Skip to main content

Mothers Reproducing the Social: Chodorow and Beyond

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Abstract

In The Reproduction of Mothering, Nancy Chodorow laid the blueprint for understanding mothers and daughters in their intricate psychosexual identification and differentiation. Synthesizing object relations theory with feminist sociological concerns regarding gender equality Chodorow brought together complex psychoanalytic theory with feminist utopian projects. The mother–daughter relationship had been hitherto dismissed in orthodox psychoanalysis as irrelevant to the central Oedipal drama. In situating mother–daughter relations both within the classic “family romance,” and also prior to and constitutive of it, Chodorow bequeathed a critically important legacy. She provided a new psychological language for understanding female subjectivity, inclusive of yet differentiating the mother’s and the daughter’s subjectivity. This chapter reviews Chodorow’s classic work, The Reproduction of Mothering, while also extending her original formulation to a contemporary understanding of changing gendered social relations. Drawing on the recent work of Alison Stone, I elucidate the process of not only reproducing but also resisting and reinventing mothering. From here, I tentatively explore how mothers are symbolically and actually “reproducing the social”. Citizen mothers, I argue, have the potential to transform human relations, economies, and polities, integrating an “ethic of care” with an “ethic of justice.” The last section of this article tentatively explores the emergence of “autonomous mothers” and their impact.

Originally published in Journal of Psychosocial Studies, Volume 13, Number 1, March 2020, pp. 6586(22). Re-published with permission of Policy Press (an imprint of Bristol University Press, UK).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 [1978]), vii.

  2. 2.

    See Chodorow, Chapter 2, this volume.

  3. 3.

    Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993 [1982]).

  4. 4.

    Lawrence Kohlberg, Essays on Moral Development, Vol. I: The Philosophy of Moral Development (San Francisco, California: Harper & Row, 1981).

  5. 5.

    Chodorow, Reproduction of Mothering.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., 47.

  7. 7.

    Chodorow, “Preface to the Second Edition,” xi–xii.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., 40.

  9. 9.

    These questions were asked by earlier analysts too, notably Karen Horney and Erich Fromm, but never entered the core of orthodox psychoanalysis. See Petra Bueskens, Mothering and Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Sociological and Feminist Perspectives (Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press, 2014), 10.

  10. 10.

    Chodorow, Reproduction of Mothering, 211–219.

  11. 11.

    While Chodorow was not the first woman analyst to engage with the question of maternal subjectivity (Helen Deutsche, Karen Horney and Melanie Klein among others came before her), she was the first to adopt an explicitly feminist lens.

  12. 12.

    Chodorow, Reproduction of Mothering, 95.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., 95, 102.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., 105.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., 94.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., 169.

  17. 17.

    Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering. Obviously, the extent to which fathers are present and engaged with sons and daughters varies across families, but broad outlines are garnered from national statistics in western nations. It is still mothers (women) who perform most of the childcare. See, Petra Bueskens, Modern Mothering and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract (London: Routledge, 2018). Interestingly, the pre-industrial family where fathers worked at home offered much more paternal contact with, and mentoring of, sons.

  18. 18.

    Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, 213. This of course refers to the overwhelming majority who are both masculine in gender presentation and heterosexual in object choice.

  19. 19.

    Sigmund Freud, “Femininity,” New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Standard Edition, Vol. 22 (London: Hogarth Press, 1964), 112–135.

  20. 20.

    Chodorow, Reproduction of Mothering, 128.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., 128–129.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., 95. By contrast being lesbian is a continuous object choice for women.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., 194–195.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 194.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., 201.

  26. 26.

    Lisa Baraitser, Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption (London: Routledge, 2009).

  27. 27.

    Alison Stone, “Mother-Daughter Relations and the Maternal in Irigaray and Chodorow,” PhiloSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism 1, no. 1 (2011): 45–64; Alison Stone, “Psychoanalysis and Maternal Subjectivity,” in Mothering and Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Sociological and Feminist Perspectives, ed. Petra Bueskens (Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press, 2014), 325–341.

  28. 28.

    Stone, “Mother-Daughter Relations.” More recently, in popular culture, we have “career women” and “stay at home mums” (as if these were mutually exclusive categories). Again, these stereotypes are unidimensional and unnuanced, and fail to grasp that women encompass and transcend these dualistic categories.

  29. 29.

