Chodorow

From what we read of Nancy Chodorow's book The Reproduction of  Mothering , she has discussed and argued about many of the key points in the gender roles battle our society seems to be fighting. I find a lot of what she has to say very interesting and enlightening, but I do not personally agree with all of the arguments. The main discussion of the first section of her book is about why women act the way they do about mothering, why the mothering trend continues, and what is wrong with it. It is clear that things have changed from two centuries ago. Women are no longer subdued to a man automatically, only to be used to have children, and receiving no social life or work. But her argument about women now having gall the freedoms and still not changing the mothering characteristic frustrates me. It comes off as though she is completely bashing everything about mothering. But, mothering is essential to life, I do not feel like it is a bad thing in society to create family's and live with and care for them. She identified how there are more divorces now and people are having less children, which can be viewed as women feeling there independence and wanting to express it. Also, how more children go to a daycare or nanny at an earlier age than ever before. This argument concerns me personally. I do not think it would be a good society if every woman (and man, don't forget) became independent and non-motherly. There is a very good equilibrium of mutual recognition that should be strived for, but I sometimes feel that there is an extreme amount of discussion about gender roles, similarly to race. I am not saying that there aren't problems with domestic violence and mistreatment in the house or bad relationships, but I feel like there is a message being sent that can be taken by a woman to mean never stay with a guy, never settle down, never have kids, everything is bad. I do find her point that "women come to mother because they have been mothered by women. By contrast, that men are mothered by women reduces their parenting capacities" very intriguing. It makes you think a lot about how we have been brought up and how that even though we do not realize, it can affect how we act for the rest of our lives.