Carol Nadelson

Chodorow has done a masterful job of elucidating the issues involved in the conceptualization of “mothering.” She begins with an overview of the topic, including a consideration of sociological and anthropological data. Building on the work of Rubin,3 Rosaldo,2 and Ortner,1 she notes that in each society kinship and family organization form the locus and core of a sex/gender system in which women's mothering is a central and defining feature of the social organization of gender. Societies, however, vary in the extent to which they differentiate the public and domestic spheres of life and the degrees to which they restrict women to the domestic.

Chodorow sets the stage for further discussion by stating, “women, as mothers, produce daughters with mothering capacities and desire to mother. These capacities and needs are built into and grow out of the mother-daughter relationship itself. By contrast, women as mothers (and men as not mothers) produce sons whose nurturant capacities and needs have been systematically curtailed and repressed.”

From this statement Chodorow begins to build and weave an artful and, at times, brilliant argument. She begins with a refutation of the case for biological or instinctual mothering, pointing out that the evidence is scant and ambiguous. She also argues that role socialization theory is not enough to account for the phenomenon of mothering. She focuses her discussion on object relations and the internalization of the maternal image as major determinants of mothering.

Chodorow carefully reviews classic psychoanalytic theory and delineates the recent critiques regarding the development of feminine identity. She provides data from sociology and social psychology which both supplement and refute aspects of psychoanalytic theory.

Throughout the book she emphasizes the importance of the primary identification with the mother and conflict about separation from her. She states that girls do not reject their mothers but remain emotionally more tie