    More recently, in popular culture, we have “career women” and “stay at home mums” (as if these were mutually exclusive categories). Again, these stereotypes are unidimensional and unnuanced, and fail to grasp that women encompass and transcend these dualistic categories.

  30. 30.

    Rachel Cusk, A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother (New York: Picador, 2001); Daphne de Marneffe, Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2004); Lisa Baraitser, “Oi Mother, Keep Ye’ Hair On! Impossible Transformations of Maternal Subjectivity,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 7, no. 3 (2006): 239–248; Baraitser, Maternal Encounters; Stone, “Mother-Daughter Relations”; Bueskens, Mothering and Psychoanalysis; Christine Moutsou and Rosalind Mayo, The Mother in Psychoanalysis and Beyond: Matricide and Maternal Subjectivity (London: Routledge, 2016); Jaqueline Rose, Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty (London: Faber & Faber, 2018); Petra Bueskens, “Maternal Subjectivity: From Containing to Creating,” in Dangerous Ideas About Mothers, eds. Rachel Robertson and Camilla Nelson (Perth: UWA Publishing, 2018), 197–211.

  31. 31.

    Chodorow, Reproduction of Mothering, 211–219.

  32. 32.

    See also Dorothy Dinnerstein who developed this argument with much more fervor. Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangement and Human Malaise (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).

  33. 33.

    I have written elsewhere about the “containing and creating” elements of maternal subjectivity. See Bueskens, “Maternal Subjectivity,” 197–211.

  34. 34.

    This assumption is, of course, problematic. Research shows women’s happiness levels have declined over the past 40 years. See, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness (Institute for the Study of Labor, IZA Discussion Paper No. 4200, 2009); Daniel Freeman and Joshua Freeman, The Stressed Sex: Uncovering the Truth About Men, Women, and Mental Health (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013). Moreover, stay-at-home mothers report higher happiness levels than full-time working mothers, though they are on a par with part-time working mother. This complicates the straightforward assumption that liberal progress—or feminism—makes women happier. Judith Treas, Tanja van der Lippe, and Tsui-O Tai, “The Happy Homemaker? Married Women’s Well-Being in Cross-National Perspective,” Social Forces 90, no. 1 (2011): 111–132.

  35. 35.

    Bueskens, Modern Motherhood.

  36. 36.

    Catherine J. Rosenthal, “Kinkeeping in the Familial Division of Labor,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 47, no. 4 (1985): 965–974.

  37. 37.

    See, Lyn Craig, Contemporary Motherhood: The Impact of Children on Adult Time (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007); Suzanne M. Bianchi, Liana C. Sayer, Melissa A. Milkie, and John P. Robinson, “Housework: Who Did, Does, or Will Do It and How Much Does It Matter?,” Social Forces 91, no. 1 (2012): 55–63; Leah Ruppanner, “Sharing of Household Responsibilities,” in Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research, ed. A. C. Michalos (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014): 258–311; Kathleen Gerson, “There’s No Such Thing as Having It All: Gender, Work, and Care in an Age of Insecurity,” in Gender in the Twenty-First Century: The Stalled Revolution and the Road to Equality, eds. Shannon N. Davis, Sarah Winslow, and David Maume (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017), 13–27.

  38. 38.

    Sharon Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Bianchi et al., “Housework.” There are significant class differences between women who are mothers in terms of education, employment and, increasingly who gets and stays married, however mothering work remains women’s work across diverse cultural, racial, and class and categories.

  39. 39.

    Feminists fought first for property rights, then for the vote and then for entry into the public sphere, including through paid work and, for those with education and social capital, for entry into the professions. Since the second wave, feminists have fought for not only legal but also cultural change. Current struggles center on culture change.

  40. 40.

    See, Karen Offen, European Feminisms, 17001950: A Political History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000); Karen Hunt, “Women as Citizens: Changing the Polity,” in The Routledge History of Women in Europe Since 1700, ed. Deborah Simonton (London: Routledge, 2006), 216–258.

  41. 41.

    I am referring here to the period during the day when productive household and agricultural labor took place in and around the home. The gradual emptying of the home occurred in a variegated way in different cultural contexts. I am describing a broad pattern that followed industrialisation and the movement of production away from the home and into the factory. I elaborate on this point in Bueskens, Modern Motherhood.

  42. 42.

    Chodorow, Reproduction of Mothering, 175.

  43. 43.

