Constructing Motherhood and Daughterhood Across the Lifespan

Allison M. Alford (Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin) is Clinical Assistant Professor of Business Communication at Baylor University. She has been teaching communication courses at the post-secondary level since 2005.Michelle Miller-Day (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is Professor of Communication Studies at Chapman University. She is the recipient of the 2015 Bernard J. Brommel Career Award for Outstanding Scholarship and Distinguished Service in Family Communication by the National Communication Association.

• Tables and Figure – Thomas J. Socha: Preface from the Series Editor – Acknowledgments – Allison M. Alford/Michelle Miller-Day: Introduction – Allison M. Alford: Daughtering and Daughterhood: Adult Daughters in Communication with Their Mothers – Allison M. Alford: Mothering and Motherhood: Socially Constructing the Role of Mothers – Michelle Miller-Day/Riva Tukachinsky/Sydney Jacobs: Reel Mothers and Daughters – Michelle Miller-Day: Memorable Moments: Turning Points in the Mother-Daughter Relationship from Childhood to Mid-Life – Denise Lawler: Pregnancy and Disability – Colleen Warner Colaner/Haley Kranstuber Horstman/Maria Butauski: Sustaining and Draining? Adoptive Mothers’ Enactment of Rituals in Open Adoption Relationships – Wendy K. Watson/Sandra L. Faulkner: Mother-Daughter Communication About Sex and Sexuality Across the Life Course – Suellen Hopfer/Huong Duong/Samantha Garcia: Mother-Daughter Communication About HPV Vaccination – Megan Meadows/Meredith Marko Harrigan: "A Different Closeness": Emerging Adult Daughters’ Depictions of Their Relational Changes with Their Mothers – Aimee E. Miller-Ott: "We Talk Like Friends": Openness and Closedness in the Mother/Married Daughter Relationship – Aimee E. Miller-Ott/Lynne Kelly: Connection or Intrusion? Mother-Daughter Communication Through Technology – Jody Koenig Kellas/Amanda Holman/Elizabeth Flood-Grady: Storying Love: Retrospective Storytelling Between Mothers and Daughters – Meredith Marko Harrigan/Angela M. Hosek/Seungji Yang: Busy Squirrels, Well-Oiled Machines, and Warm Bread: Adult Daughters’ Discursive Constructions of Their Full-Time Working Mothers – Christine E. Rittenour/Kelly G. Odenweller: It’s Not that Easy: Challenges of Motherhood – Carla L. Fisher/Bianca M. Wolf: Understanding Mother-Daughter Communication and Health Through a Discourse of "Responsible Womanhood" – Leah M. Seurer: Communicating About Mental Health in the Mother-Daughter Dyad – Michelle Miller-Day/Danielle Grainger: Motherless Daughters and the Communication of Grief and Comfort – Melissa W. Alemán/Katherine W. Helfrich: Making Difficult Conversations Normal in Later Life: Mother-Daughter Communication, Narrative Inheritance, and Planning for Death – Maureen P. Keeley/Lauren Lee/Mark A. Generous: Mothers’ and Daughters’ End-of-Life Communication – Michelle Miller-Day: A Mother-Daughter Communication Course Guide – Contributors – Subject Index.

“In this volume, editors Allison M. Alford and Michelle Miller-Day and the chapter authors explore communication and negotiating mother-daughter dyads in a breadth of family types and across all points in the lifespan. This insightful array of chapters points to the centrality of daughters and mothers in the network of primary and external family relationships and the different challenges of family identity and enactment from parenting, to navigating change, to later years as families, and often daughters, provide care for family members. Editors Alford and Miller-Day share a goal of stimulating courses focused on the topic and end the volume with practical resources as a starting point. Whether adopting the book for a whole course or a specialization within a family course, this collection will be a treasure for students, scholars, and practitioners.”Dawn O. Braithewaite, Ph.D., Willa Cather Professor of Communication Studies and Chair, University of Nebraska-Lincoln