It's a rare book that delivers so completely on such a broad promise. Mother-Daughter Wisdom is written to connect the dots between a number of separate parts: logical and emotional morality, physical and mental health, friends and family, and in an overarching sense, the relationship between being a woman's daughter and raising a daughter of your own. Because of the scope of information presented, it can be tricky to pick up the book and look for quick guidance on a particular topic such as adolescent weight issues or childhood asthma; more use, and more pleasure, will be found if you add it to your permanent reference shelf to look through in stages. Author Dr. Christiane Northup (Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom) seamlessly blends personal stories with clear research in a way that creates a compelling read from start to finish, even if the specific topic isn't necessarily one that concerns you. Information is a welcome mix of old school medical advice and new school nutrition and stress relief. In Northup's world, whole foods and loving communication can play just as important roles as antibiotics. The book is categorized somewhat loosely by age, beginning with pregnancy and labor, and continuing through infancy, childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. Each section is quite specifically tuned to relating to daughters: Mothers of sons will get some use out of sections on breastfeeding, vaccinations and the like, but emotional concerns and physical recommendations are tailor-made for women and girls, right down to the resource guide that ends the book. By itself, that resource guide is an excellent starting point for further reading, both online and in print. When added to the whole, it is just one more reason you'll reach for the book on a regular basis. Jill Lightner Amazon.com Exclusive Content Applying the unique holistic approach that made Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause such transforming forces in the lives of millions of readers, Dr. Northrup has created an uplifting, enlightening, entirely new map of female development. Mother-Daughter Wisdom blends soulful truths with groundbreaking clinical discoveries to help women of all ages thoroughly rebuild their health. Whether coming to terms with a painful memory, letting go of harmful beliefs about themselves, or celebrating the love that is passed down from mother to daughter, generation after generation, readers of this book will come to see this intimate bond in a completely new light. Dr. Northrup has provided Amazon.com customers with exclusive discussion topics and questions, intended to enrich your reading of this important and inspiring book. Download Amazon.com exclusive content now. More by Christiane Northrup, MD
Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom
The Wisdom of Menopause
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From Publishers Weekly
The author of the bestselling The Wisdom of Menopause and a certified ob/gyn takes a more expansive look at women's health and how the mother-daughter relationship affects it in this opinionated handbook-cum-memoir. Northrup's philosophy that "our bodies and our beliefs about them were formed in the soil of our mother's emotions, beliefs, and behaviors" may turn off some readers, while others may take issue with her comment that "some men fear either they or their wives are inferior if they cannot have a son." These theories aren't backed up as much by scientific evidence (although in the latter example, Northrup does cite a 1975 study) as by anecdotes from her life as a mother of two daughters and her experiences with her patients. The book's opening section ("the Foundation of Mother-Daughter Health," i.e., pregnancy) mixes obvious health tips (e.g., don't drink alcohol while pregnant) with more informative ones (e.g., take prenatal vitamins such as beta carotene and folic acid). Northrup seems more comfortable when she moves on to discussing how a mother can most effectively take care of her daughter's emotional and physical health from the ages of three months to 21 years old, and her best and most heartfelt advice is on dealing with teenage daughters. She suggests moms not become their daughters' social directors, and that they hold daughters accountable. Nuggets like these are certainly valuable; it's unfortunate that they're buried in such a massive and uneven outlay of information. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Inside Flap
With such groundbreaking bestsellers as Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause, Dr. Christiane Northrup is one of today’s most trusted and visionary medical experts. Now she presents her most profound and revolutionary approach to women’s health. . . .

MOTHER-DAUGHTER WISDOM

The mother-daughter relationship sets the stage for our state of health and well-being for our entire lives. Because our mothers are our first and most powerful female role models, our most deeply ingrained beliefs about ourselves as women come from them. And our behavior in relationships–with food, with our children, with our mates, and with ourselves–is a reflection of those beliefs. Once we understand our mother-daughter bonds, we can rebuild our own health, whatever our age, and create a lasting positive legacy for the next generation.

Mother-Daughter Wisdom introduces an entirely new map of female development, exploring the “five facets of feminine power,” which range from the basics of physical self-care to the discovery of passion and purpose in life. This blueprint allows any woman–whether or not she has children–to repair the gaps in her own upbringing and create a better adult relationship with her mother. If she has her own daughter, it will help her be the mother she has always wanted to be.

