Chodorow and the Real World

I thought that Chodorow's did a great job of developing her argument in her book The Reproduction of Mothering.  She went into clear explanation of the claims she made and illustrated these claims with examples.  Besides a few details I disagreed with, Chodorow's argument was pretty well-developed.  I especially appreciated her hopeful, constructive viewpoint, identifying the fatalistic fallacy that women's mothering is biological and unchangeable.  What I found glaringly inaccurate was the assumed statement that the whole book is found on explaining and changing: that women parent and men basically don't.

Now I do understand that she to an extent recognizes the generalization made in this assumption, but her argument as a whole is still shaped around explaining an idea that is fundamentally unstable.  At least in my own life, I feel that my father has parented me greatly.  While he may not cook and clean often like my mom, my dad has very intentionally nurtured me - emotionally, mentally, and morally.  The raising of myself was undoubtedly a team effort by my two parents and would be drastically different if my dad's parenting were to be removed from the picture.  And, in regards to Chodorow's assertions about the mothering trend in the past, I am sure my father would assert that he grew up in a culture where the father's role as a parent was highly valued.

While I would say that my family is unique in several ways, including some divergence from standard American gender stereotypes, I don't think that it is alone in this case.  Though I can't judge any other family without having been a part of it or a close observer, I would definitely say that I have noticed what appears to be parenting and important emotional ties between the child and the father.  Perhaps this sign of dedication to child-rearing isn't quite as prevalent as I think it is; maybe it is somewhat unique to my socioeconomic status.  Even if this were the case, however, Chodorow's societal generalizations does not allow room for such a case.  In fact, her implications of widespread absence of male parenting and unhealthy female parenting came to a glaring point in her line found towards the bottom of pg. 217 in her Afterword: "...children are better off in situations where love and relationships are not a scarce resource controlled and manipulated by one person only."  The idea that in most families love is "scarce" and "manipulated" by an apparently tyrannical and unstable mother appears to me to be rather and inaccurate - and, to be frank, insulting.

Chodorow's theory does manage apply to Toni Morrison's Beloved pretty well.  This is not because of a work-oriented, pedophobic father, however.  The problems of Denver, the younger daughter of the story, that could be explained through Chodorow's theory stem from the absolute lack of her father's presence and being isolated to only her mother and, for some of her life, her grandmother (both of which are actually unstable for unrelated, very understandable reasons).  Under these circumstances, where the absence of affection from the second parent is undeniable because he is literally not there, Chodorow's theory does perfectly.