Women and Their Mothers: Rejecting and Reclaiming the Tradition of the Saints

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Many women, both young and middle-aged, seem to live their lives as if their mothers were looking over their shoulders. "My mother would die," they say, "if she could see the way I keep my house." Or with rueful mock despair, they ask themselves how their mothers always managed to keep the house in order, put fresh cookies in the cookie jar, sort and fold the laundry, get a variety of children to an even wider variety of lessons and still get a hot balanced supper on the table promptly at 6:00 p.m. Even when they have chosen significantly different goals for themselves, women are often still haunted by a sense that they have failed to become the full women they perceive their mothers to …