    Michael Young and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London (London: Free Press, 2013); C. B. Stack and L. Burton, “Kinscripts: Reflections on Family, Generation, and Culture,” in Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, eds. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang, and Linda Reney Forcey (New York: Routledge, 1994), 33–44; Patricia Hill Collins, “Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing About Motherhood,” in Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, eds. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang, and Linda Reney Forcey (New York: Routledge, 1994), 45–66; Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

  44. 44.

    Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); H. Berenson, “The ‘Family Wage’ and Working Women’s Consciousness in Britain,” Politics and Society 19, no. 1 (1991): 71–108.

  45. 45.

    Elen Mutari, Marilyn Power and Deborah M. Figart, “Neither Mothers nor Breadwinners: African-American Women’s Exclusion From US minimum Wage Policies, 1912–1938,” Feminist Economics 8, no. 2 (2002): 37–61.

  46. 46.

    Nancy Fraser, “After the Family Wage: A Postindustrial Thought Experiment,” in Gender and Citizenship in Transition, ed. Barbara Hobson (New York: Routledge, 2000), 1–32.

  47. 47.

    Belinda Probert and B. Wilson (eds.), Pink Collar Blues: Work, Gender and Technology (2nd ed.) (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008).

  48. 48.

    Nancy Chodorow and Susan Contratto, “The Fantasy of the Perfect Mother,” in Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory, ed. Nancy Chodorow (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1989 [1980]), 79–96.

  49. 49.

    Julie Stephens, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking: Feminism, Memory, and Care (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 44.

  50. 50.

    Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home (New York: Viking, 2012).

  51. 51.

    Liana C. Sayer, Paula England, Michael Bittman, and Suzanne. M. Bianchi, “How Long Is the Second (Plus First) Shift? Gender Differences in Paid, Unpaid and Total Work Time in Australia and the United States,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 40, no. 4 (2009): 523–545; Bianchi et al., “Housework.”

  52. 52.

    Suzanne M. Bianchi, John P. Robinson, Melissa A. Milkie, Changing Rhythms of American Family Life (New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006).

  53. 53.

    Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Penguin, 1963).

  54. 54.

    Maternal feminism was prominent at the turn of the twentieth century influencing the establishment of the welfare state across the western world and, specifically, provisions for women as “maternal citizens.” This feminism was also associated with an essentialist and traditionalist focus centered on women’s domestic role; however, the broader vision was: (1) recognition of women’s important contributions to citizenship as mothers; (2) the economic support of women as mothers alongside and sometimes even outside the institution of marriage, and; (3) the release of women’s ethical orientation to care into the world. Contemporary maternal feminism is heir to this earlier incarnation, even as it blends an ethic of equality and cultural liberalism. See Seth Koven and Sonja Michel (eds.), Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (New York: Routledge, 1993); Marilyn Lake, “‘A Revolution in the Family’: The Challenge and Contradiction of Maternal Citizenship,” in Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and Welfares States in Comparative Perspective, eds. Seth Koven and Sonja Michel (New York: Routledge, 1993), 378–395; Marilyn Lake, “State Socialism for Australian Mothers: Andrew Fisher’s Radical Maternalism in Its International and Local Contexts,” Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History, no. 102 (2012): 55–70.

  55. 55.

    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? (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2005); Stephens, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking; Carla Pascoe Leahy and Petra Bueskens (eds.), Australian Mothering: Historical and Sociological Perspectives (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

  56. 56.

    Andrea O’Reilly, Matricentric Feminism (Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press, 2016); Bueskens, Modern Motherhood.

  57. 57.

    Working-class and poor women on average have children earlier than middle-class women and those with lower socio-economic status, are more likely to have children early in adult life out of wedlock. Val Gillies, Marginalised Mothers: Exploring Working Class Experiences of Parenting (London: Routledge, 2006); Edin and Kafalas, Promises I Can Keep; Joan C. Williams, White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2017).

  58. 58.

    See Craig, Contemporary Motherhood.

    The research forms a complex picture here. Parents’ happiness declines as does marital happiness, however meaning increases. Infants reduce parents’ happiness and marital happiness however, they increase their life meaning and a sense of social connectedness in older age, Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness (New York: Free Press, 2002); Jean M. Twenge, W. Keith Campbell, and Craig A. Foster, “Parenthood and Marital Satisfaction: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 65, no. 3 (2003): 574–583; S. K. Nelson, K. Kushlev, T. English, E. W. Dunn, and S. Lyubomirsky, “In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated with More Joy Than Misery,” Psychological Science 24, no. 1 (2013): 3–10; Daniel Gilbert, “Happiness: What Your Mother Didn’t Tell You,” World Minds Annual Symposium, December 13 (2018); C. Becker, I. Kirchmaier, and S. T. Trautmann, “Marriage, Parenthood and Social Network: Subjective Well-Being and Mental Health in Old Age,” PloS One 14, no. 7 (2019).

