REVIEWS

The Unique Experience of Motherless Mothers

Motherless Mothers: How Mother Loss Shapes the Parents We Become by: Hope Edelman HarperCollins Imprint, 2006 ISBN# 0060532459 448 pages

As a motherless mother, I was very eager to read Motherless Mothers.

I was hoping to not only relate to the Hope Edelman's own history, but to see the research Motherless Mothers presented. On several occasions I did uncover shared truths, such as my own need to be the "perfect mom" and creating a "mothering" legacy with my two pre-school daughters.

However, the format in which the book was presented made it difficult to get through. By format, I'd point to the backdrop of anecdotal sharing: the author's undertaking of over 1,000 motherless mother's interviews along with the author's personal account as a motherless mother. Upon reading the first chapter or two, my initial impression was that the book was full of sorrow and not much reflection. I had a change of heart, though, after the fifth chapter where the author begins to present research and clinical findings.

Edelman describes how mothers who lose their own moms approach motherhood in a unique manner. She starts off the book by discussing the psychological stage of grief and how new motherless mothers often times either re-experience their loss and grief or find a need to do this at the onset of becoming a new mother. She furthers this by providing insight into the effect of dealing with or not dealing with this grief and how this impacts the mother-child bond. Those mothers who had not yet dealt with their maternal loss had difficulty bonding or caring for their child. Edelman discusses how cathartic healing takes place for many motherless moms through the birth of their own children and associated experience. Furthering this healing, motherless moms have a need to develop a legacy as a mother along with resurrecting age-related occurrences shared with their lost mother.

Among the many quotes I found interesting was: "It's really hard to know when to be tough and when to give in". One of the largest new-parent difficulties that I had as a new mother, and motherless mother, is distinction between messages of love and discipline. I'm sure much of this has to do with my own maternal loss and a hyper-sensitive need for a bond of love with my children.

The author's discussion about the unique experience of mothering as a motherless mom weakened when her dialogue generalized itself to issues which all mothers experience. For example, "A mother who took on partial responsibility for herself at age four, for example, may find herself torn between wanting to foster competence in her child, wanting to offer him the security of a mother's care, and hoping to find self healing by doing for him what was not done for her." This comment points to the struggle that most "want to be a good" moms share and is not an experience which motherless mothers experience alone. Another example of this, "When Eden once choked in a restaurant, I quickly grabbed her, flipped her over, pounded on her three times between the shoulder blades to dislodge the piece of food, calmed her down… It's the possibility of crisis, the uncertainty of the unknown that unnerves me." Fearing the death of your child is, again, not an owned concept of motherless mothers. Unfortunately this fear is a concern for most mothers.

If I were in the editor's room prior to the publishing of this book, I would have advised the author to try and became very, very clear on what she was trying to present. References to her 1,000 interviews should portray stories which track tightly to the point of the chapter, offer crisp reflections and unique meaning. As it stands, the presentation and sharing of these stories becomes cumbersome to get through and often times superfluous. Furthermore, the uniqueness of this group should be investigated further by forming either chapters or discussion around mothers who lost their mothers as a young child, teen or adult. People who lose their mother while a toddler, or as a teen or as an adult have a very different set of traumas, coping and later, parenting skills. At times, the book loses context because the author speaks too often to motherless mothers as large group in comparison to the obvious smaller subgroups.

I would describe Motherless Mothers as an extended essay on the uniqueness of motherless mothers as a group; perhaps written in self-help fashion. In the preface, the author claims that this is not a book on bereavement but more of a parenting handbook. The first part of the book read much more like bereavement than a parenting handbook. I'm not sure I'd describe Motherless Mothers as a parenting book either because I didn't really learn anything new about parenting. However, the reflections that I was able to experience were helpful as both a person and parent living in our world today. Edelman's book uncovers some initial information regarding this topic, which I hope to see further explored.

Maryanne Battles is currently a Seattle, Washington stay-at-home mom to four- and two-year old daughters. She lost both parents prior to age 17 and was raised by her maternal aunt. Like most mothers, she has found parenting challenging, but is grateful to the many female role models that have shaped her life. She believes strongly she would not have had as much life success without the many people who stepped in following her parents’ deaths.