Thursday, June 19, 2014

At the end of chapter 6 in Volume II, titled The Mother, Beauvoir describes a good mother as one who puts her child first. How do some of the...

You have asked for some examples of mothers who failed to put their children first and why. Beauvoir argues that to be a good mother and to genuinely put the needs of her child first, a woman needs to have an independent sense of her own self-worth. Not all mothers are good mothers as many use their children to fulfill their own needs. As Beauvoir explains:



Mystification begins when the religion of Motherhood proclaims that all mothers are exemplary. For maternal devotion can be experienced in perfect authenticity; but in fact, this is rarely the case. Ordinarily, maternity is a strange compromise of narcissism, altruism, dream, sincerity, bad faith, devotion, and cynicism. (632)



Some examples of mothers who fall short, a falling short that derives from the woman's sense of inferiority to men, are the following:


Beauvoir cites Violette LeDuc's In the Prison of Her Skin, in which a woman beats her daughter because she, the mother, was humiliated and angered when abandoned by her seducer.


Beauvoir cites psychologist Helene Deutsch's story of a woman, Mrs. Mazzetti, who, feeling thwarted herself, both pushed her children too hard and monitored her children too strictly, oscillating between love and hostility, until they all rebelled.


In a third instance, Beauvoir cites Freud as she describes the masochistic mother finding fulfillment through a son that she wants to be "hers." This leads her to encourage his dependence by encouraging him to be selfish, shy, sedentary and greedy. With a daughter, this type of mother will project all her doubts about her self-worth onto the girl under her control. Sometimes she will heap the worst chores on this child or strike her because of her own-self hatred and/or hatred and resentment of her husband.


In the end, a woman needs to feel autonomous and good about herself to be a good mother. It is unhealthy for children to be "the full horizon" of a woman's expectations: she needs a fulfilling life of her own, says Beauvoir.

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