Try this exercise that we did in my body image class this week: What is the first image that comes to mind when you hear the word "motherhood" or "pregnancy?" Well, most people thought of Madonna, a mother holdign a baby, women in maternity clothes...I could not visualize an image. Although I canno t predict how my life will turn out, I cannot even imagine to see myself with a child. Changing its diaper. Feeding it. "Mothering it." Most of my classmates from high school ( i went to a small jewish orthodox high school) are married and some are expecting...At 22 years of age, I cannot imagine myself in the "mother role". And some enter that role at 15 years of age.
My criticism of Chodorow's work involves the universal inclusiion of everyone with X X chromosomes into the construct of motherhood.She claims that women develop capacities for motherhood thru their oedipal expeirnece. Women need to idetify with their own mother, and the child completes the relational triangle. Motherhood defines women , and completes them.
Society perpetuates this universality of motherhood. Women who decide to go to graduate school,work , etc. are simply DELAYING starting a family. Women who are infertile feel unworthy ...they cannot bear children and give a baby to their husband. Lesbian couples also choose to adopt children or conceieve.
What would Chodorow say about women who simply do not have that "maternal drive"? Those women , heaven forbid who do not want children? Eventhose who cannot have children have alternate ways...We view the woman who does not have children with shame, pity, or coldly if they say they do not want them. Woemn are discriminated against because they are "perpetually pregnant." they have a womb and a uterus, thus they may become pregnant at any time, will ask for maternity leave, and cannto wrok in some more dangerous factories beause of fetal damge from chemicals.... Motherhood, I feel is a miracle of nature, an amazing phenomenom where a little person made up of you and your lover grows inside you. It is a learned institution. You BECOME a mother when you give birth..
-Hydi Dickstein