A Grand Quarrel: Elizabeth Gaskell, Florence Nightingale and mothers today
About this ebook
Gaskell had four daughters and believed mothers had a vital role throughout their children’s lives. Nightingale was an iconoclast who thought all mothers should put their babies into crèches and go out to work. Only Gaskell recorded their quarrel. But Naomi Stadlen, an historian and psychotherapist specialising in motherhood, has pieced together, from the private writings of both women, the issues at stake.
Her final chapter explores how these issues are relevant, painful and still unresolved for mothers today.
About the author
Naomi Stadlen, who died June 2025, aged 82, worked as an existential psychotherapist in private practice, specialising in seeing mothers and parent-couples. She taught and supervised at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling and ran Mothers Talking, a weekly discussion group, for many years. Her books on motherhood have been hugely popular. Further details at www.naomistadlen.com
"Naomi’s books on motherhood… are full of simple and profound points I had not thought of, and I find them fascinating." Hilary Mantel
Her books are:
What Mothers Do – especially when it looks like nothing (2004)
How Mothers Love – and how relationships are born (2011)
What Mothers Learn – without being taught (2020)
Why Grandmothers Matter (2023)
A Grand Quarrel (2025)
