Motherless Daughters (55 page)

163 Approximately 140,000 children . . . : Heather von Tesoriero, “Siblings Raising Siblings,”
Time,
May 14, 2001.

 

164 As Russell Hurd has pointed out . . . : Hurd, “Sibling Support Systems,” 301.

164 Of all the women who said . . . : Motherless Daughters survey, question 15 (see Appendix A).

 

165 “a bond that’s often gratefully acknowledged . . . ”: Hurd, “Sibling Support Systems,” 307.

165 A 1983 study of seven . . . : Benjamin Garber, “Some Thoughts on Normal Adolescents Who Lost a Parent by Death,”
Journal of Youth and Adolescence
12 (1983): 175-183.

169 We’re not usually aware . . . : Betty Carter and Monica McGoldrick, eds.,
The Changing Family Life Cycle
(Needham Heights, Mass.: Allyn & Bacon, 1989), 229.

169 According to the psychologists . . . : Hoopes and Harper,
Birth Order Roles,
31.

 

169 When sibling positions duplicate . . . : Ibid., 129.

170 In a 1989 Amherst College study of . . . : Rose R. Olver, Elizabeth Aries, and Joanna Batgos, “Self-Other Differentiation and the Mother-Child Relationship: The Effects of Sex and Birth Order,”
Journal of Genetic Psychology
150 (1989): 311-321.

170 Only one out of ten oldest . . . : Motherless Daughters survey, questions 7 and 14 (see Appendix A).

170 May feel overlooked or excluded . . . : Walter Toman,
Family Constellation,
3rd ed. (New York: Springer, 1976), 22.

170 Is least likely to find . . . : Motherless Daughters survey, questions 7 and 15 (see Appendix A).

171 Of all the women surveyed who said they feared . . . : Ibid., questions 7 and 13e.

171 Forty-eight percent of the youngest . . . : Ibid., questions 7 and 10.

171 In addition, half of the adult . . . : Ibid., questions 7 and 18.

171 Is typically more adept . . . : Toman,
Family Constellation,
27.

172 May have been cared for by . . . : Bossard,
The Large Family System,
156.

172 May see a natural leader/teacher emerge . . . : Hurd, “Sibling Support Systems,” 307.

172 May depend on a sibling cluster . . . : Toman,
Family Constellation,
24.

172 Because a sibling usually has . . . : Ibid., 20.

173 Can draw her sense of emotional . . . : Bossard,
The Large Family System,
223-228.

173 On the other hand, large families . . . : Ibid., 230-231.

178 “Surely whoever speaks . . . ”: Walt Whitman, “Vocalism,”
Complete Poetry and Selected Prose
(Boston: Riverside/Houghton Mifflin, 1959), 271.

179 As Clarissa Pinkola Estés points out . . . : Estés,
Warming the Stone Child
.

180 As John Bowlby observed . . . : John Bowlby,
A Secure Base
(New York: Basic-Books, 1988), 177.

181 Attachment theorists generally divide . . . : Phillip R. Shaver and Cindy Hazan, “A Biased Overview of the Study of Love,”
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
5 (1988): 473-501.

181 Secure adults typically divide . . . : Ibid., 487.

 

181 Anxious-ambivalent adults usually . . . : Ibid.

181 Avoidant adults rely almost . . . : Ibid.

 

181 Most psychologists now agree . . . : Jane L. Pearson, et al., “Earnedand Continuous-Security in Adult Attachment: Relation to Depressive Symptomatology and Parenting Style,”
Development and Psychopathology
6 (1994), 359; Gina Mireault, Kimberly Bearor, and Toni Thomas, “Adult Romantic Attachment Among Women Who Experienced Childhood Maternal Loss,”
Omega
44 (2001-2001), 98.

 

181 Even when an infant . . . on a child: Leila Beckwith, Sarale E. Cohen, and Claire E. Hamilton, “Maternal Sensitivity During Infancy and Subsequent Life Events Relate to Attachment Representation at Early Adulthood,”
Developmental Psychology
35 (1999), 693-700.

 

181 In a population of nonbereaved . . . : Phillip R. Shaver and Cindy Hazan, “Adult Romantic Attachment: Theory and Evidence,” in
Advances in Personal Relationships,
ed. D. Perlman and W. Jones, cited in Bette Diane Glickfield, “Adult Attachment and Utilization of Social Provisions as a Function of Perceived Mourning Behavior and Perceived Parental Bonding after Early Parent Loss” (Ph.D. diss., University of Detroit Mercy, 1993), 52.

