Nature vs. Nurture Argument and Mothering

Women mother. In our society, as in most societies, women not only bear children. They also take primary responsibility for infant care, spend more time with infants and children than do men, and sustain primary emotional ties with infants. When biological mothers do not parent, other women, rather than men, virtually always take their place. Though fathers and other men spend varying amounts of time with infants and children, the father is rarely a child's primary parent (Chodorow 3).

Chodorow proposes an examination of mothering across generations to see how the idea is passed along and whether the assumed relationship between having children and mothering is as believed or whether it should be reconsidered.

Nancy Chodorow was born in 1944 in New York, the daughter of Marvin Chodorow, a professor of applied physics, and his wife, Leah. She was educated at Radcliffe College, attended the London School of Economics and Political Science and Harvard University, received an M.A. from Brandeis University, and a Ph.D. from the same institution in 1975. She is now teaching at Merrill College at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a member

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inly no longer hold today. . . Societies no longer need women's mothering for physical reproduction. The evolutionary-functional account does not explain why women mother today (Chodorow 28). The biological evidence has long been accepted without a proper study as to whether it explains this behavior or not: Conclusions about the biological basis of parenting in humans can only be speculative. But the evidence from animals, plus observations of human parenting, allow us to conclude that the hormonal basis of nurturance in particular is limited (Chodorow 29). Chodorow similarly considers evidence from other disciplines and other conceptions of the source of gender differences from sociological interpretations through different psychological constructs. One of the facts that emerges from her study is that whether the behavior can be fully explained or not, the fact that the behavior has become associated with women has contributed to the place women have in society and the potential they possess to change their lot: Girls and boys develop different relational capacities and senses of self as a result of growing up in a family in which women mother. These gender personalities are reinforced by differences in the identificat
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