Abstract
This chapter establishes the significance and enduring influence of Nancy Chodorow’s canonical text The Reproduction of Mothering while introducing and contextualizing it for a new generation of readers. The introduction summarizes the key ideas elucidated by Chodorow in The Reproduction of Mothering and contextualizes this in the context of second-wave feminism and the feminist debates concerning mothers and mothering. It also engages with criticism of the text from maternal feminists and postmodernists. More recent uses of Chodorow’s theory are explored as well as her own shift in emphasis from the sociological to psychic and from gender to generation. Chapter summaries are included.
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- 1.
Jessica Benjamin, Beyond Doer and Done To: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity, and the Third (New York: Routledge, 2018).
- 2.
Victor Hugo, History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-Witness, trans. T.H. Joyce and Arthur Locker (New York: Mondial, 2005 [1852/1877]).
- 3.
Chodorow, “Preface to the Second Edition,” in The Reproduction of Mothering, x.
- 4.
Jessie Bernard Award of Sociologists for Women in Society, American Sociological Association (1979); Symposium, “On The Reproduction of Mothering: A Methodological Debate,” Signs 6, no. 3 (1981): 482–514; named one of “Ten Most Influential Books of the Past Twenty-five Years,” Contemporary Sociology 25, no. 3 (1996) 25th Anniversary Special Issue; “The Reproduction of Mothering: A Reappraisal.” A symposium in Feminism and Psychology 12 (2002): 5–53. The Reproduction of Mothering has also been excerpted in numerous edited collections and translated into Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, German, Swedish, Portugese, Italian and Chinese.
- 5.
Personal correspondence, 2019.
- 6.
Nancy Chodorow, The Psychoanalytic Ear and the Sociological Eye (London and New York: Routledge, 2019).
- 7.
Contrary to later assertions of universalising, Chodorow was well aware of exceptions to this norm. In her assertion that the nuclear family is problematic for mothers, she contrasts it with other more economically and socially integrated models, “In a previous period, and still in some stable working-class and ethnic communities, women did support themselves emotionally by supporting and reconstituting one another. However, in the current period of high mobility and familial isolation, this support is largely removed, and there is little institutionalized daily emotional reconstitution of mothers. What there is depends on the accidents of a particular marriage, and not of the carrying out of an institutionalized support role.” Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, 36.
- 8.
Chodorow, “Preface to the Second Edition,” The Reproduction of Mothering, vii.
- 9.
Chodorow is here outlining the normal regression experienced by psychologically healthy mothers.
- 10.
Chodorow, “Preface to the Second Edition,” viii.
- 11.
Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, 107.
- 12.
This is a term first coined by sociologist Raewyn Connell referring more specifically to the socio-economic (not psychic) currency of masculinity. See. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 1993), 79.
- 13.
It took 35 years for Freud to grasp the significance of the mother-daughter relationship. Beneath the girl’s Oedipus complex, he came to realise was a deep “homosexual” tie to her mother. The little girl never relinquished her (erotic) attachment to her mother, and as a consequence her Oedipus complex was never fully resolved. She was never fully reconciled with either femininity or heterosexuality, but would retain deep ties to her mother and, later, mother substitutes (daughters, sister, friends). Sigmund Freud, “Female Sexuality,” 226.
- 14.
Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, 167.
- 15.
In my understanding Chodorow uses the term patriarchy in quite specific sociological and anthropological terms, to mean father dominance in social, political, legal and economic terms. This is distinct from more recent popular uses of the term, which refer to an ill-defined and all-inclusive male dominance.
- 16.
Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, 128–129.
- 17.
Chodorow is here referring to an abstract, heuristic triangle that is both conventional—i.e., the norm in families, and a useful conceptual device for understanding and interpreting women’s internal object world.
- 18.
Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, 36.
- 19.
Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, 211–212.
- 20.
It is important to note that this is a heuristic distinction. The “two parts” I refer to—the psychoanalytic and sociological parts—are woven together through-out the book. They are integrated into the book, albeit as separate chapters, rather than constituting two separate sections.
- 21.
Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, 214.
- 22.
Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangement and Human Malaise (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).
- 23.
Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination (New York: Pantheon, 1988).
- 24.
Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1970).
- 25.
Kate Millet, Sexual Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1970).
Interestingly, both Millet and Firestone granted Freud his peculiar genius while deriding his elevation of the masculine over the feminine. In many respects this anticipated Juliet Mitchell’s work insofar as already, even in the midst of blistering critique, there was a distinction between Freud “the genius” and Freud “the patriarch”.
- 26.
Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Morrow, 1970), 71.
- 27.
Karen Horney, Feminine Psychology (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967 [1926]).
- 28.
Helene Deutsche, Psychology of Women, vols. 1 and 2 (New York: Grune & Stratton, 1944/1945)
- 29.
Juliet Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1974).
- 30.
Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism, xv.
- 31.
Chodorow repeatedly refers to her work being produced in her 20s and being defined by developmental concerns that naturally focused more on the daughter (as future mother) than on the mother as past daughter. Chodorow, “Preface to the Second Edition,” xvii.
- 32.
Freud’s late reflections on women also identify the intensity of the girl’s pre-Oedipal relationship to her mother. See Freud, “Female Sexuality,” 225–243. See also, Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, 95.
- 33.
See in particular, Horney, Feminine Psychology; Erich Fromm, “Psychoanalysis and Sociology,” in Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, eds. Stephen Bronner and Douglas Kellner (New York: Routledge, 1989 [1929]), 37–39.
- 34.
Interestingly, as Chodorow shows, she went on to discover that most of these pioneering women analysts were not feminists. Chodorow makes a fascinating (to this editor) passing comment in a footnote, “Lurking in my unconscious was probably a romanticized image of the reproduction of professional mothering.” Nancy Chodorow, “Seventies Questions for Thirties Women: Gender and Generation in a Study of Early Women Psychoanalysts,” in Nancy Chodorow, Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), 268.
- 35.
Daphne de Marneffe, Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2004); Anne Manne, Motherhood: How Should We Care for our Children? (Crows Nest, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2005); Julie Stephens, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking: Feminism, Memory, and Care (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
- 36.
Nancy Chodorow and Susan Contratto, “The Fantasy of the Perfect Mother” in Nancy Chodorow, Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1989 [1980]), 82.
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Chodorow and Contratto, “The Fantasy of the Perfect Mother,” 88.
- 39.
See, in particular, Dinnerstein who believed women’s “monopoly” on early childcare would lead to an environmental apocalypse because it generated a misogynist tendency to objectify women and nature, to treat them both as resources to exploit.
- 40.
Stephens, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking, 44.
- 41.
Ibid., 45.
- 42.
See Ann Orloff, Farewell to Maternalism: Welfare Reform, Liberalism, and the End of Mothers’ Right to Choose between Employment and Full-Time Care (Illinois: Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, 2000).
- 43.
I am thinking here of familiar calls to “abolish the family”. Or Firestone’s insistence on the superfluity of the incest taboo in a free society.
- 44.
Juliet Mitchell, Women’s Estate (London: Pelican, 1971).
- 45.
Juliet Mitchell, “Looking Back at Women’s Estate,” Verso Blog, February 3, 2015. https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1836-juliet-mitchell-looking-back-at-woman-s-estate.
- 46.
Ann Snitow, “Feminism and Motherhood: An American Reading,” Feminist Review 40, no. 1 (1992): 34.
- 47.
This, of course, built on the first-wave feminist campaigns for reduced family size and contraception. In particular, the work of Margaret Sanger. All over the western world, this produced a demographic shift towards smaller families. As Alison Mackinnon’s work shows, this was fundamentally connected to the new and radical view that women were ends-in-themselves and had a right to control their own reproductive destiny. See Alison Mackinnon, Love and Freedom: Professional Women and the Reshaping of Personal Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
- 48.
My own view differs from this, notwithstanding the “collective memory”. In contrast, I argue that second-wave feminism broke the link between “woman” and “mother” that was integral to women’s subordination. This freed women into a whole new way of being (or not being) mothers. Importantly, one needs to be able to say no to something in order to authentically choose it. It is because of second-wave feminism (building on the insights and activism of earlier waves) that women have this choice today. It is a fundamental right of world historic importance. This necessarily took precedence over, and underscored, the capacity to elaborate on maternal subjectivity in the terms discussed by contemporary feminist writers, which presuppose a level of choice and agency second wave (and earlier) writers could not.