  59. 59.

    Edin and Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep.

  60. 60.

    Williams, White Working Class.

  61. 61.

    Anne Crittendon, The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job Is Still the Least Valued (New York: Henry Holt, 2002).

  62. 62.

    Michelle Budig and Paula England, “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood,” American Sociological Review 66, no. 2 (2001): 204–225; Michelle Budig and Paula England, “The Motherhood Penalty in Cross-National Perspective: The Importance of Work–Family Policies and Cultural Attitudes,” Social Politics 19, no. 2 (2012): 163–193.

  63. 63.

    Bueskens, Modern Motherhood.

  64. 64.

    Stone, “Mother-Daughter Relations.” Reproduced here in Chapter 12.

  65. 65.

    Ibid., 46–47.

  66. 66.

    Alison Stone, Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Maternal Subjectivity (London: Routledge, 2012), 29.

  67. 67.

    Stone, “Mother-Daughter Relations,” 57 (emphasis own).

  68. 68.

    Stone, Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Maternal Subjectivity, 30.

  69. 69.

    Stone writes, “… our psychical formation apparently disposes us against the sorts of social change that would promote gender justice.” Ibid. Here she aligns with Juliet Mitchell’s more recent position in which she identifies conservative tendencies in both psychoanalysis and feminism suggesting these reflect an unconscious pull toward stasis or reproduction of the status quo. Indeed, for Mitchell, sexual difference is defined by an “underwater tow that makes progress regress on matters of ‘gender’ equity.” Juliet Mitchell, “Introduction, 1999,” in Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis (London: Penguin, 2000), xviii. See also, Juliet Mitchell, “Reply to Lynne Segal’s Commentary,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 3, no. 2 (2002), 218.

  70. 70.

    Stone, Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Maternal Subjectivity, 26.

  71. 71.

    Ibid., 30.

  72. 72.

    Ibid., 26.

  73. 73.

    Ibid., 25.

  74. 74.

    Ibid., 26.

  75. 75.

    Ibid., 4.

  76. 76.

    Ibid., 5.

  77. 77.

    Ibid., 3.

  78. 78.

    Ibid.; Alison Stone, “Psychoanalysis and Maternal Subjectivity,” Mothering and Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Sociological and Feminist Perspectives, ed. Petra Bueskens (Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press, 2014), 325–341.

  79. 79.

    Stone, Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Maternal Subjectivity, 5.

  80. 80.

    Ibid., 88.

  81. 81.

    Ibid., 142–147.

  82. 82.

    Ibid., 145.

  83. 83.

    I named my first child—a daughter—“Mia Renee.” Only later did I realize this literally meant, “my own rebirth,” which of course, she was.

  84. 84.

    Stone, Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Maternal Subjectivity, 141.

  85. 85.

    Talero in Stone, Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Maternal Subjectivity, 136.

  86. 86.

    Stone, Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Maternal Subjectivity, 145.

  87. 87.

    Catherine Hakim, Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century: Preference Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Lydia Saad, “Children a Key Factor in Women’s Desire to Work Outside the Home,” Gallup Poll, October 2015; Williams, White Working Class.

  88. 88.

    Michele Hoffnung, “Wanting It All: Career, Marriage, and Motherhood During College-Educated Women’s 20s,” Sex Roles, 50, no. 9–10 (2004): 711–723; Nicole Arthur, and Christine Lee, “Young Australian Women’s Aspirations for Work, Marriage and Family: ‘I Guess I am Just Another Person Who Wants It All,’” Journal of Health Psychology 13, no. 5 (2008): 589–596.

  89. 89.

    Hakim, Work-Lifestyle Choices; 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.

  90. 90.

    See Virginia Haussegger, Wonder Woman: The Myth of Having It All (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2005); Anne Marie Slaughter, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” The Atlantic, July/August, 2012; Kathleen Gerson, “There’s No Such Thing as Having it All,” 13–27.

  91. 91.

    Wendy Hollway, Juliet Mitchell, and Julie Walsh, “Interview with Juliet Mitchell Psychoanalysis and Feminism: Then and Now,” Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society no. 20 (2015): 112–130, https://doi.org/10.1057/pcs.2015.3.

