The vast majority of academic texts on motherhood have focused on women’s experiences of the early years of mothering, while texts covering the topic of home-leaving have tended to privilege the young person's experience. Combining lively empirical material with an illuminating social-theoretical framework, Trish Green's book addresses the much neglected area of the mother's experience of separation from her child at the time of their home-leaving.

The book makes clear how the mother's experience of separation is silenced, first by the socio-cultural constructions of motherhood per se, second by the privileging of the child's transition to adulthood, and third by a neglect of the relational dimension of this particular life-course transition. In doing so the book makes an important contribution to debates on ageing, identity and the life-course, and will be of great interest to sociologists with various academic interests.