182 When the psychologist Bette Glickfield . . . : Glickfield, “Adult Attachment,” 53.

182 The significantly higher percentage . . . : Ibid.

 

182 A 2001 study at . . . : Gina Mireault, Kimberly Bearor, and Toni Thomas, “Adult Romantic Attachment Among Women Who Experienced Childhood Maternal Loss,” 97-104.

182 Taken together, these findings . . . : Ibid., 102.

 

183 A 1990 study of 118 undergraduates . . . : Nancy L. Collins and Stephen J. Read, “Adult Attachment Working Models and Relationship Quality in Dating Couples,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
58 (1990): 651-655.

 

184 As Maxine Harris found . . . : Harris,
The Loss That Is Forever,
152-155.

184 As the psychologist Martha Wolfenstein pointed out . . . : Martha Wolfenstein, “Loss, Rage, and Repetition,”
Psychoanalytic Study of the Child
24 (1969): 434-435.

185 A daughter who can’t evoke . . . : Phil Mollon, “Narcissistic Vulnerability and the Fragile Self: A Failure of Mirroring,”
British Journal of Medical Psychology
59 (1986): 317-324.

186 But this kind of loyalty can go . . . : Emswiler and Emswiler,
Guiding Your Child Through Grief
, 194.

188 “Self reliance is perhaps . . . ”: Harris,
The Loss That Is Forever,
159.

190 Forty-six percent of the adults . . . : Glickfield, “Adult Attachment,” 53.

190 Of the 154 motherless women surveyed . . . : Motherless Daughters survey, question 2 (see Appendix A).

190 Bette Glickfield found the presence . . . : Glickfield, “Adult Attachment,” 49-50.

190 Other research indicates that . . . : Michael Rutter, “Resilience in the Face of Adversity,”
British Journal of Psychiatry
147 (1985): 604.

191 Carolyn Pape Cowan, Ph.D. . . . : Carolyn Pape Cowan and Philip A. Cowan,
When Partners Become Parents
(New York: Basic Books, 1992), 140-144.

192 As they prepared to . . . : Gary Jacobson and Robert G. Ryder, “Parental Loss and Some Characteristics of the Early Marriage Relationship,”
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
39 (October 1969): 780.

192 Instead, they found that . . . : Ibid.

192 These couples exhibited a . . . : Ibid.

194 “If women are the earliest sources . . . : Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” in
Powers of Desire,
eds. Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), 177-205.

195 “The unmothered child often wants to . . . : Estés,
Warming the Stone Child.

195 But without a mother-figure or caretaker . . . : Joyce McDougall, “Parent Loss,” in
The Reconstruction of Trauma,
ed. Arnold Rothstein (Madison, Conn.: International Universities Press, 1986), 151.

196 “Compulsion is despair . . . : Geneen Roth,
When Food Is Love (
New York: Plume/Penguin, 1992), 15.

 

199 There are two common relationship strategies . . . : Harris,
The Loss That Is Forever,
144.

202 The French author Simone de Beauvoir asked . . . : Simone de Beauvoir,
The Second Sex
(1949) (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1972), 13.

205 The “deep feminine” . . . : Naomi Lowinsky, personal communication, November 21, 1992.

 

205 Adrienne Rich has described . . . : Adrienne Rich,
Of Woman Born
(New York: Norton, 1986), 220.

205 The sociologist Miriam Johnson, in a review . . . : Miriam M. Johnson, “Fathers and ‘Femininity’ in
Daughters: A Review of the Research,
”
Sociology and Social Research
67 (October 1982-July 1983): 2.

205 Fathers, she says, influence the . . . : Ibid., 1-17.

205 Mothers provide the . . . : Ibid.

 

206 Nancy Drew in business . . . : “GNotes,”
Glamour,
August 1993, 185.

206 One out of three motherless women . . . : Motherless Daughters survey, question 18 (see Appendix A).

 

211 The most important factor . . . : Phyllis Klaus, personal communication, November 25, 1992; Nan Birnbaum, personal communication, July 9, 1992. See also Bryan E. Robinson and Neil H. Fields, “Casework with Invulnerable Children,”
Social Work
(January-February 1983): 65; Michael Rutter, “Resilience in the Face of Adversity,”
British Journal of Psychiatry
147 (1985): 605.

212 Of the ninety-seven women . . . : Motherless Daughters survey, question 15 (see Appendix A).

 

212 “Such ‘most similar’ persons . . . ”: Toman,
Family Constellation
, 47-48.

