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Reproduction of Mothering The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender today still probably remains one of the best books of feminist psychology. It describes stereotypes of men and women. It explains social organization of gender and sexuality, which was the topic to be discussed for a long period of time by many philosophers and psychologists. This book concentrates not only on the issues of mothering as a single drive for a girl, but rather on the desire for a man. In Chodorow's opinion, the resolution to Oedipal complex is not removing the traces of identification of the daughter with her mother. Her identification with mother should be more differentiated to turn out to be a different aspect of womanhood.
The proof that the girl wants a child is not enough. Basically, the desire for a child is not that big because the girl in some way connects with her mother, who usually will pay more attention to son. The distinction between gender identities is quite noticeable. For example, if the girl does not want to be similar as the mother she should adopt other features, because in her mind in order to become not parent but nurturer there should be very specific image. The image will have almost no relation to her desires and to mothers conduct. The reason for this is that the daughter mostly identifies her mother only as mother, not as the individual with some concept of conduct.
Therefore, she wants to become mother in the future too. In Chodorow's opinion, women desire men more than they desire children, which will not fit into the concept of motherhood. For this reason the identification with mother brings to the point that a possible offspring will not be considered except her. A girl considers her mother having another children is not what she expected. Especially if a girl has brother, she becomes jealous, which may serve as an explanation for a girls desire for a man. Further grounds for distrust of any universal urge to mother, lie in the supposed timing of that urge.
Women, we often hear, can postpone mothering throughout their twenties and even early thirties to make a career, which is quite understandable as in our modern society every individual tries to rely on his / her own abilities and opportunities, but then they feel a powerful longing. It is as if we regularly passed the day without a thought of food and then woke up at two in the morning feeling deep hunger. Can mental hunger be equally poorly managed? Indeed, if human mind is the outcome of evolution, can the perpetuation of the species rest so mostly, on what happens to a woman after age 30? Some other objections are factual and historical, in light of the book's, and society's, implied contrast between the female mothering instincts and the male sex drive. Even laying aside an unscientific survey of my male and female friends (most of whom do want children, the men in slightly higher proportion than the women), consider the cultures in which women were long treated as means toward a male heir.
Women can no longer expect to rely on men for old approaches towards security, and yet they are not free to require power and sex for themselves. They might as well try mothering, which is the instinct loaded deeply in the brain. Hey, it is so rich in associations with sex and security, even a kind of power. Finally, an observer can hardly avoid being aware of just how effectively cultural instruction of motherhood works.
No woman can avoid the circle of admiration about a new mother as a man safely can. Nearly universal changes in fashion make their rounds far more quickly than the hands of a biological clock and on far more diffuse impetus. No wonder baby-boomers seem all to have discovered motherhood in the same year. The connection of mothering with the sexuality can be found it to take a closer look on the sexual drives of both sexes, male and female. The point is that women and men are raised to need each other for the survival (for the means of reproduction of human species) and so seek intimacy with one another, which is the primary instinct to have children and therefore to transmit their genetic code. Still we are unable to fulfill each others needs because of the social organization of parenting (women is mother).
Both sexes are looking for a return to the emotional and physical union with the mother. Men simultaneously seek and fear exclusivity. Women have different and more complex relational needs that an exclusive relationship with a man cannot fulfill, even if it would be primary. Therefore, the two structural principles of the family are in contradiction with each other. The family reproduces itself in form but at the same time undercuts itself in content. People form heterosexual couples, even though both males and females are parented mostly by women, these heterosexual relationships are strained and difficult.
In earlier times, the father was less absent, the family was centered on production, and the sexes were economically interdependent, as both men and women were gaining together all that they might need for survival. The heterosexual asymmetry did not overwhelm the family. With industrial capitalism, however, the family has become primarily emotionally important, isolated, and mobile. Men were the workers, who were earning the means of survival for the whole family and women turned out to be their supporters and helpers, generally being at home. Other primary relationships are less available. That is the reason to concentrate on the discussion of heterosexual object, which may give some explanations on this issue.
Chodorow's book makes a trace between a girls gender development and her relationship with the mother. For instance, boys have more advantages of being loved by mother and more possibilities to be detached from the mother. The solution on this issue can be found if to transform girls jealousy of male choices into heterosexual drive. The jealousy primarily describes female heterosexuality and this point of view is quite similar to the Freud's studies. The ground for such a decision can be viewed through the prism of general socially accepted principle of male dominance. The only thing that the girl can offer to men (in her unconscious understanding) is sex on the first place and after it for the means of reproduction.
Freudian psychoanalysis is different from the focusing the view on emotional and physical investments of cognitive structures, while it does not depend on the cognitive interpretations. Chodorow has brought the new approach, but the similarity is quite distinguishable. Unlike many followers of neo-Freudian approach, Chodorow can speak of Oedipal conflict without having relation with sexism. She prefers not to use Freudian circularity, which relies on the admiration of observed phallus es and therefore makes clearer and more precise study on the topic.
Chodorow is more consistent and less random, while still leaving the whole process uncertain enough to permit an individual to imagine homosexuals. Basically, the girls desire for a man results from the desire for the mother. There should be many widely shared values of the relationship between man and woman, which will result into the reproduction existence. For the desire of a girl to reproduce and to become mother there should be a link that will be created in the act of reproduction mainly, which again support the idea of the greater desire for men. Motherhood should be desired by the girl as a part of normal development of a girl as not an individual but as physical object, but it is separate from womanhood, which is the development of personality mainly. Actually, Chodorow is not construct all these conditions and values into a question until the epilogue, which was quite late for the correct understanding of the book.
Sources: Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (1978).
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