  92. 92.

    Sayer et al., “How Long Is the Second”; Lyn Craig, Killian Mullan, and Megan Blaxland, “Parenthood, Policy and Work-Family Time in Australia 1992–2006,” Work Employment Society 24, no. 1 (2010): 27–45; Michelle Budig, Joya Misra, and Irene Boeckmann, “The Motherhood Penalty in Cross-National Perspective: The Importance of Work–Family Policies and Cultural Attitudes,” Social Politics 19, no. 2 (2012): 163–193.

  93. 93.

    Robert VerBruggen and Wendy Wendy Wang, “The Real Housewives of America: Dad’s Income and Mom’s Work,” Institute for Family Studies, 2019, https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/newfinalifsresearchbrief-verbruggenwang-realhousewives.pdf.

  94. 94.

    Williams, White Working Class.

  95. 95.

    Hakim, Work-Lifestyle Choices; Hakim, “Women’s Lifestyle Preferences.”

  96. 96.

    Saad, “Children a Key Factor.”

  97. 97.

    Australian Bureau of Statistics, Family Characteristics and Transitions, Australia, 201213, Catalogue 4442.0, 2015, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/allprimarymainfeatures/E6A9286119FA0A85CA25699000255C89?opendocument.

  98. 98.

    Australian Bureau of Statistics, Gender Indicators, Australia. Catalogue 4125.0, 2018, https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/4125.0~Sep%202018~Main%20Features~Economic%20Security~4.

  99. 99.

    Dennis Finn and Anne Donovan, PwC’s NextGen: A Global Generational Study, Price Waterhouse Coopers, 17 February (2013), 1–16, https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/hr-management-services/pdf/pwc-nextgen-study-2013.pdf; Deloitte, Deloitte Millennial Survey, October 24 (2018), https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/millennialsurvey.html.

  100. 100.

    Petra Bueskens, “Poverty-Traps and Pay-Gaps: Why (Single) Mothers Need Basic Income,” in Views of a Universal Basic Income: Perspectives from across Australia, ed. Tim Hollo (Melbourne: The Green Institute, 2017), 42–51.

  101. 101.

    Williams, White Working Class.

  102. 102.

    Slaughter, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.”

  103. 103.

    Lisa Belkin, “The Opt-Out Revolution,” The New York Times Magazine, October 26, 2003, https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/magazine/the-opt-out-revolution.html; Pamela Stone and Ackerly Hernandez, L. “The All-or-Nothing Workplace: Flexibility Stigma and “Opting Out” Among Professional-Managerial Women,” Journal of Social Issues 69, no. 2 (2013): 235–256, https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12013.

  104. 104.

    Anne Hattery, Women, Work and Family: Balancing and Weaving (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2001); Alison Morehead, “Synchronizing Time for Work and Family: Preliminary Insights from Qualitative Research with Mothers,” Journal of Sociology 37, no. 4 (2001): 355–371; Jane Maree Maher, “Accumulating Care: Mothers Beyond the Conflicting Temporalities of Caring and Work,” Time & Society 18, no. 2–3 (2009): 236–243; Bueskens, Modern Motherhood. Integration has also been identified as the “intensification” of women’s (mothers’) time through “multitasking.” See Rachel Connelly and Jean Kimmell, The Time Use of Mothers in the United States at the Beginning of the 21st Century (Michigan: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2010); Liana Sayer, “More Work for Mothers? Trends and Gender Differences in Multitasking,” in Time Competition: Disturbed Balances and New Options in Work and Care, eds. Tanje van der Lippe and Pascale Peters (New York: Edward Elgar, 2006), 41–56; Lyn Craig and Judith Brown, “The Multitasking Parent: Time Penalties, Dimensions, and Gender Differences,” in The Economics of Multitasking, eds. Charlene M. Kalenkoski and Gigi Foster (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 33–59.

  105. 105.

    Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 3.

  106. 106.

    Ibid., 178.

  107. 107.

    Joan C. Williams, Mary Blair-Loy, and Jennifer L. Berdahl, “Cultural Schemas, Social Class, and the Flexibility Stigma,” Journal of Social Issues 69, no. 2 (2013): 209–234.

  108. 108.

    Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011); David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (London: Penguin, 2019), 274–280.

  109. 109.

