Fatherless Women: How We Change After We Lose Our Dads

by Clea Simon

Overview

There is a special bond between a father and a daughter, and when that bond is broken by death, a woman's life can change in profound and unexpected ways. Clea Simon, critically acclaimed author of Mad House, explores this crucial meeting point of grief and growth by delving into her own experience and those of other women to paint an illuminating portrait of the father-daughter relationship and its lifelong ramifications. Filled with moving stories of real women, this poignant, comforting, and insightful book paves the way for all women to make peace with the past, with the adults they have become, and to courageously face the question: what happens next?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780471217770
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	03/12/2002
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	328 KB

About the Author

Clea Simon is a Massachusetts-based writer, journalist and a regular contributor to the New York Times, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Ms., Rolling Stone and Salon.com. Sheas the author of three nonfiction books, She lives in Cambridge, MA, with her husband, the writer Jon S. Garelick, and their cat, Musetta.
http://www.cleasimon.com

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
1	After Daddy	1
2	Reconciling Visions	15
3	Fatherless Girls	37
4	Time for Mourning	51
5	Connecting with a Mate	77
6	Marriages in Transition	103
7	Babies and Mortgages	121
8	Mothers and Daughters	133
9	Work and Self-Image	157
10	When Lives Do Not Change	185
11	The Journey Over Time	201
	Postscript	207
	Acknowledgments	213
	Recommended Reading	215
	Bibliography	217
	Index	221

Editorial Reviews

When fathers die, says Simon (Mad House), a Boston Globe journalist, their daughters may experience crucial changes in their lives. Some will feel freed of their father's expectations and strictures. Some will want to have a baby. Some will already have worked out their issues with their dads years earlier and will simply feel grief at the loss of a parent. Some will forge a whole new relationship with their mother, if she's still living. Everything is possible, and may depend on the daughter's sexuality and age, on whether the parents were divorced or unhappy with each other. Or none of these things may happen, or if they do, they may not depend on the aforementioned factors. Such rampant indeterminacy is meant to sound embracing and supportive; instead, it reads like equivocal psychobabble. Despite plenty of valid and judicious observations ("When we lose a parent, we move up a step in the generational hierarchy"), the narrative feels flat and unsubstantiated. Simon writes mostly based on her own experience of her father's death and has also talked to friends and read some popular psychology books on fathers and daughters and on death and grieving. Her friends' experiences are used to illustrate some of the ways paternal death affects daughters, while experts are invoked to give the book some clout. (Oct.) Forecast: Too anecdotal to pass as scholarship, and too dull for popular appeal, this book will need a lot of big-name endorsements before anyone's going to buy it for herself or a grieving girlfriend, the only conceivable market for this strangely unaffecting volume. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Boston Globe journalist Simon draws on her own experiences, as well as those of women she has interviewed, to examine the relationship between father and daughter and the changes that occur when a father dies. Although interesting for its personal insights and backed by the interviews and a bibliography, this is not a scholarly work and should be read as the author's personal reflections. Chapters explore the grief process and the life changes that can follow, affecting marriages, work choices, and bonds between mothers and daughters. Readers are also shown the complexity of father-daughter relationships and how daughters learn to reconcile sometimes opposing influences after a father's death. Because the author was 31 when her father died and her interviewees were mostly in their twenties, thirties, and forties, many of the emotional changes cited here could have come about simply as a part of maturation. Those who lose their fathers very early in life, as well as the 50 percent who lose them after they turn 50, would probably not experience a father's death in the same way. Suitable for large public libraries. Kay Brodie, Chesapeake Coll., Wye Mills, MD Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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