- 49.
Maura Sheehy, “Introduction: Writing of Mothers,” in Women, Mothers, Subjects: New Explorations of the Maternal, ed. Maura Sheehy (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 2.
- 50.
Lisa Baraitser, Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption (London: Routledge), 10.
- 51.
Lisa Baraitser, “Oi Mother, Keep Ye’ Hair On! Impossible Transformations of Maternal Subjectivity,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 7, no. 3 (2006): 239–248.
- 52.
It might be, as I argue in my recent book Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities, that women now have two modes of self, not easily reconciled given their foundations in the structural and symbolic separation of spheres produced by industrial modernity. It’s not that the maternal self is simply a visage for projection, but that women have come to inhabit individualized selves in the past 40 years that are not easily reconciled with mothering selves, that are largely lived in domestic spaces sequestered from civil society. Petra Bueskens, Modern Motherhood, and Women’s Dual Selves: Rewriting the Sexual Contract (London: Routledge, 2018), 172–176.
- 53.
Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Institution and Experience (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976).
- 54.
Chodorow, “Preface to the Second Edition,” xvi.
- 55.
de Marneffe, Maternal Desire, 25.
- 56.
See Lisa Belkin, “The Opt-Out Revolution”, The New York Times, October 26, 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/magazine/the-opt-out-revolution.html. For a fuller analysis of this phenomenon see Pamela Stone, Opting Out: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
- 57.
de Marneffe, Maternal Desire. See also her reply to critics, Daphne de Marneffe, “The (M)other We Fall in Love with Wants to Be There: Reply to Commentaries,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 10, no. 1 (2009): 27–32.
- 58.
Ibid.
- 59.
de Marneffe, Maternal Desire, 64.
- 60.
Manne, Motherhood, 41.
- 61.
Ibid., 41.
- 62.
Ibid., 38. Dinnerstein believed that exclusive mother care was the cause of environmental destruction through a misogyny that extended to “mother earth”.
- 63.
Ibid.
- 64.
In the last two decades, we have also seen a resurgence of nannies among the wealthy. See Cameron MacDonald, Shadow Mothers: Nannies, Au Pairs, and the Micropolitics of Mothering (Berkeley: California University Press, 2010); Megan K. Stack, Women’s Work: A Reckoning with Work and Home (New York: Doubleday, 2019). See also, Katie Garner, Chapter 14, this volume.
- 65.
Manne’s argument is based here on the heated feminist debate on childcare in Australia through the 1990s and 2000s. She draws on policy documents, research and statements made by prominent feminists in the media. Manne, Motherhood, 183–235.
- 66.
Manne, Motherhood, 40–41.
- 67.
Arlie Hochshild, The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work (California: University of California Press, 2003), 214.
- 68.
Nancy Fraser, Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neo-liberal Crisis (London: Verso, 2013).
- 69.
See Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).
- 70.
Chodorow, “Preface to the Second Edition,” xvi.
- 71.
Jürgen Habermans, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1 (London: Heinemann, 1984 [1981]).
- 72.
See Arlie Hochschild, The Outsourced Self (New York: Henry Holt, 2011).
- 73.
See Bueskens, Modern Motherhood, 9.
- 74.
Ann Orloff, “From Maternalism to ‘Employment for All’: State Policies to Promote Women’s Employment Across the Affluent Democracies,” in The State after Statism: New State Activities in the Age of Liberalization, ed. J.D. Levy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 230–270.
- 75.
Catherine Hakim, “Women’s Lifestyle Preferences in the 21st Century,” in The Future of Motherhood in Europe, eds. Gijs Beets, Joop Schippers, and Egbert te Velde (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009), 177–195.
- 76.
Judith Warner, “The Opt-Out Generation Wants Back In,” The New York Times, August 7, 2013. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/magazine/the-opt-out-generation-wants-back-in.html?pagewanted=3&smid=fb-share.
