Motherhood in patriarchy Essay

and so on are also affected by the patriarchal system. Therefore it looks almost as if women are imprisoned by patriarchy so they need to be freed. The imprisonment here is the created notion that if a woman is not a mother or does not become one then she is not a real woman. This kind of reasoning really restricts women from living life as they would have wanted. Making friends is sometimes scrutinized by society for mothers therefore they only maintain friends who are only necessary for the promotion of their motherhood or family.
Another agreement Rich put forward in support of Firestone was that patriarchy restricts women from training their kids the way they are supposed to be trained. After patriarchy confers certain forceful demands from the men such as male first born, twin boys and so on, the system also imposes a huge task on women to train up a child the way his father thinks he should be trained. Therefore if anything goes wrong the mother is blamed but when everything goes right, the credibility is allotted to the man only. It gets much more complicated when the child or children are boy(s). The comments that some fathers make that are very unfair include "this is my true son", "teach him how to be a real man", "Thank God it's a boy" and so on. If the child happened to be a female the system of patriarchy would create an already established 'training procedure' for her and the 'procedure' would surely include motherhood training from the scratch. However Rich urged women not to give up their biological motherhood for the sake of patriarchy but should rather fight for the redemption of that gift God has given them.
In Adrienne Rich's own publication, she stated that
"I have come to believe ... that female biology the diffuse, intense sensuality radiating out from clitoris, breasts, uterus, vagina the lunar circles of menstruation the gestation and the friction of life which can take place in the female body has far more radical implications than we have yet come to appreciate. Patriarchal thought has limited female biology to its own narrow specifications. The feminist vision has reconciled from female biology for these reasons it will, I believe, come to view our physicality as a resource, rather than a destiny. In order to live fully human life, we require not only to control of our bodies (though control is a prerequisite) we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality, our bond with the natural order, the corpeal ground of our intelligence"
The only angle where Rich opposed Firestone was that in her own opinion, Firestone was wrong to see reproductive technology as an option for liberating women from biological motherhood.
With these views discussed above it is obvious that surrogate motherhood as well was highly opposed by radical cultural feminists. However their reason for opposing it is different from the reasons associated with biological motherhood. Culturalists believe that surrogate