Drawing on patient case histories and personal experiences, Dr. Northrup also presents findings at the cutting edge of medicine and psychology. Discover:

How to lay the nutritional foundation to prevent eating disorders and adult diseases
The truth about the immunization controversy–and the true meaning of immunity
How we can change our genetic health legacy
Why financial literacy is essential to women’s health
How to foster healthy sexuality and future “love maps” in our daughters
How to balance independence with caring, and individual growth with family ties

Written with warmth, enthusiasm, and rare intelligence, Mother-Daughter Wisdom is an indispensable book destined to change lives and become essential reading for all women.

About the Author
Christiane Northrup, M.D., is the bestselling author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause, and host of four previous public television specials. A board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist with more than twenty-five years of clinical experience, she trained at Dartmouth Medical School and Tufts New England Medical Center. She is also past-president of the American Holistic Medical Association and has pioneered the partnership between conventional and complementary medicine. Her work has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, and Good Morning America, among many other media appearances. She lives in Maine and is the mother of two adult daughters.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1

Mothers and Daughters

The Bond That Wounds, the Bond That Heals


The mother-daughter relationship is at the headwaters of every woman's health. Our bodies and our beliefs about them were formed in the soil of our mothers' emotions, beliefs, and behaviors. Even before birth, our mother provides us with our first experience of nurturing. She is our first and most powerful female role model. It is from her that we learn what it is to be a woman and care for our bodies. Our cells divided and grew to the beat of her heart. Our skin, hair, heart, lungs, and bones were nourished by her blood, blood that was awash with the neurochemicals formed in response to her thoughts, beliefs, and emotions. If she was fearful, anxious, or deeply unhappy about her pregnancy, our bodies knew it. If she felt safe, happy, and fulfilled, we felt that too.

Our bodies and those of our daughters were created by a seamless web of nature and nurture, of biology informed by consciousness, that we can trace back to the beginning of time. Thus, every daughter contains her mother and all the women who came before her. The unrealized dreams of our maternal ancestors are part of our heritage. To become optimally healthy and happy, each of us must get clear about the ways in which our mother's history both influenced and continues to inform our state of health, our beliefs, and how we live our lives. Every woman who heals herself helps heal all the women who came before her and all those who will come after her.

A mother's often unconscious influence on her daughter's health is so profound that years ago I had to accept that my medical skills were only a drop in the bucket compared to the unexamined and ongoing influence of her mother. If a woman's relationship with her mother was supportive and healthy, and if her mother had given her positive messages about her female body and how to care for it, my job as a physician was easy. Her body, mind, and spirit were already programmed for optimal health and healing. If, on the other hand, her mother's influence was problematic, or if there was a history of neglect, abuse, alcoholism, or mental illness, then I knew that my best efforts would probably fall short. Real long-term health solutions would become possible only when my patient realized the impact of her background and then took steps to change this influence. Though health-care modalities such as dietary improvement, exercise, drugs, surgery, breast exams, and Pap smears all have their place, not one of them can get to the part of a woman's consciousness that is creating her state of health in the first place.

Before birth, consciousness literally directs the creation of our bodies. It is also constantly being shaped by our life's experiences, most especially those of childhood. No other childhood experience is as compelling as a young girl's relationship with her mother. Each of us takes in at the cellular level how our mother feels about being female, what she believes about her body, how she takes care of her health, and what she believes is possible in life. Her beliefs and behaviors set the tone for how well we learn to care for ourselves as adults. We then pass this information either consciously or unconsciously on to the next generation.

Though I acknowledge that the culture at large plays a significant role in our views of ourselves as women, ultimately the beliefs and behavior of our individual mothers exert a far stronger influence. In most cases, she is the first to teach us the dictates of the larger culture. And if her beliefs are at odds with the dominant culture, our mother's influence almost always wins.

MATERNAL ATTENTION:
AN ESSENTIAL LIFELONG NUTRIENT

When a TV camera focuses on audience members in the studio or at sporting events, what does the person on camera shout out? More often than not, it's "Hi, Mom!"

Each of us has a primal need to be seen and noticed by our mothers, and that's why the loss of one's mother can be so devastating. In a letter at the beginning of Hope Edelman's book, Motherless Daughters, a woman whose mother died when she was thirteen wrote:

No one in your life will ever love you as your mother does. There is no love as pure, unconditional, and strong as a mother's love. And I will never be loved that way again.


