A woman’s acceptance of conception mirrors her relations with her mother and husband.

Evidence

Birth control and legal abortion would allow women to control their pregnancies freely. In fact, what decides woman’s fecundity is in part a considered desire and in part chance. As long as artificial insemination is not widely practiced, a woman might desire to become pregnant but be unable to—because either she does not have relations with men, or her husband is sterile, or she is unable to conceive. And, on the other hand, she is often forced to give birth against her will. Pregnancy and motherhood are experienced in very different ways depending on whether they take place in revolt, resignation, satisfaction, or enthusiasm. One must keep in mind that the decisions and feelings the young mother expresses do not always correspond to her deep desires. An unwed mother can be overwhelmed in material terms by the burden suddenly imposed on her, be openly distressed by it, and yet find in the child the satisfaction of secretly harbored dreams; inversely, a young married woman who joyfully and proudly welcomes her pregnancy can fear it in silence, hate it with obsessions, fantasies, and infantile memories that she herself refuses to recognize. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1433 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

This presupposes humble renunciation on her end; but she is rewarded because guided and protected by male force, she will escape original abandonment; she will become necessary. Queen of her hive, tranquilly resting on herself within her domain, but carried by man’s mediation through the universe and limitless time, wife, mother, and mistress of the house, woman finds in marriage both the force to live and life’s meaning. We must see how this ideal is expressed in reality. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1196 (#expands, via linked claim)

Here, then, is why woman has a double and deceptive image: she is everything he craves and everything he does not attain. She is the wise mediator between auspicious Nature and man; and she is the temptation of Nature, untamed against all reason. She is the carnal embodiment of all moral values and their opposites, from good to bad; she is the stuff of action and its obstacle, man’s grasp on the world and his failure; as such she is the source of all man’s reflection on his existence and all expression he can give of it; however, she works to divert him from himself, to make him sink into silence and death. As his servant and companion, man expects her also to be his public and his judge, to confirm him in his being; but she opposes him with her indifference, even with her mockery and her laughter. He projects onto her what he desires and fears, what he loves and what he hates. And if it is difficult to say anything about her, it is because man seeks himself entirely in her and because she is All. But she is All in that which is inessential: she is wholly the Other. And as other she is also other than herself, other than what is expected of her. Being all, she is never exactly this that she should be; she is everlasting disappointment, the very disappointment of existence that never successfully attains or reconciles itself with the totality of existents. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 413 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A wife’s childhood-formed core resists a husband’s attempts to reshape her — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1302; Woman’s contradictory image stems from being man’s inessential Other — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 413; Woman’s defining situation is being forced to assume herself as Other — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 64 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Expressed attitudes toward pregnancy mask women’s contradictory and repressed inner feelings. #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1433
• Woman’s contradictory image stems from being man’s inessential Other #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 413
• Woman’s defining situation is being forced to assume herself as Other #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 64
• Marriage makes woman contingent while man mediates her to the universe #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1196