector, neglecting her own womanhood and inadvertently imposing a constrained view of womanhood and sexuality on her daughter, affecting the daughter's ability to see herself as an independent and sexual being.

Chapter 2

Friday suggests that symbiotic relationships are of great significance to women as they often determine the pattern of their relationships throughout their lives (pp. 51-52). In contrast to society's encouragement of boys to develop independence, girls are often taught to realize their self-worth through relationships, thus promoting patterns of lifelong dependence.

The transition from symbiosis to separation is full of fluctuations and challenges, which complicates the process of achieving emotional independence (p. 54) Friday highlights the fact that women who do not develop a basic level of trust as infants remain emotionally tied to their mothers' anxieties and fears despite achieving external markers of independence such as careers and families. This continued emotional dependence prevents them from being fully comfortable in control of their life (p. 55) and leads to cause women to replicate similar patterns of restriction with their own daughters, maintaining a cycle of emotional restriction and dependence that remains largely unchallenged by society (p. 56). In addition, mothers often believe that their deep understanding of what it means to be a girl reduces their daughters' opportunities for freedom and growth. By taking on the role of dominant, mothers stifle their daughter's individuality and force her to participate in familiar activities.(P.62)