| This is a great book, a sound theory, and an exceptional and gutsy
psychologist. She took on the moral development theorist, Larry
Kohlberg, and said his theory may apply to men, but men are slightly
less than 1/2 the human population and the findings don't necessarily
extrapolate to the rest of us.
No kidding.
Greatness exists in saying what I knew all along!
Moral development is a favorite topic of mine.
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| [RE .2]: Who's Ted?
[RE 14.7]: Gilligan does not attribute the "different
voices" to physiological differences. The book is devoted to
observed differences between men and women, but she makes it
clear at the outset that these differences can not be assumed to
have a physiological root.
In fact, she begins the book with a speculation that Nancy
Chodorow's hypothesis may apply: that children identify with
their same-sex parent, thus girls identify with their mothers,
who are primary caregivers - thus girls identify with values of
nurturance and maintenance of relationships.
(This hypothesis inspired me to do a literary review of the
research on fathers who are primary caregivers. There's very
little information out there, though, and no conclusions can be
made yet.)
<_Jym_>
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| I had great fun at the Ivory Tower studying with Larry Kohlberg. Carol's
research was very enlightening in the sense that she used *real* moral
dilemmas with her subjects., i.e., women experiencing abortions and their
feelings over the "rightness" or "wrongness" of their choices. Her
research indicated women skipped stage 4 of Kohlberg's 6 stages of moral
development--and Larry had been saying women seemed to "stay stuck" in
stage 3. I used to argue stage 3 was superior to stage 4...
--Ginger
|