Environment/Mother
Psychological Ecology, Gender, and Backlash, 1940-1990
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3553265 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susanne Schmidt (0000-0002-6200-4539), Susanne I Schmidt (0000-0003-0051-6480, University of Basel, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 116 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 277-301 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Isis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/735718 |
| OpenAlex | W4410641328 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 24 |
This paper historicizes the connection between gender and environment by investigating constructions of “feminine environmentality”: depictions of women as environment, surrounding, and background that were promoted by a broad and influential body of psychological discourse throughout the twentieth century. It reads models of child development and the male life course against the grain, as guidelines for care work and reproductive labor, to show how psychologically oriented researchers, practitioners, and policymakers instructed women to provide, even embody, optimal conditions for children’s growth and men’s self-actualization. Above all, the paper draws attention to the normative implications of feminine environmentality, demonstrating how this was used as a tool of antifeminist backlash. In addition to challenging received understandings of the British pediatrician analyst Donald Winnicott and US émigré psychoanalyst Erik Erikson as proto-feminist, the paper also identifies a discourse of racial difference in maternal capacities, which has received little attention. It shows how praise of Black women’s maternal aptitude contributed to rationalizing racial discrepancies in maternal health care
Backlash · Biology · Sociology · Ecology · Engineering · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Medical History and Research · Psychology
Nature's body
Midlife Crisis
In a Different Voice
Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle
The Distance Cure
Disfigured Images
Identity
Gender and Environmental History
Winnicott, Participation and Gender
The Anti‐Feminist Reconstruction of the Midlife Crisis
Where organisms meet the environment
Reconstructing Motherhood
Mothers and Medicine
Sex differences in the play configurations of preadolescents
Cold War Freud
Social Violence and Conservative Social Psychology
Earth Mother Myths and Other Ecofeminist Fables
Mother, the Invention of Necessity
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |