ced with love, self-sacrifice, protection, compassion, and generally virtues that are necessary for mothering. Held spells it out for us: "(Traditionally) Women have had fewer occasions to experience for themselves the moral problems of governing, leading, exercising power over others (except children)... Men, on the other hand, have had fewer occasions to experience the moral problems of family life and the relations between adults and children." (Ethics - Theory and Contemporary Issues; By Barbara MacKinnon; Ed. 2; Pub. Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998) Another theory is founded on the psychosexual development in childhood and adolescence. Latest by the time of puberty, males experience a separation from their mothers as they come to comprehend themselves as being different from their mothers, thereby acquiring a sense of individuality and autonomy. I think that the latter two trades may be inforced by the fact that their father, at that point, may not simply replace the care and nurturing of the mother. At the same stage of development, females establish a new relation with their mother, reinforcing the existing one as they discover that they are becoming what their mother is--a woman. While the socio-cultural theory is based on gender, the biological theory is based on sex. In the center of this theory is the reproductive capacity of women, and its lack in men. It proposes that the difference in moral perspective springs from experiences as pregnancy, labor and childbirth, and women's feeling of dependency and contingency resulting from reproductive practice. "Women feel themselves participating in species life at its very primitive level... Caring and nurturing are said to spring naturally from the intimate and sympathetic relation to the child." (Ibid.) All three theories are debatable and each one might, in fact, be hard to prove wrong as their premises are solid. However, the strength of the socio-cultural is particularly evid...
