Why Form a Mother-Daughter Book Club?

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"Together we came up with the plan of creating a small, supportive community — an extended family of committed mothers — in which mother-daughter connection was the norm."

— from The Mother-Daughter Project by SuEllen Hamkins and Renée Schultz

One day Charlotte and I were talking politics. I told her that I thought the world would be a better place if half of the political power in every country were in the hands of women, who comprise half of the human population. I don't know if this will ever come to pass, or if the effect would be as I imagine — especially given that we have female politicians with a variety of political leanings — but perhaps we'd have less war, better education for our children, better health care for everyone, a cleaner environment, and in America, for sure, less time spent discussing abortion and birth control instead of jobs and the economy. I told Charlotte that my greatest hope is that in my lifetime I will see more women ascend into leadership roles in government, business, media, and other male-dominated realms where their presence could be a game changer.

"That is why I want us to write this book, because —"

"Because we have to start with the children," finished Charlotte.

That we do.

After this exchange, I remembered a favorite quote from the movie Babe. As the narrator said, "little ideas that tickled and nagged and refused to go away should never be ignored, for in them lie the seeds of destiny." This conversation with Charlotte tickled and nagged, and helped us refine our ideas on what the book should be, why mothers should read it, and why we feel mothers and daughters will benefit from starting their own club. So why form a book club?

We Need Small Villages

Mother-daughter book clubs are not only a vehicle for sharing the enjoyment of reading, but they also act as small villages where women can collectively support girls and model healthy femininity for them. As a broader culture, we are failing at this. The best interests of children seem to often come last, behind the best interests of adults and corporations that can make money by selling products and services that reinforce gender stereotypes. As grownups, when we prioritize profit over children, we are robbing our youngest citizens of a healthy childhood in order to line our pockets. It is an act of economic and emotional vandalism. But it doesn't have to go down like this.

Mother-daughter book clubs provide girl-friendly smaller villages, and in some ways they are emotionally safer than school and sometimes even home. For only children like mine, they are a place where they can feel something akin to having sisters. For children with siblings, they are a place where they can feel special and enjoy time spent with their mothers. Most important, clubs can really be the small, intimate groups in which girls experience a measured amount of communal upbringing, something that is sorely absent in today's world.

Clubs Can Meet a Wide Range of Goals

If you talk to people who have been in mother-daughter book clubs or if you read about them, you will quickly see that there are many reasons for forming them, as well as for staying in them over time. Some examples of differing missions include:

* providing more challenging books for strong readers;

* providing additional practice for weaker readers;

* building strong emotional bonds with daughters;

* social opportunities for mothers;

* social opportunities for girls;

* addressing important aspects of family life, such as imparting religious values, reinforcing racial identity, or fostering an appreciation for art or music; and/or

* helping girls become more confident by providing a safe place for them to express their opinions and use their intelligence, apart from the environment of school where some girls dumb themselves down.

This book will help you form and run a specific kind of mother-daughter book club that teaches mothers how to help daughters prepare for — and proactively address — the challenges facing them today. The goal is to raise girls to become confident young women in a culture that makes many girls and women feel insecure and powerless about their looks and abilities and future roles. With the tools you gain from this book, you will be able to instill in your daughters a greater sense of agency about their own lives, and this will lead to girls who are more resilient and more driven to reach their fullest potential.

But even with that specific mission, your club will be poised to accomplish other goals as well, as you come to define them. Once the meeting structure is in place, you can use it to enrich or empower the daughters of the club in whatever ways your own group determines are important. Clubs can and do evolve over time, and that is one of the beautiful things about them.

Clubs Help Moms and Girls Navigate the "Terrible Teens" and Other Clichés

When I was reading and researching in preparation for starting our own mother-daughter book club, and again as I worked on this book, I sometimes felt conflicted about the ways in which mother -daughter communication was discussed. Sure, it is very important and must be cultivated! But sometimes I felt that as the reader, I was presented with various euphemisms for girls and their behavior that were at best incomplete and at worst harmful clichés.

We have the moody, cantankerous "terrible teen," who drags her mother on terrifying roller coaster rides along with herself and all of her hormones. We have the "sullen tween," who stem-winds her mother by saying "nothing" when asked what she did at school that day, heading off to her bedroom with her smartphone and her itchy thumbs.

Of course there are girls like this, and mothers have battled or negotiated some version of these adolescent behaviors since time began. But there are many other kinds of preteens and teenagers, despite the fact that we often paint them all with the same brush. In fact, mother-daughter...