    Hakim, “Work-Lifestyle Choices”; Hakim, Women’s Lifestyle Preferences.

  110. 110.

    Bueskens, Modern Motherhood.

  111. 111.

    Privacy is under assault with digitisation however this is beyond the scope of the article. See Shoshanna Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the Frontier of Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2019).

  112. 112.

    Chodorow and Contratto, “The Fantasy of the Perfect Mother.”

Bibliography

  • Abrams, L., “At Home in the Family: Women and Familial Relationships.” In The Routledge History of Women in Europe Since 1700, ed. D Simonton. London: Routledge, 2006, 14–53.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———, The Making of Modern Woman: Europe 1789–1918. London: Longman/Pearson, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arthur, N., and C. Lee, “Young Australian Women’s Aspirations for Work, Marriage and Family: ‘I Guess I am Just Another Person Who Wants It All.’” Journal of Health Psychology 13, no. 5 (2008): 589–596.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Australian Bureau of Statistics, Family Characteristics and Transitions, Australia, 2012–13. Catalogue 4442.0, 2015. https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/allprimarymainfeatures/E6A9286119FA0A85CA25699000255C89?opendocument.

  • ———, Gender Indicators, Australia. Catalogue 4125.0, 2018. https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/4125.0~Sep%202018~Main%20Features~Economic%20Security~4.

  • Baraitser, Lisa, Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption. London: Routledge, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Becker, C., I. Kirchmaier, and S. T. Trautmann, “Marriage, Parenthood and Social Network: Subjective Well-Being and Mental Health in Old Age.” PloS One 14, no. 7 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218704.

  • Belkin, L., “The Opt-Out Revolution.” The New York Times Magazine, October 26, 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/magazine/the-opt-out-revolution.html.

  • Berenson, H., “The ‘Family Wage’ and Working Women’s Consciousness in Britain.” Politics and Society 19, no. 1 (1991): 71–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bianchi, S., L. Sayer, M. Milkie, and J. Robinson, “Housework: Who Did, Does, or Will Do It and How Much Does It Matter?” Social Forces 91, no. 1 (2012): 55–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bianchi S. M,, Robinson J. P., & Milkie M. A. Changing Rhythms of American Family Life. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Budig, M., and P. England, “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood.” American Sociological Review 66, no. 2 (2001): 204–225.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Budig, M., J. Misra, and I. Boeckmann, “The Motherhood Penalty in Cross-National Perspective: The Importance of Work–Family Policies and Cultural Attitudes.” Social Politics 19, no. 2 (2012): 163–193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———, “Work-Family Policy Tradeoffs for Mothers? Unpacking the Cross-National Variation in the Motherhood Earnings Penalties.” Work and Occupations 43, no. 2 (2016): 119–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bueskens, Petra, Mothering and Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Sociological and Feminist Perspectives. Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———, Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract. London: Routledge, 2018a.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———, “Maternal Subjectivity: From Containing to Creating.” In Dangerous Ideas About Mothers, eds. R. Robertson and C. Nelson. Perth: UWA Publishing, 2018b, 197–211.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———, “Gillard’s Dilemma, the Sexual Contract and Maternal Citizenship.” In Australian Mothering: Historical and Sociological Perspectives, eds. C. Pascoe Leahy and Petra Bueskens. London: Palgrave, 2019, 421–435.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chodorow, Nancy, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 [1978].

    Google Scholar 

  • Chodorow, Nancy, and S. Contratto, “The Fantasy of the Perfect Mother.” In Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory, ed. Nancy Chodorow. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1989, 79–96.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins, H., “Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing About Motherhood.” In Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, eds. E. Nakano Glenn, G. Chang, and L. R. Forcey. New York: Routledge, 1994, 45–66.

    Google Scholar 

  • Connelly, R., and J. Kimmell, The Time Use of Mothers in the United States at the Beginning of the 21st Century. Michigan: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  • Craig, L., Contemporary Motherhood: The Impact of Children on Adult Time. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Craig L., and J. Brown, “The Multitasking Parent: Time Penalties, Dimensions, and Gender Differences.” In The Economics of Multitasking, eds. C. M. Kalenkoski and G. Foster. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 33–59.

    Google Scholar 

  • Craig, L., K. Mullan, and M. Blaxland, “Parenthood, Policy and Work-Family Time in Australia 1992–2006.” Work Employment Society 24, no. 1 (2010): 27–45.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crittendon, A., The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job Is Still the Least Valued. Henry Holt: New York, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cusk, R., A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother. New York: Picador, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deloitte, Deloitte millennial survey. October 24, 2018. https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/millennialsurvey.html.

