Daughters of Feminists: Young Women with Feminist Mothers Talk about Their Lives

To ascertain the effect of a mother's feminist commitment on her daughter's attitudes and behavior, Glickman, herself a feminist with a grown daughter, interviewed 50 women, aged 18 to 35, raised by mothers involved in the women's movement. She asked her subjects to reminisce about their childhoods, to describe their relationships and to talk about gender issues. She has an easy conversational style that is well-suited to this anecdotal oral history. Her subjects are women who live in New York City, Chicago and San Francisco, and most are well-educated, white and middle-class. The minority women included in Glickman's sample felt that racism was a greater problem to them than sexism. While all those interviewed acknowledged that their mothers' feminism had helped them to become strong women, few have pursued a course of political activism and most prefer to fight sexism through individual rather than collective action. (Oct.)