The mother-child bond is socially constructed, not natural law.
Evidence
If too often today a woman has a hard time reconciling the interests of her children with a profession that demands long hours away from home and all her strength, it is because, on the one hand, woman’s work is still too often a kind of slavery; on the other hand, no effort has been made to ensure children’s health, care, and education outside the home. This is social neglect: but it is a sophism to justify it by pretending that a law was written in heaven or in the bowels of the earth that requires that the mother and child belong to each other exclusively; this mutual belonging in reality only constitutes a double and harmful oppression. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1535
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: This dense passage collapses the nature/culture dichotomy with total clarity: what looks like natural belonging is exposed as a ‘sophism’ masking ‘double and harmful oppression’ — paradigm-level for the existentialist-feminist reading.
- XREF: connects to: The maternal obligation is a social construct, not a natural dictate — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1533; Womanhood is socially constructed, not biologically destined — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 676; Maternal vocation is socially imposed, not instinctually innate — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 693 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- The maternal obligation is a social construct, not a natural dictate
#corroborates(0.95) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1533 - Maternal vocation is socially imposed, not instinctually innate
#corroborates(0.95) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 693 - Womanhood is socially constructed, not biologically destined
#expands(0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 676 - Motherhood is framed as a sacred obligation rather than a natural need
#expands(0.80) - Human nature is the totality of historically determined social relations, not a fixed essence.
#expands(0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 617 - The desire for freedom from social conventions is not innate but culturally constructed.
#expands(0.75) - Gender is a social power structure rather than a genetic trait.
#expands(0.72)