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John Myers
Psychology, Sociology

Sara Hodges , Mentor

Early Parental Presence and Self-Other Overlap: An Empirical Examination of Chodorow’s Theory of the Reproduction of Mothering

This study, inspired by Nancy Chodorow’s (1978) theory of the reproduction of mothering, will empirically scrutinize her hypothesis that male dominant, father absent societies in which women do all or most of the parenting for children of both sexes replicate themselves by creating dissimilar atmospheres in which young girls and boys may develop their gender identities. According to Chodorow, differences in the availability of a same-sex parent result in differences in how males and females relate to other people and thus disparities in their ability to parent as adults. College students completed a battery of pen-and-paper measures designed, among other things, to reveal correlations between the level of equality in the presence of a participant’s parents during early childhood and the extent to which a participant’s self-representation overlaps with each of the participant’s parents and the person with whom the participant is closest.