Nancy Chodorow, professor emerita of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, passed away on October 14. She was 81 years old.
A graduate of Radcliffe College (now part of Harvard University), Dr. Chodorow earned her Ph.D. in sociology from Brandeis University in Massachusetts. While there, she was exposed to extensive research on mother-son relationships, leading her to question why there was little scholarship on mother-daughter relationships. This topic was the center of Dr. Chodorow’s doctoral dissertation, which was later published as her first book, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (University of California Press, 1978). The monograph would become one of the most influential works in the field of psychoanalytic feminism.
Throughout her career, Dr. Chodorow continued her scholarship on how mothering shapes psychological development and social roles. In addition to The Reproduction of Mothering, she was the author of five other books on feminist and gender theories.
Dr. Chodorow joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1986 as a member of the sociology department. She went on to play a key role in founding the university’s gender and women’s studies department. During her tenure, she also practiced as a psychoanalyst and faculty member with the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. After her retirement, she relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she taught at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, as well as Harvard Medical School.