There are few other novels with which Her Mother's Daughter can be compared. Gail Godwin's A Mother and Two Daughters (1982) deals with this theme, although in Godwin's novel the effects of the mother-daughter tie are more psychologically diffuse. Regardless of any defects in her novel, French deserves credit for writing honestly about an important and vulnerable part of women's identity.

More strained comparisons might be made with the "big" multigenerational sagas, and with novels of father-son relationships. In such comparisons, details of daily domestic life loom larger in Her Mother's Daughter. Also, the major conflicts in French's novel are with social reality, rather than between parent and offspring which characterize so many father-son novels.