My Basket 0 item - £0.00

Mothers and Daughters: The First Three Years

Author(s) : Ilene S. Lefcourt

Reviews and Endorsements

Ilene Lefcourt draws on over 35 years of a changing culture for women, while running parenting groups for mothers and their infants and toddlers. This is a wellspring of knowledge in the creation of optimal daughter-mother engagements that may help ”promote a little girl developing a strong, clear voice and becoming a woman who knows her own mind and expects her voice to be heard.” This book is an antidote to eons of female demure silence, fostered in the name of a “femininity” that is destructive to the ability of women to hold their own in a patriarchal society.
The text is lively and available, with informative, emotionally telling vignettes of pitfalls and successes. It shows how women help each other in the groups, fostered by the author. The growth and responsiveness of these (lucky) children, form the cherished centerpiece.
The book should be read by all mental health workers - not only child and family workers, but also therapists with mothers in their practices, and psychoanalysts, who hear sorrowful adult daughters rejecting being like my own mother. The more we learn from the observations of fine practitioners like Ms. Lefcourt, the more we can appreciate the psychic complexities and range of mother-daughter bonding and their surrounding networks of internalized family figures. No longer are female-to-female dynamics unworthy of such detailed study, as in the past. Little girls can be helped towards a sturdier psychic future.
Rosemary H. Balsam, M.D., Associate Clin. Professor of Psychiatry, Yale Medical School; Training and Supervising Analyst Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis; author, Women’s Bodies in Psychoanalysis; ed, of two volumes on the work of Hans Loewald, 2024; The Sigourney Award for psychoanalytic excellence, 2018

Mothers and Daughters: The First Three Years is a treasure trove of wisdom that evokes childhood memories and leads to personal reflections that enrich the valuable information, and a deep attunement to a little girl’s developing mind. This book invites mothers to claim their own minds and voices at a time when a baby’s enormous needs can eclipse their own.
Drawing on 35 years of experience as the director of an early childhood center in New York City, Ilene Lefcourt generously shares her remarkable knowledge and her cogent understanding of the minds of mothers, babies, and toddlers in these crucial and formative early years of life. Ms. Lefcourt has a deep understanding of how intergenerational issues when not reflected upon can readily take up residence in the nursery. It is rare to read a book about early development that can have such a profound impact and be equally valuable to mothers and professionals.
Susan Coates Ph.D. Clinical Professor of Clinical Psychology, Columbia University Medical Center; Faculty, Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research