- 77.
Sheilah O’Donnel in Warner, “The Opt-Out Generation Wants Back In”.
- 78.
Stone in Warner, “The Opt-Out Generation Wants Back In”.
- 79.
Anne Crittendon, The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job Is Still the Least Valued (New York: Henry Holt, 2002).
- 80.
Michelle Budig and Paula England, “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood,” American Sociological Review 66, no. 2 (2001): 204–225.
- 81.
Petra Bueskens, Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract (London: Routledge, 2018), 142–145; Petra Bueskens, “Modern Mothers’ Dual Identities and the New Sexual Contract,” Journal of the Motherhood Initiative 10, no. 1 & 2 (2019): 59–82.
- 82.
Catherine Hakim, Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century: Preference Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
- 83.
Sarah Charlesworth, Lyndall Strazdins, Léan O’Brien, and Sharryn Sims, “Parents’ Jobs in Australia: Work Hours Polarisation and the Consequences for Job Quality and Gender Equality,” Australian Journal of Labor Economics 14 (2011): 35–57; Marion Baird and Alexandra Heron, “The Life Cycle of Women’s Employment in Australia and Inequality Markers,” in Contemporary Issues in Work and Organisations: Actors and Institutions, eds. Russell Lansbury, Anya Johnson, and Diane van den Broek (London: Routledge, 2019), 42–56.
- 84.
This is sometimes referred to as the “Nordic paradox” insofar as greater choice has produced a greater divergence—or, in other words, greater inequality—between men and women. See Anne Lise Ellingsæter, “Scandinavian Welfare States and Gender (De) Segregation: Recent Trends and Processes,” Economic and Industrial Democracy 34, no. 3 (2013): 501–518. Recent research indicates that it is primarily women who take “parental” leave and, moreover, that women take leave more frequently and for longer duration in turn disrupting their career trajectories and reducing their income, lifetime earnings and superannuation. OECD, “Is the Last Mile the Longest? Economic Gains from Gender Equality in Nordic Countries,” Paris: OECD Publishing (2018). http://doi.org/10.1787/9789264300040-en; Kati Kuitto, Janne Salonen and Jan Helmdag, “Gender Inequalities in Early Career Trajectories and Parental Leaves: Evidence from a Nordic Welfare State,” Social Science 8, no. 9 (2019). https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8090253.
- 85.
While more women are entering the full-time workforce in recent decades after a substantial policy push, including “use it or lose it” leave entitlements designated for fathers only and universal high quality childcare, women still prevail in part-time work across the Nordic countries as recent research shows. See Aart-Jan Riekhoff, Oxana Krutova and Jouko Nätti, “Working-Hour Trends in the Nordic Countries: Convergence or Divergence?” Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies 9, no. 3 (2019). https://tidsskrift.dk/njwls/index; OECD, “Is the Last Mile the Longest?”; Anne Lise Ellingsæter, “Scandinavian Welfare States and Gender (De)segregation: Recent Trends and Processes,” Economic and Industrial Democracy 34, no. 3 (2013): 501–518. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831x13491616.
- 86.
Anne Lise Ellingsæter and Ragnhild Steen Jensen, “Politicising Women’s Part-Time Work in Norway: A Longitudinal Study of Ideas,” Work, Employment and Society 33, no. 3 (2019): 444–461.
- 87.
Hakim, “Women’s Lifestyle Preferences in the 21st Century”.
- 88.
de Marneffe “The (M)other We Fall in Love with Wants to Be There,” 31.
- 89.
Ibid.
- 90.
Ibid.
- 91.
Or unpaid work such as volunteering, creative pursuits, gardening, art etc.
- 92.
Chodorow now recognizes the call for shared parenting could be transformed into a claim for father’s rights. Clearly this depends on fathers being loving, responsible parents. Chodorow, “Preface to the Second Edition,” xvi.
- 93.
Ibid.
- 94.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).
- 95.
Arguably the discipline has never been the same given the fundamental unit of analysis shifted from “women” to “gender” and the distinction between the two was hereafter collapsed.
- 96.
Stephen On, “Interview with Carole Pateman by Steven On,” Contemporary Political Theory 9, no. 22 (2010): 239.
