Editorial Review
Reviving Ophelia meets The Mother- Daughter Book Club in a book that offers a proven model for staying connected through adolescence There is no comment more troubling to the mother of a young girl than “she loves you now, but just wait ’til she’s a teenager.” Ten years ago, SuEllen Hamkins and Renee Schultz, psychotherapy professionals with a combined forty years’ experience and both mothers of then seven-year-old daughters, created The Mother-Daughter Project with several other women in their community, with the hope of disproving this damaging assumption. With their young daughters, the group met regularly to speak frankly about such issues as girls’ friendships (and aggression), puberty, the media’s influence on their self-image and esteem, drugs, and sexuality.
As their daughters matured, the mothers marveled at the strength and confidence with which the girls thrived through adolescence. The Project had succeeded in creating a haven from the many perils of teen culture. Equally important, it helped the mothers navigate their own fears and concerns about adolescence with integrity and grace.
At once simple and revolutionary, this book details the success of the Mother-Daughter Project’s groundbreaking model, providing the reader with a road map for strengthening her bond with her own daughter, and providing strategies for staying close through adolescence and beyond.
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Customer Reviews
a wonderful resource for parents 
2007-08-31
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.
great message for mothers and daughters! 
2007-05-20
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.
Great book for mothers with daughters 2008-04-24
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!
This is a gift of a book. And for another inspirational and fascinating book that goes deep into the challenges 2008-04-10
and joys of the mother-daughter relationship, I recommend That's How the Light Gets In: Memoir of a Psychiatrist by Susan Rako, M.D. The title comes from a song by Leonard Cohen: "There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Rako's book is extraordinarily insightful, gracefully written, and an overall great read. The writing just flows.
Highly reccommend this to moms of girls 2008-03-26
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.
Incredibly Useful and Beautiful 2007-10-08
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.
good for rich white people 
2007-09-13
Three years ago, you could not have convinced me that my mother and I would have a functional adult relationship. In addition to a life crisis that brought us back onto speaking terms and into each other's lives, we learned to set aside most of our differences because life is too short to do otherwise. When I heard about The Mother-Daughter Project, a book that promises "a proven model for staying connected through adolescence and beyond," I felt a glimmer of hope that young women would no longer spend their twenties overcoming the verbal scars of youthful wars with our parents. Maybe my expectations were quite high, but this overly self-referential, self-help book in disguise is written in such a fluffy, insulting way that I found it hard to accept any of its legitimate advice.
It should first be noted that the ten-year group experiment on which this book is based took place in greater Massachusetts, where I currently reside. While that doesn't immediately lend itself to a myriad of privileges, two educated, white women wrote this book from their own experience. They do make a cursory acknowledgement that mothering is more than their version of the status quo, but this recognition simply doesn't show through in their analysis or supposedly practical application, and I just can't get down with that kind of written tokenism.
Most helpful for their references to other similar, more groundbreaking works, this is a good book for mothers who literally have no clue about how to start relating to their teenagers. The overly simplistic solutions and embarrassing language do not make it an effective read for teens, however. If my mother had handed me this when I was in middle school, I'd have laughed in her face despite my strong desire to heal our relationship even then. An overly indulgent attempt to debunk myths like the "perfect girl" or the "supermom," this book is mainly a solution for upper class white folks who have a built-in support system ready to consciousness-raise and spend long hours dissecting how to best grow their relationships.
