Chodorow, Nancy

Chodorow, Nancy

(chōd`ərō'), 1944–, American psychologist. A professor at the Univ. of California at Berkeley, Chodorow has extensively pursued the question of why women desire motherhood. Using Freudian psychoanalytic theory, she has argued that young girls remain mother-identified even after the Oedipus complexOedipus complex,
Freudian term, drawn from the myth of Oedipus, designating attraction on the part of the child toward the parent of the opposite sex and rivalry and hostility toward the parent of its own.
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 symbolically separates the male child from his mother. Chodorow believes that the acceptance of the domestic ideal is the foundation of women's oppression. Her theories have been widely influential in contemporary feminist writing. Her works include The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Psychology of Gender (1978).

Chodorow, Nancy

(1944-) US sociologist whose influential work The Reproduction of Mothering (1978) explored the question: how does mothering reproduce GENDER identity? Her account, utilizing object relations theory, suggests that, unlike boys, girls do not have to give up their relationships with their mothers. Thus, for Chodorow, it is masculinity rather than femininity that can be seen as the detour in the development of identity. See also OEDIPUS COMPLEX.