- 97.
Evelyn Nakano Glenn, “Social Constructions of Mothering: A Thematic Overview,” in Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, eds. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang, and Linda Rennie Forcey (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 2–9.
- 98.
Nakano Glenn, “Social Constructions of Mothering,” 5
- 99.
Ibid., 5.
- 100.
Parveen Adams, “Mothering,” in The Woman in Question, eds. Parveen Adams and Elizabeth Cowie (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990 [1983]), 324.
- 101.
Patrice DiQuinzio, “Exclusion and Essentialism in Feminist Theory: The Problem of Mothering,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 8, no. 3 (1993): 9.
- 102.
DiQuinzio, “Exclusion and Essentialism in Feminist Theory,” 15.
- 103.
Juliet Mitchell, “Reply to Lynne Segal’s Commentary,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 3, no. 2 (2002): 219.
- 104.
Even Butler made this point in her succinct postmodern aphorism: “… there can be no subject without an Other.” Judith Butler, “Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory, and Psychoanalytic Discourse,” in Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. Linda J. Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1990), 326. Behind the working-class mother is the lesbian, working-class mother. Behind the lesbian, working-class mother is the black, lesbian, working-class mother and so on ad infinitum. For the postmodernists this meant jettisoning “the subject”, for those who didn’t embrace the postmodern turn, it meant recognising that there are limits to generalisation, and an ever-present need for theorising that moves between generalisation and empirical specificity.
- 105.
As Chodorow says, “I am careful to point out that I am not describing a universal or essential story but a pattern … We can generalize about patterns in these psychological processes, as I do in The Reproduction of Mothering, or we can look especially to clinical individuality and personal uniqueness: one approach informs and enriches the other.” Chodorow, “Preface to the Second Edition,” xv.
- 106.
Chodorow, “Preface to the Second Edition,” xi–xii. It is possible to argue this is akin to Mitchell’s point that Freud was describing rather than endorsing patriarchy. This, of course, was not accepted by many feminists, and it seems Chodorow’s claim that The Reproduction of Mothering was describing rather than endorsing the late-twentieth century nuclear family met the same fate at the hands of postmodern feminists.
- 107.
I am not suggesting women choose the social and economic consequences of their preference for primary care (the double shift, reduced income, less superannuation); these are the consequences of outdated family and workplace structures and the exploitation of women’s labour. However, the idea that women should adopt the masculine model of work—uninterrupted, full-time attachment to the labour force over a lifetime (now, no longer available to large swathes of working class men)—is false; nor is the conservative “solution” of marriage a viable answer to (single) mothers’ poverty. Marriage is an institution that is clearly beneficial when it works, but needs to remain soluble; and while it does, women cannot rely on it. Women as mothers need remuneration that is not contingent upon marriage. As the political philosopher and women’s rights advocate of the nineteenth century J.S. Mill said, this leaves women to the vagaries of luck. A woman is lucky, he noted, to have a good husband. We cannot assume this is a given, nor consign her entire life and future to the happenstance of luck. We would like to imagine we are a long way from this, but in fact, with few exceptions, a mother without a husband is still likely to be facing stark structural contradictions and economic deprivation.
- 108.
Nancy Chodorow, “‘Too Late’: Ambivalence About Motherhood, Choice, and Time,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 51, no. 4 (2003): 1181–1198.
- 109.
Chodorow, “‘Too Late’,” 1187.
- 110.
Ibid. See also, Chodorow, “Preface to the Second Edition,” xiii.
- 111.
Chodorow, “Preface to the Second Edition,” xv.
- 112.
Ibid., xv–xvi.
- 113.
Chodorow, “Preface to the Second Edition,” xvi.
- 114.
Mitchell, “Reply to Lynne Segal’s Commentary,” 222.
- 115.
Jade McGleughlin was not Chodorow’s student but can be located here in terms of her generation and critical engagement with Chodorow.
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Bueskens, P. (2021). Introduction: The Reproduction of Mothering Turns Forty. In: Bueskens, P. (eds) Nancy Chodorow and The Reproduction of Mothering. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55590-0_1
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