Oryx and Crake offers many examples of failed mother-child relationships. Jimmy's complicated relationship with his mother is developed in more depth. Her distance, depression, and distraction stem from the work she does. Like Offred's mother in The Handmaid's Tale, she stays busy working. Unlike Offred's mother (whose career is never specified), Jimmy's mother works for a large biotechnology company. Her professional status as a microbiologist, unthinkable in the patriarchal culture of Gilead, should make a progressive and positive statement about women's achievement of equality. But his job ultimately threatens his mental health. As a result, she abandons her only child. Readers discover through Jimmy the differences between his world and that of the early 21st century. Most of the changes are technological. Scientists create food substitutes, hybrid animals, and life forms used solely to generate transplanted tissue. There are also several examples of scientific progress applied to human reproduction; wealthy couples can create children with bespoke specifications. Even more than in Gilead, children are described as the result of reproduction. Children born in the time of the novel are largely left alone to care for their parents themselves; no positive mother or motherly figure helps the main characters. These examples illustrate the shortcomings of this society of the future. Early on, Jimmy remembers his strained relationship with his mother. When he was a child, she expected him to be bright and understand his work. As a little boy, he wanted unconditional love that she couldn't always provide. It seems clear that Jimmy's mother experienced some of the "undeniable anger" that Adrienne Rich discovers and that connects all mothers (24). His mother's job... middle of paper ...... just around the corner. Works cited1. Marguerite Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1985. Print.2. ---. Oryx and Crake. New York: Anchor Books, 2003. Print.3. ---. “Important moments in my mother’s life.” Snapshots: 20th-century mother-daughter fiction. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates and Janet Berliner. Boston: David R. Godine, 2000. 24-38. Print.4. ---. The year of the flood. New York: Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, 2009. Print.5. Nancy Chodorow. The reproduction of motherhood: psychoanalysis and sociology of gender. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Print.6. Nancy Chodorow and Susan Contratto. “The fantasy of the perfect mother.” Feminism and psychoanalytic theory. New Haven: Yale UP, 1989. 79-98. Google Books. Internet. March 5, 2011.7. Adria Schwartz. “Remove nature from motherhood. » Basin, Honey and Kaplan240-255. Print.