ABSTRACT
Women's education is shaped not only by their experiences of formal schooling but also by their experiences and observations within families. Much has been written by feminists, criticizing psychoanalysis but remaining within its traditions, of the ways in which young girls learn and internalize their notions of femininity and motherhood from their very early experiences of being mothered (see especially Chodorow, 1978; Eichenbaum and Orbach, 1982). In this chapter I want to investigate the way in which the process of learning what it means to be a woman is both based upon the structural social relationships in advanced industrial societies and also plays a crucial part in their reproduction. It is not only in intense emotional relationships, particularly the mother-daughter relationship, that women learn about their future roles but also through observation and teaching within families and schools. Most important is the way in which families and schools are structured to interact in particular ways with each other and provide the bedrock of women's work: motherhood.
