The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender

Rating:
Summary: Dated Feminist Text
Review: Feminist Nancy Chodorow takes an in-depth look at the role of "mothers" in society. Chodorow presents three common approaches to explain why women mother. In the end, she emerges, not surprisingly, favoring only one.

Chodorow's first explanation is that mothering is a product of biology. Chodorow attacts this theory stating that genetic or sexual differences do not make a woman a better mother and that women do not have a motherly instinct any more than a father. Her argument is seriously found wanting.

The second approach that Chodorow dismisses is the socio-anthropological view that mothering is a product of role-training. This view states that girls learn socially the role that they are to assume - that of mother. Chodorow disagrees that girls simply acquire this role in such an observant fashion.

Chodorow believes that men and women can parent equally, but she feels that the differing relational needs developed in childhood are reproducing women as mothers in adulthood.

Unfortunately, Chodorow completely dismisses the fact that men and women are different. Therefore, her theory is seriously flawed.

Rating:
Summary: Provocative Ideas -- But No Data
Review: No data. Zilch. Nada. No in-depth interviews, no participant observation, no historical analysis, no surveys, -- just one woman's musings.
She of course may be right in the end, but without ANY research to backup her claims -- it is just a rant.
This book definitely made me think about raising kids and what I wanted in a spouse, and definitely makes a strong case for equal parenting. But in my opinion, good scholarship is a marriage between data and theory; a synthesis of research and imagination. Without both, a scholarly book falls flat. Chodorow did no research, has no data, and thus this book ends up being speculation at best, flat-out myth-making at worst.

Rating:
Summary: Please read this book more carefully!
Review: The two people who reviewed this book before me probably did not read it carefully. Chodorow in fact quotes hundreds of researches and conclusions made by other psychoanalysts and herself. She states her own opinions about the issues she discusses, of course, but also other critics'. In the notes to the chapters she indicates several further readings to illustrate her points or other theories. This book is very educational and opens the readers' eyes to many crucial aspects of mothering, both for parents and children's sake. I recommend all her books.