213 In more than half of the eighty-three stepfamilies surveyed . . . : Motherless Daughters survey, question 9.

213 Because the actual mother . . . : Rose-Emily Rothenberg, “The Orphan Archetype,” 190.

215 The British psychiatrist John Birtchnell . . . : John Birtchnell, “Women Whose Mothers Died in Childhood: An Outcome Study,”
Psychological Medicine
10 (1980): 699-713. See also Rutter, “Resilience,” 603.

218 Although fathers do pass on . . . : Eileen Hepburn, “The Father’s Role in Sexual Socialization of Adolescent Females in an Upper and Upper-Middle Class Population,”
Journal of Early Adolescence
1 (1981): 53-59.

218 A Widener University . . . : Ibid., 55.

218 In this study, conducted . . . : Ibid., 56.

218 For two thousand years . . . : Rich,
Of Woman Born
, 237-240; Naomi Ruth Lowinsky,
The Motherline
(Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1993), 6-9.

220 An adult woman dissatisfied . . . : De Beauvoir,
The Second Sex,
309, 533.

220 Menstruation is hardly . . . : Ibid., 536.

221 “They remember what she gave . . . ”: Susan Griffin,
Woman and Nature
(New York: Perennial/Harper & Row, 1978), 210-211.

224 Of the 154 motherless women . . . : Motherless Daughters survey, question 17 (see Appendix A).

224 Grandmothers, aunts, sisters . . . : Ibid.

224 More than half . . . : Ibid., questions 4 and 17.

224 Likewise, only 13 percent . . . : Ibid.

224 Daughters who were adolescents . . . : Ibid.

226 Storytelling serves a vital function . . . : George S. Howard, “Culture Tales: A Narrative Approach to Thinking, Cross-Cultural Psychology, and Psychotherapy,”
American Psychologist
46 (March 1991): 187-197.

226 “When a woman today comes . . . ”: Lowinsky,
The Motherline
, 13.

235 Matrophobia, as Adrienne Rich explains . . . : Rich,
Of Woman Born
, 235.

235 “I wonder whether . . . ”: Kim Chernin,
In My Mother’s House
(New Haven, Conn.: Ticknor & Fields, 1983), 306.

238 As Naomi Lowinsky points out . . . : Lowinsky,
The Motherline,
53.

240 Some psychologists believe . . . : Judith Kegan Gardiner, “On Female Identity and Writing by Women,”
Critical Inquiry
8 (1981): 353.

240 Others see identity as more . . . : Ibid., 352.

240 Still others propose . . . : Don P. McAdams, Power,
Intimacy, and the Life Story
(Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1985), 57-58, cited in Howard, “Culture Tales,” 193.

246 More than three-quarters . . . : Motherless Daughters survey, question 13b (see Appendix A).

247 Ninety-two percent . . . : Ibid., questions 5 and 13b.

247 The same was true . . . : Ibid.

247 . . . according to the medical geneticist . . . : Matthew B. Lubin, M.D., personal interview, August 17, 1993.

250 Two-thirds of the motherless women . . . : Motherless Daughters survey, question 13d (see Appendix A).

 

251 The psychologists Veronika Denes-Raj . . . : Veronika Denes-Raj and Howard Ehrlichman, “Effects of Premature Parental Death on Subjective Life Expectancy, Death Anxiety, and Health Behavior,”
Omega
23 (1991): 309-321.

 

252 Because the concept . . . : Ernest Becker,
The Denial of Death
(New York: Free Press, 1973), 16-17.

252 A mother’s death is as close . . . : Denes-Raj and Ehrlichman, “Premature Parental Death,” 317.

 

254 As Denes-Raj and Ehrlichman discovered . . . : Ibid., 316-319.

 

254 But Dr. Denes-Raj . . . : Veronika Denes-Raj, personal communication, October 15, 1993.

 

261 It’s the reason why the . . . : Motherless Daughters survey, questions 1 and 12 (see Appendix A).

 

262 “Everyone who is born . . . ”: Susan Sontag,
Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
(New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1990), 3.

265 While remaining adult and . . . : Nancy Chodorow,
The Reproduction of Mothering
(Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1978), 89-90.

 

265 At the same time, a new mother . . . : Ibid., 90.

 

265 As the psychiatrists Sol Altschul . . . : Sol Altschul and Helen Beiser, “The Effect of Early Parent Loss on Future Parenthood,” in
Parenthood: A Psychodynamic Perspective,
eds. Rebecca S. Cohen, Bertram J. Cohler, and Sidney H. Weissman (New York: Guilford Press, 1984), 181.