"The women we interviewed nearly always named out-of-school experiences as their most powerful learning experiences. The mothers usually named childbearing or child rearing. The kind of knowledge that is used in child rearing is typical of the kind of knowledge women value and schools do not. Much of it comes not from words but from action and observation, and much of it has never been translated into words, only into actions. ...
"This kind of knowledge does not necessarily lead to general propositions. Good mothering requires adaptive responding to constantly changing phenomena; it is tuned to the concrete and particular. A response that works with a particular child at a particular moment may not work with a different child or with the same child at a different moment. ... In this sense "maternal thinking" differs from scientific thinking, which considers an experimental result to be real - a fact- only if it can be replicated."
- Belenky, M.F., B.M.Clinchy, N.R. Goldberger, & J. M. Tarule. Women's Ways of Knowing: The development of self, voice, and mind. Basic Books, Inc., NY. p. 201