Motherhood is glorified only when it keeps women subordinate to husbands.

Evidence

It is a mystification to maintain that woman becomes man’s equal through motherhood. Psychoanalysts have tried hard to prove that the child provides the equivalent of the penis for her: but enviable as this attribute may be, no one believes that possessing one can justify an existence or that such possession can be a supreme end in itself. There has been an enormous amount of talk about the sacred rights of women, but being a mother is not how women gained the right to vote; the unwed mother is still scorned; it is only in marriage that the mother is glorified—in other words, as long as she is subordinate to the husband. As long as he is the economic head of the family, even though it is she who cares for the children, they depend far more on him than on her. This is why, as has been seen, the mother’s relationship with her children is deeply influenced by the one she maintains with her husband. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1536

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the immodesty-panics essay and sacrifice essay: honor/sacredness ideology used to lock in hierarchy, not to elevate women. — connects to: Prevent initiatives framed Muslim women only as wives and mothers who restrain men — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us…, 569
• QUESTION: The empirical claim that unwed mothers are ‘still scorned’ and that maternity never delivered political rights is worth checking against mid-century French/cross-cultural evidence.

Broader Connections

• Prevent initiatives framed Muslim women only as wives and mothers who restrain men #complicates (0.75) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 569