Denied paternity and child support can permanently extinguish a woman’s desire for intimacy.

Evidence

At that period, I came to know a judge. I was happy to have a real man to love. I gave him all my love. Our relations were such that at twenty-four years old, I gave birth to a healthy boy. Today that child is ten. I have not seen the father for nine and a half years … as I found the sum of twenty-five hundred marks insufficient, and as he refused to give the child his name and denied paternity, everything was over between us. No other man has aroused my desire since. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1429

Categorization

• SHARE: The stark closing line — ‘No other man has aroused my desire since’ — after abandonment and paternity denial is a case study worth sharing with anyone working on gender and reproduction.
• XREF: connects to: Uncertainty about paternity can destroy a mother’s attachment to her child