One of my newsletter subscribers recently used nearly the same words, although her loss came much later in life:

I lost my mother four years ago when I was forty-nine. And I sure do miss her. Mother-daughter relationships are one of the most intimate we will ever have and often one of the most complicated. One of the most painful things I realized when my mom died was that I would never again be loved as unconditionally (in this life) as a mother loves.

A daughter's need for her mother is biologic, and it continues throughout her life. Not only was our mother's body the source of life for us but it was her face that we looked to, to see how we were doing. By gazing into our mother's eyes and experiencing her response to us, we learned crucial first lessons about our own worth.

The quality of attention we receive as babies determines in part how worthy we feel to be here on the planet. When our mother shows her approval through smiling and talking to us, then we encode the idea that we are all right. If, on the other hand, she is not present for whatever reason, or withholds her love when we don't do what she wants us to do, we feel abandoned. We'll do whatever it takes to get that attention back. As young children, our mother's approval or disapproval felt like either the kiss of life or the kiss of death. No wonder she still has the power to affect our well-being. No wonder, even as educated adult women, we keep going back to the same well of maternal attention to see if we're okay and lovable and to check out how we're doing.

I firmly believe that the mother-daughter bond is designed by nature to become the most empowering, compassionate, intimate relationship we'll ever have. How is it, then, that when we go back to that well to be refilled, the result is so often disappointment and resentment on both sides?

Too many of my patients and friends have told me painful stories about going home for the holidays. Here's one of them:

During my junior year in college, I went home on the Friday night before Mother's Day. I'd already told my mom that I'd be unable to stay and have a family dinner on Sunday because I had to get back, write a paper, and study for my final exams. When I walked into my house, my mother burst into tears. I said, "Mom, what's wrong?" She continued crying and said, "The ones you love the most hurt you the most. Don't get close to anyone."
I said, "Mom, are you upset because I'm not staying down here for Mother's Day?"
She replied, "I can't talk about it."
Of course this made me feel as though I was being a terrible daughter (which is exactly what my mother wanted to convey). I said to her, "Mom, you haven't been happy with me since the day I moved out to go to college." She obviously wasn't willing to talk about what was really going on. She refused to address this and just kept cleaning the kitchen counter. She finally said, "I promised your father we were going to have a good day. So let's have a good day."
 
This sort of thing went on around Mother's Day and every other major holiday for years, but my friend couldn't stay away. "Not going is just not an option," she told me. No wonder she goes, despite the anxiety, headaches, and upset stomach that often ensue. She keeps going back to the well of maternal attention to try to slake her thirst for unconditional recognition and approval, because for generations her cells have been programmed to do this. Though she sometimes gets a few sips of her mother's approval, there is never enough to truly fill her up, and the price is very high. She is being called upon to bear the brunt of her mother's unhappiness and lack of fulfillment. At the very time when she most needs her mother's support to move ahead in her own life, her mother is calling her back. The message may take many forms, from tears to anger to stony silence, but the subtext is always the same: if you really loved me, you'd stay here and suffer with me.

My friend's relationship with her mother needn't be this difficult. To help heal it, she must first identify and name the common web of expectations, needs, and miscommunication in which she and her mother both feel trapped. And then she needs to look below the surface of her mother's behavior and her habitual response to it. When she does, she'll see that her (and her mother's) behavior stems seamlessly from our cultural inheritance as women. Appreciating this is the first step toward healing.

MATERNAL AMBIVALENCE:
OUR CULTURAL LEGACY

Both men and women in this society are encouraged to view having a baby and raising a child as the most significant achievement in a woman's life. And on many levels, it is. For a significant number of women, however, motherhood brings up far more conflict and ambivalence than we feel comfortable admitting lest we be labeled as "bad" mothers whose love for our children is suspect. To admit our ambivalence about motherhood and the ensuing loss of control and status that so often accompany it is to fly in the face of one of our most cherished cultural myths.

The epidemic of undiagnosed and untreated postpartum depression and the toll it takes on society speaks volumes. Who wouldn't be ambivalent about the one decision in a woman's life that totally changes her future? Though the biological act of becoming pregnant requires little thought or planning for most, raising a healthy, secure child is, hands down, the hardest job on earth. It requires a degree of maturity and altruism for which there's no way to adequately prepare. Today it also means the loss of independence and freedom that women have fought so long to attain.

