Fatherless Women: How We Change After We Lose Our Dads - Hardcover

"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 apart 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. ("Library Journal," September 15, 2001)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 issued 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

A poignant book about adult daughters who lose their fathers, filled with stories about the author's life and the stories of other women, and with probing explorations of the psychology of women who lose their fathers and the legacies of loss.