cover image Mother's Voice: Strenghening Intimacy in Families

Mother's Voice: Strenghening Intimacy in Families

Kathy Weingarten. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $22.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-15-162680-9

A diagnosis of breast cancer triggered family therapist Weingarten's exploration of the myriad ways our culture encourages mothers to keep themselves at a ``crippling silence'' from their children. Continuing her practice of speaking in the ``voice'' of the selfless mother, Weingarten, whose children were 10 and 13, began her ordeal with cancer surgery and treatment by concealing her fears and anxieties, but her skilled awareness led her to ``unsilence'' much of her reaction, to expose her vulnerability and to develop an intimacy with her children despite ``fear that confiding . . . would blur a generational boundary between us.'' With perceptive and convincing observations drawn from research, her therapy practice and personal experience, Weingarten argues that mothers can assume ``judicious'' rather than ``ultimate'' responsibility for their children's welfare, responsibility that can be shared with other adults and with the children themselves. Weingarten's gradual approach to a kind of ``liberated mothering'' is a nurturing and reliable model. Author tour. (May)