The Mother-Daughter Project: How Mothers and Daughters Can Band Together, Beat the Odds, and Thrive Through Adolescence

Few things are more meaningful—or more complicated—than mother-daughter relationships. This helpful parenting guide helps moms navigate their relationships with their daughters to create strong ties and a close, respectful connection that will last a lifetime. 

SuEllen Hamkins, MD, and Renée Schultz, MA, originally created the Mother-Daughter Project with other women in their community in the hopes of strengthening their bonds with their then seven-year-old girls. The group met regularly to speak frankly about such issues as friendships and aggression, puberty, body image, drugs, and sexuality.

The results were amazing: confident, assertive teenage girls with strong self-images and close ties to their moms. Equally important, the mothers navigated their own concerns about adolescence with integrity and grace.

From their dedication and efforts arose The Mother-Daughter Project, an incredibly useful parenting handbook that details the success of the Project’s groundbreaking model, providing mothers with a road map for staying close with their own daughters through adolescence and beyond.

SuEllen Hamkins, MD, is a psychiatrist and an author. She served as the psychiatrist for Smith College for 12 years before becoming assistant director of the Center for Counseling and Psychological Health at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a clinical adjunct assistant professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. She is the coauthor, with Renee Shultz, of The Mother-Daughter Project.

Renee Schultz is the coauthor, with SuEllen Hamkins, of The Mother-Daughter Project. She has worked in the field of mental health for more than 30 years and is currently in private practice as a licensed marriage and family therapist. She lives in western Massachusetts.