Contrary to the myth, nurturing isn't an innate default setting in the human female. It is active and requires strength, stamina, will, intelligence, and determination: all of the qualities that we tend to associate with maleness. And yet, because femaleness has so long been seen as inferior to maleness, the work of nurturing and raising our young has also been denigrated.

Instead of being honest about the less than wonderful aspects of motherhood, however, we oversentimentalize it on the one hand, while undersupporting and downplaying the actual work involved on the other.

No human mother was ever designed to be the sole source of sustaining life energy for her child without also receiving outside support for herself and her own individual needs. Although we mothers nurture initially through the very substance of our own bodies, and later through our hearts, minds, and souls, the energy we expend in nurturing must always be replenished with self-care and self-development if we are to mother optimally. No one would expect a field to produce bumper crops year after year without replenishing the soil regularly, yet we expect mothers to do this. And most mothers don't feel they can ask for help.

When the fuel required for mothering and nurturing others is not replenished regularly, or when mothers don't get their need for self-development met separately from their children's or family's needs, breakdowns and failures in the nurturing system manifest as depression, anxiety, and even violence that affect both mothers and children. Illness then becomes the most socially acceptable way to get nurturance needs met.

DOCTOR, HEAL THYSELF

I first wrote the proposal for this book in 1996 when both my daughters were still living at home with their father and me. At the time, I thought I knew what it was going to be about. After all, I had raised two healthy daughters, had a solid relationship with my own mother, and as an obstetrician-gynecologist, had helped countless other mothers give birth to and raise healthy daughters themselves. With great enthusiasm, I began writing what I thought of as an "owner's manual for raising a healthy daughter."

But every time my writing got under way, it was interrupted by another project. It took more than five years of starting and stopping before I finally understood why this kept happening. I wasn't ready. In order to write the book that needed to be written, I first had to come to grips with my own beliefs about mothering. I had to be willing to allow my own denial and sentimentality to be burned away so that I could clearly see how these primal mother-daughter bonds had influenced every cell in my body and every aspect of my life for more than fifty years. In retrospect, I saw that every project or event that appeared to interrupt the writing of this book was a necessary step in its preparation.

One of those intervening projects was writing The Wisdom of Menopause, a book that describes how and why the menopausal transition is, in essence, a biologically supported opportunity for major personal growth and transformation. It boils down to this: Grow or die. And the choice to grow always involves clearing up any unfinished emotional business from the first half of our lives.

My own midlife transition included the end of my twenty-four-year marriage. During the soul-searching that was part of this painful life change, it came to me that I had married my mother. Not every part of my mother, of course. Just the parts from our past together that were still crying out for resolution and healing. My relationship with my husband had been an opportunity to reenact, and thus bring to consciousness, some outmoded beliefs about myself that had been formulated years earlier in response to my mother. As a result of this new awareness, I was able to bring more love, joy, and health into all areas of my life, but especially into my relationship with my mother and my daughters.

None of this was easy, however. There were many days during the dissolution of my marriage when I was certain that I was a total failure as a woman and as a mother. After all, on the surface, I had it all--a physician husband, two lovely children, a nice home, and a career that has always felt like the work I was born to do. Why push it? I wasn't sure I was worthy of more.

The truth is, a part of me had always felt that I had to prove myself in order to be loved. So, like many women, I overgave--both to my daughters and to my husband. I fell into the pattern easily enough, given that motherhood and sacrifice are still nearly synonymous in our culture. The needs of mothers are assumed to come last--after everyone else's. It was shocking to realize that even with all my outward success, I still lost myself at home. And now that I was divorced, I had to face the same issues with both my mother and my daughters.


Opening My Eyes

By this time, both daughters were in college. I'd look forward to their holiday and summer vacations and stock the house with their favorite foods. If I didn't have something they wanted, I'd feel awful about it. I'd fantasize about all the fun we'd have when they came home, only to be disappointed when they had already scheduled other activities with their friends that didn't include me. The problem was that I didn't know how to stop my automatic "mothering" behavior and the emotional needs that were fueling it. I didn't really know how to tell the difference between my healthy desire to nurture and care for my daughters, and my need to earn their love to affirm my worth.

My relationship with my mother was also changing. Ironically, she and I were now the only single adult women in my extended family with no children living at home. When she was my age, my mother had been forced by widowhood to individuate from her former role as wife and mother. She responded by becoming the mayor of her town for five years. After that, she fulfilled a dream of hiking the entire Appalachian Trail and also of climbing the hundred highest peaks in New England.

