Maternal guilt and self-pity can manifest as suffocating, destructive over-protectiveness

Evidence

But it is especially a certain masochistic form of motherhood that risks weighing heavily on the young daughter. Some women feel their femininity as an absolute curse: they wish for or accept a daughter with the bitter pleasure of finding another victim; and at the same time they feel guilt at having brought her into the world; their remorse and the pity they feel for themselves through their daughter are manifested in endless anxieties; they will never take a step away from the child; they will sleep in the same bed for fifteen or twenty years; the little girl will be destroyed by the fire of this disquieting passion. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1521

Categorization

• XREF: This is the masochistic pole of motherhood, pairing with Beauvoir’s earlier analysis of feminine masochism to show the causal structure of maternal over-investment. — connects to: Perpetual self-pity becomes an addictive identity that resists all help — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1807; Pregnancy vomiting reflects unconscious rejection of the child — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1454
• SEED: An essay angle on how maternal over-protection in literature and life runs on guilt converted into anxiety rather than love — a claimable pattern across cultures.