Abstract
In this article, the author offers a reading of the psychoanalytic concept of the Oedipal conflict, taking into account a post-structural or cultural studies' theorizing of subjectivity and the constructed nature of childhood. It is taken for granted that what are typically seen as natural gendered behaviors or natural sexual preferences are instead performative expressions of dominant discourses. Working from this stance, it is proposed that it likewise makes sense to understand the psychoanalytic perspectives on a child's gender and sexual development as tremendously instructive descriptions of how adults work through dominant discourses about normal development to bring children into being as gendered and sexualized subjects. The author argues that a major facet of parenting for most contemporary, heterosexual Western parents involves the demand that our children experience the Oedipal conflict. Using stories of the author's own parenting, she describes some of the ways that she participated in provoking outcomes that at least consciously she thought she did not intend.
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