Chodorow Comment

There is a poignant symmetry between Nancy Chodorow’s first book The Reproduction of Mothering, Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender and this, her last article, now published shortly after her death. Her trailblazing 1978 book boldly and confidently introduced psychoanalytic thinkers, especially Fairbairn, into mainstream sociology to better answer the critical social question of “why women mother.” Psychoanalytic object relations theory, she argued, is essential to understanding the intertwined psychic and social mechanisms required for girls to identify with their mothers—for them to embrace motherhood for themselves and for boys to eschew the role and place their psychic energies elsewhere. This book expresses the importance for social sciences to move beyond a cognitively based socialization theory in order to more deeply understand childhood mentation. Unconscious experience, too, must be reckoned with as individuals relate to others and motivate and orient themselves within the social structures in which they are situated.

The Reproduction of Motherhood was a tour de force. It brought feminist critique of patriarchy straight to the center of sociological theory and critical analysis. It introduced to sociology not psychoanalytic theory per