One aspect of the issues raised by Nancy Chodorow in her book The Reproduction of Mothering is a variation on the nature or nurture argument, whether women mother because that is their nature or because they have been acculturated to do so. Mothering in this context has a specific meaning aside from women having children:
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 of the American Sociological Association and Sociologists for Women in Sociology. Her book, The Reproduction of Mothering, received the Jessie Bernard Award from the American Sociological Association in 1980. In that book, she challenges the traditional view that females are biologically predisposed toward the nurturing of infants and instead says that mothering fulfills a woman's psychological need for reciprocal intimacy, a need that begins during baby...