  • de Marneffe, D., Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———, “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.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edin, K., and M. Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Finn, D., and Donovan, A. PwC’s NextGen: A Global Generational Study, Price Waterhouse Coopers, 17 February (2013), 1–16. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/hr-management-services/pdf/pwc-nextgen-study-2013.pdf.

  • Fraser, N., “After the Family Wage: A Postindustrial Thought Experiment.” In Gender and Citizenship in Transition, ed. B. Hobson. New York: Routledge, 2000, 1–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freeman, D., and J. Freeman, The Stressed Sex: Uncovering the Truth About Men, Women, and Mental Health. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freud, Sigmund, “Femininity.” New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Standard Edition, Vol. 22. London: Hogarth Press, 1964 [1933], 112–135.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedan, B., The Feminine Mystique. New York: Penguin, 1963.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gerson, K., “There’s No Such Thing as Having It All: Gender, Work, and Care in an Age of Insecurity.” In Gender in the Twenty-First Century: The Stalled Revolution and the Road to Equality, eds. S. N. Davis, S. Winslow, and D. Maume. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017, 13–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giddens, Anthony, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert, D., “Happiness: What Your Mother Didn’t Tell You.” World Minds Annual Symposium, December 13, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1Y2Z1BGwno.

  • Gillies, V., Marginalised Mothers: Exploring Working Class Experiences of Parenting. London: Routledge, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilligan, C., In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graeber, D., Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. London: Penguin, 2019.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hakim, Catherine, Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century: Preference Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———, “Women’s Lifestyle Preferences in the 21st Century.” In The Future of Motherhood in Europe, eds. J. Schippers, G. Beets, and E. te Velde. Dordrecht: Springer, 2009, 177–195.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanson, T., “Parenthood and Happiness: A Review of Folk Theories Versus Empirical Evidence.” Social Indicators Research 109, no. 1 (2012): 29–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hattery, A. Women, Work and Family: Balancing and Weaving. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hays, S., The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hochschild, A., The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. New York: Viking, 2012 [1989].

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoffnung, M., “Wanting It All: Career, Marriage, and Motherhood During College-Educated Women’s 20s.” Sex Roles, 50, no. 9–10 (2004): 711–723.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hollway, W., Mitchell J., and Walsh, J., “Interview with Juliet Mitchell—Psychoanalysis and Feminism: Then and Now.” Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society (2015) 20, 112–130. https://doi.org/10.1057/pcs.2015.3.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hollway, W., Mitchell, J., & Walsh, J. “Interview with Juliet Mitchell Psychoanalysis and Feminism: Then and Now,” Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society (2015) 20, 112130. https://doi.org/10.1057/pcs.2015.3.

  • Hunt, K., “Women as Citizens: Changing the Polity.” In The Routledge History of Women in Europe Since 1700, ed. D. Simonton. London: Routledge, 2006, 216–258.

    Google Scholar 

  • Irigaray, L., “The Bodily Encounter with the Mother,” In The Irigaray Reader Reader, ed. M. Whitford. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1991, 34–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kessler-Harris, A., Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003 [1982].

    Google Scholar 

  • Koven, S., and S. Michel, eds., Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States. New York: Routledge, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kristeva, Julia, and A. Goldhammer, “Stabat Mater.” Poetics Today 6, no. 1/2 (1985): 133–152.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lake, M., “‘A Revolution in the Family’: The Challenge and Contradiction of Maternal Citizenship.” In Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and Welfares States in Comparative Perspective, eds. S. Koven and S. Michel. New York: Routledge, 1993, 378–395.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “State Socialism for Australian Mothers: Andrew Fisher’s Radical Maternalism in Its International and Local Contexts.” Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History, no. 102 (2012): 55–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manne, A., Motherhood: How Should We Care for Our Children? Crows Nest, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maher, J., “Accumulating Care: Mothers Beyond the Conflicting Temporalities of Caring and Work.” Time & Society 18, nos. 2–3 (2009): 236–243.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell, J., “Introduction, 1999.” Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis. London: Penguin, 2000, xv–xxxviii.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———, “Reply to Lynne Segal’s Commentary.” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 3, no. 2 (2002): 217–228.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell, S. A., and M. J. Black, Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought. USA: Basic Books, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morehead, A., “Synchronizing Time for Work and Family: Preliminary Insights from Qualitative Research with Mothers.” Journal of Sociology 37, no. 4 (2001): 355–371.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moutsou, C., and R. Mayo, The Mother in Psychoanalysis and Beyond: Matricide and Maternal Subjectivity. London: Routledge, 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mutari, E., M. Power, and D. M. Figart, “Neither Mothers Nor Breadwinners: African-American Women’s Exclusion From US Minimum Wage Policies, 1912–1938.” Feminist Economics 8, no. 2 (2002): 37–61.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nelson, S. K., K. Kushlev, T. English, E. W. Dunn, and S. Lyubomirsky, “In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated with More Joy Than Misery.” Psychological Science 24, no. 1 (2013): 3–10.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Offen, K. European Feminisms, 1700–1950: A Political History. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Reilly, A. Matricentric Feminism. Toronto: Demeter Press, 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pascoe Leahy, C., and P. Bueskens, eds., Australian Mothering: Historical and Sociological Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

