ABSTRACT
After one hundred years of psychoanalysis it seems reasonable to re-examine Sigmund Freud's version of the father's role in the light of some fundamental changes in family structures and parenting practices which have occurred since he formulated his psychosexual theories. It seems at first paradoxical that most of the followers of Freud shifted their theorizing from his focus on the father's role to the mother's function of holding, feeding, and facilitating her child. Patriarchy was then still largely uncontested, and the father as master, provider and law-maker ruled supreme, demanding obedience and expecting submission to his authority. The postmodern parenting scenario in the image of the Olympian gods affords women sexual opportunity and reproductive success in a self-determined semi-matriarchy that has liberated them from the opposite self-effacement of patriarchy. This resulted ultimately in the liberation of women, the rise of feminism, and the establishment of women's studies as a serious academic subject.