Now that I was in a similar situation, however, I remembered more difficult parts of the story. How, after she was widowed, my mother's social life changed dramatically, because she was no longer invited to the events that she and my dad had attended for years. How she had been unable to take out a loan in her own name, even though she owned the farm where we grew up. (My own social and financial situation was different, but no less challenging to my sense of worth.) I also discovered that, as two single women, we were automatically paired as a "couple" at all family events. Did my newly single status mean that I was now expected to be both my mother's companion and caregiver?

Old memories kept coming up with new significance. I recalled that my mother had always been happiest when she was on the move. (Even today, at the age of seventy-eight, a perfect day for her involves participating in several different sports, then mowing the lawn and watering all the flowers on the property.) As a child I don't remember her ever lingering at the table after a meal. She'd begin to clear the table and get the dishes washed as soon as possible so she could get on to the next thing. Often I was not yet finished eating. Now I realized that from as far back as I could remember, she had had a kind of "caged lion" feel about her when she couldn't be active. I believe that stopping would have caused her to feel something she didn't want to feel. I also believe that, as a child, I sensed her uneasiness and unconsciously took on the responsibility of soothing her. This was my own soul choice, not my mother's doing, but it created a pattern that was now painfully outdated.

One day during this period of intense inner work, my left eye suddenly began to feel irritated. I took out my contact lens and cleaned it. That didn't help. Every time I put it back, there was still irritation. By the time I went to an eye specialist in Portland, the vision in my left eye was so clouded that I couldn't read the top line of an eye chart. At the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston, I was diagnosed with infectious crystalline keratopathy, a very rare form of corneal ulcer that is usually seen only in patients who are immunocompromised in some way. The prognosis was blindness in that eye. I was terrified.

Even while I was searching out the most sophisticated medical care I could find, I kept asking myself, "Why this? Why now?" A chance remark by a female resident at Mass Eye and Ear really caught my attention: she said that when women have eye problems such as mine, it's always in the left eye. I knew that the immunosuppression that had led to this infection was related to the suppressed memories I had recently dredged up. This is not surprising, given that our first emotional center, which affects our blood, immune system, and sense of safety and security in the world, is heavily influenced by our relationship with our mother. The left eye is associated with the right brain, the part that is in touch with emotions that the left side of our brain, our intellect, often tries to deny. The left side of the body, including the organs on that side, are also said to represent the mother in traditional Chinese medicine.

Finally things turned around when, in addition to the antibiotic drops I was prescribed, I began to use very high doses of vitamin C (vitamin SEE, as a friend of mine pointed out) and also worked with several different healers. In retrospect, I see that my eye infection came about because of an obsolete belief I was carrying. I believed that in order to maintain my standing as a good mother and a good daughter, it was my job to care for my family in ways that were no longer appropriate for me. In traditional Chinese medicine, eyes are in the liver meridian. And the liver is associated with anger. (Are we surprised?) Unbeknownst to me, I was angry about what I believed I was "supposed" to be and do as a mother and daughter.

My eye infection was really my body's wisdom, letting me know, through a brush with blindness, that there was a different way to see the situation. I had to see that my mother and my daughters were all strong, capable adults who didn't need me to sacrifice anything for them or rescue them in any way. It was time for me to envision my role as both a mother and a daughter in a new, healthier way for all concerned. And as usual, this insight came to me through my body--quite literally through my eyes, which were signaling me to illuminate a previously dark and unexamined area of my psyche.

It was following this that I finally recognized the real book that was trying to come through me: not a doctor's parenting manual for daughters, but an entirely new and empowering way of looking at the mother-daughter relationship. I wanted to find a way to help women of all ages--whether or not they are raising a daughter--heal themselves physically and emotionally at the deepest possible levels.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The bonds are laid down in the womb, passed from generation to generation; they continue throughout life, shaping our physical, mental, and spiritual well being. By understanding these mother-daughter bonds, we can rebuild our own health, whatever our age, and insure a healthy future for our daughters. This is the extraordinary scope and promise of Dr. Northrup's challenging new book.

Mothers And Daughters is for every woman who's had a mother--whether or not she has kids, and even if she's filled up her house with boys. It's definitely not a book about bringing up baby, even though Dr. Northrup says "The mother is the first physician." Like The Wisdom Of Menopause, it's going to change how women feel about their entire lives.

