Motherloss

By Lynn Davidman

Book Overview

Lynn Davidman's pathbreaking study analyzes the immediate and continuing impact of a mother's premature death on the children she leaves behind. Drawing on interviews with sixty adults from a variety of class backgrounds, Davidman argues that the experience of motherloss is shaped by our social conceptions of women's roles in the family and in society. Speaking candidly, often with great emotion and insight, Davidman's interviewees were glad for the opportunity to break cultural taboos and silences about death and to create stories that reveal the power of this early loss to influence their lifelong conceptions of self, family, community, God, and love. With a profound sense of purpose and keen insight, Davidman highlights the narratives of ten respondents, weaving them together into a powerful book that reveals the numerous common themes--as well as the individual variations--in people's stories. This first study of the lifelong impact of motherloss on women's and men's lives will become the definitive work on perhaps the deepest and most complex disruption to occur in the course of a life.

Davidman, who was thirteen when her mother died of cancer, enriches the narrative with her own insights of growing up as the only female in an Orthodox Jewish home with her father and two brothers. The book is enlivened by her movement back and forth between herself and others, individuals and society, thereby challenging the assumption that the personal has no place in our quest for knowledge and understanding. She successfully uses others' experiences to better illuminate her own, and at the same time develops an empathic understanding of their stories by reaching deep into her own memories and feelings about her mother's death and its impact on her life. Despite the silences, isolation, and confusion that accompany a mother's death, and the cultural messages to move on, Davidman's respondents find ways--in thoughts, prayers, memories, symbolic objects, and practices--to retain their mother's presence in their daily lives.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520232003
• ISBN13: 9780520232006
• Release Date: December 2000
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 307 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

An important contribution to the sociology of loss

Lynn Davidman's book provides a sensitive and nuanced account of how mother loss reverberates throughout the course of people's lives in complex ways. As a fellow sociologist, I was touched by and learned from her deep and compassionate empathy for her subjects. She carefully and thoughtfully listened to their stories, and presents her analysis in a strikingly original way that honored the integrity of the narratives. This book helped me think about loss, identity, narrative and the art of sociological writing in new ways. I also know that her work has helped many individuals to make better sense of their own experiences of mother loss, something that few sociology books can claim.

motherloss

I was impressed with the diversity of people interviewed. A central theme for most of the interviewees was how little disclosure of their mother's illness was given to them before or even after death. I was happy to see that children of the mothers who died in the 1980s and 90's were made more aware of their family situations. This book gives permission for those of us who have lost our mothers to open up the emotional attic and relive the memories that we all too often bury in our day to day lives.

The Art of Storytelling and Meaning Making

What is perhaps most impressive about this high-achieving book is the wide audience to which it appeals. On one hand, Davidman is a masterful storyteller, weaving her own story of loss with the poignant and remarkable stories of her respondents. She is sensitive and incisive and expertly is able to represent the broad array of experiences with motherloss that she encountered during her fieldwork. This book is also a superb example of what sociology can be. Far from crunching numbers or stating hackneyed conclusions, Davidman offers a work of qualitative sociology replete with thick analysis and an understanding of the complexities and contradictions of the lives we live. She offers a fresh perspective on the role of the sociologist that, I hope, will inform sociologists in years to come.Her writing is lucid and engaging and carries the reader through many painful stories about motherloss and the aftermath of what she terms the loss of caring. Her steady voice and astute analysis demystifies the often silenced and unspoken tragedy of losing a parent at a young, formative age. There are few people--in the academy and outside of it--who I can think of who would not grow and learn from this book.

It helps to get it out in the open

When I was fifteen, my mother died of cancer. This book is the first one I have found that has helped me make sense of this experience. My mother's cancer was not openly discussed in our family and we did not talk about my mother much after she died. But her death made a huge impact on my family;we were kind of lost without her. And for most of my life I have not talked very much about this. But reading this book and seeing the experiences of the people Davidman interviewed, helped me see how common our family's experiences were. It was helpful to learn about how society and the mother's role in it, and the American taboo on death, shaped our very personal, painful experiences of loss. I recommend this book to anyone who has lost a mother at any age. I'm sure you will find comfort in it.

Read Motherloss!

This is one of the most powerful qualitative studies I have ever read. I found it emotionally hard to read. I had to put it down frequently because the emotions in the narratives flooded me at times. But the interpretations and the framework that set them up allowed me to read the narratives with an understanding that went outside of myself, which I think was particularly critical for me as a reader who has not shared the experience of the death of my mother. The book also manages to convey some very rich theory without diminishing the narratives and the integrity of the respondents. I loved that about the book. I also was very impressed with the methodological discussions--they answered many important questions about what it means to do fieldwork and particularly, to do fieldwork on a sensitive issue. Finally, the "voice" is perfect: the blend of personal and scholarly that allows the reader in. This is such a rich and fine book. I am going to use it in my introduction to qualitative methodology classes and in my feminist research and scholarship class.Read this book!