Mothers and Daughters: The First Three Years

Mothers and Daughters: The First Three Years offers a new perspective on female development and the origins of mother-daughter relationship pleasures and stresses.

In addition to emotional development and the impact of mothers’ childhood memories on mother-daughter interactions, this book explores the enmeshment of personal and cultural themes about being female. Filled with mothers’ intimate and surprising insights about the links between their own childhood memories and current interactions with their daughters that lead to solutions to typical mother-daughter conflicts, this book demonstrates the influence a little girl can have on her mother to discover new aspects of herself. In a changing world, where women are gaining more social, economic, and political power, this book illustrates how remnants of the past live on in the present.

Through the lens of female empowerment, mothers’ memories are integrated with societal changes to shed new light on supporting the next generation of women.

Ilene S. Lefcourt established the Sackler Lefcourt Center for Child Development in 1982, was the director, led the mother-baby-toddler groups, and taught child psychiatry residents and psychoanalytic parent-infant psychotherapy trainees about her work for over 35 years. She has been a faculty member at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and is currently in private practice. Ms. Lefcourt is the author of Parenting and Childhood Memories: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Reverberating Ghosts and Magic (2021), Mother-Baby Toddler Group Guide: A Psychodynamic Approach (2022) and When Mothers Talk: Magical Moments and Everyday Challenges from Birth to Three Years (2024).