![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() She believes that motherhood is sustained in part by patriarchy and in part by the women it uses to maintain their secondary value under the regime of patriarchy. A system of power, it is continuously at work, co-opting with other institutions to manage and dominate those it believes to be weaker and serving a specific purpose in upholding that institution’s power. Rich defines institutions in general as “the ways in which power is maintained and transferred behind the walls…the invisible understandings which guarantee that it shall reside in certain hands but not in others, that information shall be transmitted to this one but not to that one, the hidden collusions and connections with other institutions of which it is supposedly independent” ( 279-280). Motherhood as an institution is fully developed and discussed in Adrienne Rich’s powerful examination of motherhood in Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (W.W. ![]()
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