An adolescent can experience motherhood as an assault on bodily self-possession.

Evidence

Each little child playing in the sand, I loathed him for coming out of a woman … I loathed the adults too for lording it over the children, purging them, spanking them, dressing them, shaming them in all ways: women with their soft bodies always ready to bud out with new little ones, men who looked at all this pulp of their women and children belonging to them with a satisfied and independent air. My body was mine alone, I only liked it brown, encrusted with sea salt, scratched by the rushes. It had to stay hard and sealed. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1435

Categorization

• SEED: This passage is prime material for an essay on bodily autonomy as adolescent resistance against reproductive destiny.
• XREF: connects to: Girls’ feelings about motherhood shift from possession to self-preservation in adolescence. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1434; Coerced and clandestine abortion attempts physically and psychologically scar young women. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1425

Broader Connections

• Girls’ feelings about motherhood shift from possession to self-preservation in adolescence. #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1434
• Coerced and clandestine abortion attempts physically and psychologically scar young women. #exemplifies (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1425