The relationship between mothers and daughters has been the subject of much research and study, in such fields as psychoanalysis, sociology, and women's studies. But rarely has the history and evolution of this relationship been examined. In The Anchor of My Life, Linda W. Rosenzweig draws on a wide range of primary sources--letters, diaries, autobiographies, prescriptive advice or self-help literature, and fiction—to reveal the historical nuances of this pivotal relationship. Rosenzweig's distinctive approach focuses on the interaction between mothers and daughters of the American middle class at the turn of the century, revealing that mothers and daughters managed to sustain close, nurturing relationships in an era marked by a major female generation gap in terms of aspirations and opportunities. Illustrated with photographs and portraits of the time, The Anchor of My Life provocatively challenges the facile, late twentieth-century assumption that the mother-daughter relationship is necessarily defined by hostility, guilt, and antagonism.