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In the course of this presentation, I will be suggesting that, while both men and women have gender-specific difficulties in establishing and maintaining a mutually gratifying intimate relationship, in the area of autonomous functioning, because of the conscious and unconscious differences in child-rearing practices, it is women who demonstrate a vulnerability to disruption and dysfunction. This is especially evident within the context of an intimate relationship, and significant enough to suggest the hypothesis of a developmental deficit.
As Dinnerstein (1976) and Chodorow (1978) point out, parenting is asymmetrical, namely, both boys and girls are mothered by a woman. Thus, the early symbiosis for a boy is with a person of the opposite sex, while for a girl it is with a person of the same sex. Stoller (1968) points out that because of this, until the process of differentiation has proceeded to roughly 18 months, children of both sexes make a primary identification with their mother. Parenthetically, one has to be careful with the idea that the first identification, is “female”: since it is unlikely that infants have any clear representation of genital distinctions, it is hard to be sure exactly what that identification carries. But it is surely an identification with the person who is mother.
As Mahler observes, it is only via the process of separation-individuation that the actual psychological birth of the child takes