Chodorow, Nancy

Chodorow, Nancy (chōd`ərō'), 1944–, American psychologist. A professor at the Univ. of California at Berkeley, Chodorow has extensively pursued the question of why women desire motherhood. Using Freudian psychoanalytic theory, she has argued that young girls remain mother-identified even after the Oedipus complex symbolically separates the male child from his mother. Chodorow believes that the acceptance of the domestic ideal is the foundation of women's oppression. Her theories have been widely influential in contemporary feminist writing. Her works include The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Psychology of Gender (1978).