Kate Raphael, host of Womens Magazine, interviews Sandra Butler on KPFA (April 2, 2018).
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Sandra Butler and Nan Fink Gene Discuss Mothers’ Perspectives on Their Life-Long Role
What do mothers over 65 have to say about their current mother-daughter relationships? Authors Sandra Butler and Nan Fink Gefen interviewed 78 mothers, ranging in age from 65-85, of varied backgrounds, family configurations, employment, education, racial identities, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. The authors listened as mothers recounted stories of the complex twists and turns of their mothering over time. The interactive presentation, facilitated by Ashby Village co-chair of the Arts and Culture program Marcia Freedman, was both touching and thought provoking, punctuated by knowing laughter and sighs of recognition from the audience.
Read full article from Ashby Village »
Watch the full event online:
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Push and Pull: Dancing With our Daughters
Mothers pull for continuing personal autonomy – daughters push for our safety
As women age and see the end of life more clearly than its midpoint, we and our daughters find ourselves engaging in a new and unfamiliar dance. Mothers pull to maintain their independence, while daughters push for their safety. While the dance is understandable and inevitable, the difference in intention can create stumbles and missteps.
Older mothers, as I came to understand after dozens of interviews for It Never Ends: Mothering Middle-Aged Daughters, want to keep their independence for as long as they are able, and to be the ones who determine when and how it should be relinquished. Yet their daughters are concerned about accidental falls, or pots left too long on the stove, and their mother’s physical well-being.
Read full post on psychologytoday.com »
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Still Mothering After All These Years
Mothering doesn’t end as women age.
I am nearly 80 years old and my daughters are in the last years of their 50s. When I was a young, a mother just starting out, I imagined that I would be actively engaged for about 18 years before they left home, at which time I would return to the concerns of my own life and they would find their way forward into their own. Of course, I quickly learned that the relationship doesn’t unfold like that. Mothering almost always begins at their birth and ends at our death. I understand that now.
As I prepare to enter my ninth decade, I think about how I want to live these final years. I no longer find the same things funny. I strain to hear, chase after lost proper nouns, try multiple remedies to soothe endlessly aching joints and make every effort to keep my spirits positive. Things seem to take longer now. I am slower and more deliberate in my choices and my actions. And I’m so much more appreciative of what I have, even as the list of what is going and gone continues to grow.
Read full post on psychologytoday.com »
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More and Less
Older mothers with more time yet less contact with middle-aged daughters
I no longer call my daughter, but instead wait to hear from her. That way, I’m certain that she has both the inclination and time to visit. That way, I protect myself against the fear of hearing even the slight hesitation as she adjusts and juggles whatever it was she was planning to do at the moment the phone rang. I don’t trust my spontaneous impulse just to hear her voice but instead send a text or email with a brief update or asking when she has time to talk.
Read full post on psychologytoday.com »
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Crossing the Broken Bridge
Have I been a good-enough mother to my daughter? This question hovered in my thoughts on past sleepless nights when I replayed the scenes of my maternal mistakes—for which I had tried, judged, and sentenced myself. The choices I made as a young woman continued to reverberate painfully through her life and in retrospect, were so foolish, even though they seemed so urgent and necessary then. But crossing the “broken bridge” has taken time.
Read full post on livingbetter50.com »
Is it crazy for two close friends to think they can write a book together—and maintain their friendship?
Five years ago, at our usual Monday breakfast in a café, we asked ourselves this question. We’d been toying with the idea of co-authoring a book about the experience of mothering middle-aged daughters and imagined it would be a challenging and provocative way to spend the next few years. We would develop our ideas and questions, interview a range of women, and write a book that would open a long, overdue conversation among older mothers about these relationships. While we were used to being together often, we understood this would mean that we would have much more contact, and we’d need to create a balance of work and non-book time so that we’d continue to share other parts of our lives. There would be differences of opinion that would have to be navigated, and we hoped we’d do this skillfully, but the question that was paramount for both of us was: Could we make it through the predictable ups and downs during this period and keep our friendship in one piece?
Read full post on writersdigest.com »
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AARP Interview: The Mother-Daughter Bond
A new book explores a unique relationship that ‘never ends’
There are countless books about mothers and daughters, but not so many (if any) about what motherhood is like when your daughters are in their 40s and 50s. Now there’s one, It Never Ends: Mothering Middle-Aged Daughters by Sandra Butler, 79, and Nan Fink Gefen, 76.
The authors, each with two daughters in their 50s, interviewed nearly 80 mothers in their 70s and 80s about their relationships with their daughters (a dynamic different than that between mothers and sons, which deserves its own book, they say).
“There’s an assumption that mothering stops when your kids are in their 40s and 50s,” says Butler from her home in the San Francisco Bay Area. Nope.
Read full interview on AARP.org »
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A Silent Rebuke
Whenever my mother came to visit during the early years of my own mothering, I allowed my two young daughters to make messes. I encouraged them to express both their disagreements and their often disagreeable thoughts. Raising daughters who knew how they felt and had the confidence to speak up for what they thought was right and fair was a value I held, one emerging from my own longing and inability as a child to express my feelings and, as my grandmother would have put it, “stick up for myself.” My mother’s intention was to raise children who were well behaved and successful. Perhaps that was her way of communicating to her immigrant mother that she was living the American dream of white upwardly mobile motherhood of the l940’s and 50’s. She had a well scrubbed carefully furnished house. Obedient children. Her own car. All markers of American success.
Read full post at motherhoodlater.com »
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Kirkus Review
IT NEVER ENDS
Mothering Middle-Aged Daughters
by Nan Fink Gefen, Sandra Butler
KIRKUS REVIEW
An insightful look at the relationships between senior mothers and their middle-aged daughters….
Though Butler and Gefen often search for patterns, they recognize that “no two mother-daughter relationships are alike,” nor should they be. Most older mothers of daughters will connect to at least one narrative in this book, which also includes discussion questions.
An important personal and sociological perspective on women’s lives.