The book introduces an entirely new map of female development, built around the powerful metaphor of life as a house with many rooms. You come up from the foundation, right up the cellar stairs, when you are born, and if everything goes well, you move from one room to another every seven years or so. But you can get stuck in a room. We've all met middle-aged women who are miserable and angry because they just aren't prom queens any more. They're stuck. And we've met daughters who became prom queens to please their mothers, or still feel terrible because they didn't. They're stuck. This book offers a blueprint for getting free--for both mother and daughter.

It's also organized around the 'Five Facets of Feminine Power," which are revisited at each age and stage of development. Each has a powerful impact on physical and emotional health, including:
1) Female Biology--From a provocative treatment of the immunization controversy to a lifetime nutritionprogram.
2) Relationships and Bonding--Learning trust and independence; recognizing relationships that drain or hurt you; teaching healthy sexuality to your daughter.
3) Self-Care--From self-esteem and daily health routines to managing difficult moods and avoiding addiction.
4) Adaptability and Resourcefulness--Why training in money management is essential to women's health, and other skills for success in life.
5) Passion and Purpose--How to nurture the inner fire that keeps us alive both literally and spiritually.

Written with warmth, passion, and dazzling insight, Mothers And Daughters is a book that will change lives and become essential reading for all women.

SYNOPSIS

With such groundbreaking bestsellers as Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause, Dr. Christiane Northrup is one of today’s most trusted and visionary medical experts. Now she presents her most profound and revolutionary approach to women’s health. . . .

MOTHER-DAUGHTER WISDOM

The mother-daughter relationship sets the stage for our state of health and well-being for our entire lives. Because our mothers are our first and most powerful female role models, our most deeply ingrained beliefs about ourselves as women come from them. And our behavior in relationships–with food, with our children, with our mates, and with ourselves–is a reflection of those beliefs. Once we understand our mother-daughter bonds, we can rebuild our own health, whatever our age, and create a lasting positive legacy for the next generation.

Mother-Daughter Wisdom introduces an entirely new map of female development, exploring the “five facets of feminine power,” which range from the basics of physical self-care to the discovery of passion and purpose in life. This blueprint allows any woman–whether or not she has children–to repair the gaps in her own upbringing and create a better adult relationship with her mother. If she has her own daughter, it will help her be the mother she has always wanted to be.

Drawing on patient case histories and personal experiences, Dr. Northrup also presents findings at the cutting edge of medicine and psychology. Discover:

How to lay the nutritional foundation to prevent eating disorders and adult diseases
Thetruth about the immunization controversy–and the true meaning of immunity
How we can change our genetic health legacy
Why financial literacy is essential to women’s health
How to foster healthy sexuality and future “love maps” in our daughters
How to balance independence with caring, and individual growth with family ties

Written with warmth, enthusiasm, and rare intelligence, Mother-Daughter Wisdom is an indispensable book destined to change lives and become essential reading for all women.


From the Hardcover edition.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The author of the bestselling The Wisdom of Menopause and a certified ob/gyn takes a more expansive look at women's health and how the mother-daughter relationship affects it in this opinionated handbook-cum-memoir. Northrup's philosophy that "our bodies and our beliefs about them were formed in the soil of our mother's emotions, beliefs, and behaviors" may turn off some readers, while others may take issue with her comment that "some men fear either they or their wives are inferior if they cannot have a son." These theories aren't backed up as much by scientific evidence (although in the latter example, Northrup does cite a 1975 study) as by anecdotes from her life as a mother of two daughters and her experiences with her patients. The book's opening section ("the Foundation of Mother-Daughter Health," i.e., pregnancy) mixes obvious health tips (e.g., don't drink alcohol while pregnant) with more informative ones (e.g., take prenatal vitamins such as beta carotene and folic acid). Northrup seems more comfortable when she moves on to discussing how a mother can most effectively take care of her daughter's emotional and physical health from the ages of three months to 21 years old, and her best and most heartfelt advice is on dealing with teenage daughters. She suggests moms not become their daughters' social directors, and that they hold daughters accountable. Nuggets like these are certainly valuable; it's unfortunate that they're buried in such a massive and uneven outlay of information. Agent, Ned Leavitt. (Mar.) Forecast: TV tie-ins could help this sell well; the book's publication is timed to coincide with a PBS special of the same name, and Northrup has appeared on Oprah. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal