Mothering, Gendered Embodiment, and the Perpetuation of Gender Inequality

• In Event: 512 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 09. Creating Families and Networks

Abstract

Sociologists have long considered women’s mothering to be an important site at which gender inequality is maintained. This paper synthesizes the theory of gendered organizations and Chodorow’s psychoanalytical theory to describe how the family is itself a gendered organization, and summarizes the important critiques by feminists of color that have led to a questioning and refinement of this theory. The author notes that these theories share in common an assumption that all parenting done by women is “mothering” and all parenting done by men is “fathering,” and argues that this is evidence of a need for a closer interrogation of the role of gendered embodiment in upholding the gendered organization of family and parenting. Two examples are given from the author’s research on LGBTQ parenting in order to argue that LGBTQ parents are an especially salient site for studying gendered embodiment and parenting. Because LGBTQ parents, in varying ways, disrupt the heterosexual two-parent family model upon which most family theory is based, the author calls for closer attention to these families as central to a re-centering of embodiment in theorizing gender.

Author

• Kate H. Averett, University of Texas-Austin