    Google Scholar 

  • Probert, B., and B. Wilson, eds., Pink Collar Blues: Work, Gender and Technology, 2nd Edition. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008 [1993].

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, J., Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty. London: Faber & Faber, 2018.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenthal, C. J., “Kinkeeping in the Familial Division of Labor.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 47, no. 4 (1995): 965–974.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ruppanner, L., “Sharing of Household Responsibilities.” In Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research, eds. A. C. Michalos, 258–311. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Saad, L., “Children a Key Factor in Women’s Desire to Work Outside the Home.” Gallup Poll, October 2015. https://news.gallucom/poll/186050/children-key-factor-women-desire-work-outside-home.aspx.

  • Sayer, L. C., P. England, M. Bittman, and S. M. Bianchi, “How Long Is the Second (Plus First) Shift? Gender Differences in Paid, Unpaid and Total Work Time in Australia and the United States.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 40, no. 4 (2009): 523–545.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sayer, L., “More Work for Mothers? Trends and Gender Differences in Multitasking.” In Time Competition: Disturbed Balances and New Options in Work and Care, eds. T. van der Lippe and P. Peters, 41–56. New York: Edward Elgar, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seligman, M., Authentic Happiness. New York: Free Press, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Slaughter, A. M., “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” The Atlantic, July/August, 2012. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/.

  • Stack, C. B., and L. Burton, “Kinscripts: Reflections on Family, Generation, and Culture.” In Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, eds. E. Nakano Glenn, G. Chang, and L. R. Forcey, 33–44. New York: Routledge, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevenson, B., and J. Wolfers, The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness (Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit, Institute for the Study of Labor, IZA Discussion Paper No. 4200, 2009). http://ftp.iza.org/dp4200.pdf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stone, Alison, Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Maternal Subjectivity. London: Routledge, 2012.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———, “Mother-Daughter Relations and the Maternal in Irigaray and Chodorow.” PhiloSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism 1, no. 1 (2011): 45–64.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———, “Psychoanalysis and Maternal Subjectivity.” In Mothering and Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Sociological and Feminist Perspectives, ed. P. Bueskens. Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press, 2014, 325–341.

    Google Scholar 

  • Treas, J., van der Lippe, T., and Tai, T. C., “The Happy Homemaker? Married Women’s Well-Being in Cross-National Perspective.” Social Forces 90, no. 1 (2011): 111–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Twenge, J. M., W. K. Campbell, and C. Foster, “Parenthood and Marital Satisfaction: A Meta-Analytic Review.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 65, no. 3 (2003): 574–583.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • VerBruggen, R., and W. Wendy Wang, “The Real Housewives of America: Dad’s Income and Mom’s Work.” Institute for Family Studies, 2019. https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/newfinalifsresearchbrief-verbruggenwang-realhousewives.pdf.

  • Weeks, K., The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, J. C., White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2017.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, J., M. Blair-Loy, and J. L. Berdahl, “Cultural Schemas, Social Class, and the Flexibility Stigma.” Journal of Social Issues 69, no. 2 (2013): 209–234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Young, M., and P. Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London. London: Free Press, 1957.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Petra Bueskens .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Bueskens, P. (2021). Mothers Reproducing the Social: Chodorow and Beyond. In: Bueskens, P. (eds) Nancy Chodorow and The Reproduction of Mothering. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55590-0_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55590-0_13

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-55589-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-55590-0

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics