Origins of Femininity and the Wish for a Child

Ever since Freud first articulated his theories of female sexual development (1905, 1924, 1931, 1933) there have been some sharp differences of opinion on the subject among analysts as well as nonanalysts. Various aspects of these differences have been discussed and debated over the years (Horney, 1924, 1926, 1933; Deutsch, 1930, 1945; Jones, 1927, 1935; see Fliegel, 1982 and Chehrazi, 1986 for reviews), but less explicit emphasis has been placed on the question of the origin of the wish for a child in girls.

It is inevitable that one's attention should currently be drawn to the issue because of the striking pressure to have children which has become manifest in women in their thirties who have deferred childbearing or who even had doubted whether they ever wanted to have children. Such pressure would not have been observable readily and so commonly in former times when either absent or imperfect birth control methods did not permit such decisions; or women had no reason for deferring having children since other careers were not widely open to them. The pressure toward childbearing currently has an intensity we usually associate with an