Dutiful Daughters: Caring for Our Parents As They Grow Old

by Jean Gould (Editor)

Overview

These first-person accounts portray, with thoughtfulness and clarity, a wide range of caregiver experiences: the possibility of deepening relationships; the opportunity for forgiveness; the ability to reach out and to look within to find strength; the sorrow of watching a parent grow old; and the chance to say goodbye.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786750924
Publisher:	Avalon Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/24/2010
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jean Gould is the author of the novel Divorcing Your Grandmother and the editor of Season of Adventure. A book review editor at Sojourner, she lives in Natick, MA.

What People are Saying About This

Betsy Chalfen

Dutiful Daughters offers a critical place for engagement about what it means for women to care for our aging parents, and what it feel like to confront the associated loss, grief, and eventually, death.
—Betsy Chalfen, Sorjourner: The Women's Forum

Editorial Reviews

Edited by poet and essayist Gould (Season of Adventure), this unusual book of first-person essays by women writers is timely and engaging. Appearing just as policymakers reassess Medicare and Social Security, it documents the private side of aging and caregiving. Each of the 22 stories told here is different: some contributors tell of how caring for their aging parents deepened their relationships or afforded opportunities for late-life forgiveness; others explore loss and sorrow. As a result, this is a wonderfully varied exploration of the complicated emotional and spiritual issues that emerge for both parents and daughters as their bodies and relationships age. It will likely be read by aging parents and their caregiving children alike. Very highly recommended for all public libraries.--Kay L. Brodie, Chesapeake Coll., Wye Mills, MD Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

An eclectic and evocative collection of first-person narratives by women who serve as the primary caretakers of their elderly parents. Gould, a visiting scholar in Women's Studies at Northeastern University, has collected 22 moving and provocative essays examining the many emotions felt by those caring for aging parents. From the diversity of voices and experiences, a number of common themes emerge. Among them is the healing that can occur between daughter and parent as the roles of dependency are reversed. While caring for her aging father, Patricia A. Gozemba establishes a newly deepened comradeship upon discovering that he had never shared her mother's antipathy toward her lesbianism. "Stunned by my father's passive declaration of support," she writes, "I felt vindicated, stupid, infantile and relieved." Marion Freyer Wolff, too, eventually replaces anger toward her father with forgiveness when, gazing into his sorrowful eyes, she recalls his many losses ranging from family members who were murdered during the Holocaust to his older daughter's recent death. These stories also attest to the unexpected discoveries that a daughter caring for a parent may chance upon. In her story "The Minyan Connection," Sheila Golburgh Johnson describes how she rediscovers Judaism—after years of fleeing any connection to her faith or people—by joining her father's Saturday morning prayer service after his death. Also included in this collection are accounts of lives that linger on for too long. In "The Promise," Diane Reed describes her desperate, often futile attempts to help her 86-year-old mother die once life had become intolerable. And in "Mother May Be the Death of Me," Martha Bakerlaments her overbearing mother's survival, since it means that she can continue to "make the lives of all four of her daughters a living hell." Concluding with resources from organizations, and Web sites to books, Dutiful Daughters provides a powerful, intimate overview of circumstances likely to touch many of our lives.

Kirkus Reviews