Hostility toward a husband can turn a mother against the child conceived by him

Evidence

Mrs. Smith was the youngest in a family with many other children, one boy and several girls. After this boy had disappointed the ambitious hopes of the parents, they wanted to have another son, but instead my patient was born. Her mother never concealed her disappointment over this fact … the patient was saved from traumatic reactions to this attitude by two compensations—her father’s deep and tender love for her, and the maternal affection of one of her sisters … As a little girl she had reacted to her mother’s rejections with conscious hatred … Up to her pregnancy she had been able to disregard her mother problem; but this method no longer worked when she herself was about to become a mother … she gave birth one month before term to a stillborn child. Soon she was again pregnant; and her joy was now even more mixed with fear of loss than during her first pregnancy. By this time she had come into close relation with a former friend of hers who was also pregnant … The friend had a mother who was the opposite of her own … full to the brim with maternal warmth. She spread her motherly wings both over her own loving daughter and Mrs. Smith. [But] her friend had conceived a whole month before her; thus during the last month she would be left to her own fate … to the surprise of everyone concerned, her friend did not have her child at the expected time … and gave birth to a boy overdue by a whole month on the very day that Mrs. Smith expected her own delivery. The two friends now consciously adjusted themselves to each other in regard to their next pregnancies and conceived in the same month. This second time, Mrs. Smith had no fears or doubts. But during the third month of her pregnancy her friend told her that her husband had been offered a position in another town and that the family would probably move there. That very day Mrs. Smith started on a miscarriage. This woman could not manage to have a second child … After her friend had failed her she could no longer chase away the shadow of the mother she had rejected. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1441 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A rejecting mother’s unresolved shadow can subconsciously sabotage a woman’s pregnancies. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1441

Broader Connections

• A rejecting mother’s unresolved shadow can subconsciously sabotage a woman’s pregnancies. #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1441