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What Simone de Beauvoir Got – And Didn’t Get – About Motherhood

Nura Hossainzadeh argues that motherhood is both physical and transcendent.

It is often said that becoming a parent is a profound transition. This transition feels different to everyone, since it occurs within the particular context of each person’s life. For me, it felt like a jolt from the abstract to the concrete; from the philosophical to the everyday; from the freedom to speculate, to the need to make decisions. When I had my first child, I was teaching political theory at Princeton, and when I had my second, I was teaching in a ‘great books’ program at Stanford. So I moved abruptly from spending my days thinking about the big ideas – justice, freedom, Islamic theories of government, love in Christian mystic writings, love in medieval Italian poetry – to dwelling in the more physical dimensions of life: changing diapers at what often felt like 1,000 times a day; experiencing the inevitable lack of sleep that comes with having a newborn; and asking my body to nourish this growing lifeform with breastmilk.

In the midst of being caught (as it often felt) in the physical components of motherhood, the words of the twentieth century French existentialist and feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir have often come back to me. She writes about both womanhood and motherhood in The Second Sex (1949), which I taught at Stanford. Beauvoir, who was never a mother herself, except insofar as she once adopted a protégé who was in her thirties, often has unflattering things to say about motherhood, and she looks down on the physical nature of it. Experiencing motherhood has helped me to understand Beauvoir’s concerns; but it has also helped me to see where her arguments fall short – where she doesn’t quite grasp how the parts of motherhood that seem simply to be physical toil and sacrifice can be something greater. Those parts of motherhood that are deeply physical–such as breastfeeding and pregnancy itself–lead to spiritual growth precisely because of, and through, their physical nature.

Simone de Beauvoir by Gail Campbell

Breastfeeding is Authentic

Beauvoir draws on the existentialist distinction between ‘transcendence’ and ‘immanence’ to depict motherhood. A person flourishes most fully, she says, when they do things that facilitate their transcendence. This means, freely engaging in projects of their own choosing and creation. In this way, they ‘expand’ their existence. On the other hand, immanence, the opposite of transcendence, involves lapsing into doing things that maintain instead of expand life, oriented by the ‘same-olds’ of life: same-old aims, same-old principles that one never questions or elaborates, and, on a more mundane level, same-old tasks that one must perform in order to stay alive, or to keep others alive. Simply keeping one’s baby alive – an end dictated by nature – is certainly not a project of our own creation. The end the mother works for is mere existence (or survival), and not the expansion of existence. So to Beauvoir’s mind, motherhood seems to be associated with a most basic form of immanence – with fulfilling tasks that are necessary to keeping one’s child (and, from a broader perspective, the species more generally) physically alive.

The emphasis for Beauvoir is on the physical, even animalistic, dimensions of motherhood. Even at puberty, she says, a woman’s body seems ‘possessed by outside forces’ that aim at perpetuating the species. Various physical processes – menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding – are integral to the broader process by which the human species is maintained. In these processes, the woman does not ‘affirm’ herself in an existentialist manner – she does not create anything new and individual. Rather, she participates in the maintenance of existence, and does not transcend basic existence to create – to engage in projects that bear the mark of her individual being. “From puberty to menopause,” writes Beauvoir, “she is the principal site of a story that takes place in her and does not concern her personally.” She says of breastfeeding, for example, that it is “an exhausting servitude… the breastfeeder feeds the newborn to the detriment of her own strength.”

This is not wrong. Breastfeeding can be incredibly taxing. But Beauvoir focuses exclusively on the difficulties of breastfeeding, which prevent the woman from acting freely in the world, without speaking of the ways that breastfeeding itself can be freeing. For instance, what if, through the intimacy of breastfeeding, one is able to comprehend feelings one has not experienced before?

It is physically tiring to breastfeed. It’s tiring for the body to make the milk, and it’s tiring to breastfeed throughout the day and often at night. But the sense of calm that washes over a baby’s body when he is breastfeeding is a sight to be seen. I have never seen such calm elsewhere. So breastfeeding teaches me what calmness is, both by allowing me to witness it on his face, and by allowing me to experience it as a result of giving it to him. Both mother and baby rest in this state of calm together. And if the mother is experiencing this mental, perhaps spiritual, state through the experience of breastfeeding, can it be said to be just ‘animal’? As she engages in this very physical act, isn’t the mother also transcending the physical?

Beauvoir might reply that breastfeeding isn’t a new and individual ‘project’, and therefore isn’t a source of transcendence. Surely women and babies have felt calm during breastfeeding throughout time; what’s new? . We don’t put anything unique and individual in the world by breastfeeding. However, the feeling of calm inaugurated by breastfeeding is unique insofar as it is experienced by this particular woman, and this particular baby; a bed of repose juxtaposed against the worries of their particular lives. Calmness doesn’t everywhere mean the same thing or have the same significance; values, experiences and feelings exist in contexts. Martin Luther King Jr. taught the importance of sympathy, with reference to African Americans in America in the middle of the 20th century. While sympathy for the oppressed is a perennial value, and sympathy is a perennial feeling, his promotion of sympathy in his context surely constituted a unique and worthwhile “project.” A mother’s application of “calm” to her context and her life is also a unique and worthwhile project.

Of course, women who never become mothers may achieve equally meaningful and uplifted states of being through other experiences – one need not be a mother to understand calmness. But Beauvoir does not see breastfeeding even as one potential path to gaining transcendent insight. Certainly it is a difficult physical, even to a degree animal, act that consumes the time and energy of the mother like few others in life, but it has significant payoff in that, precisely because it is a physical act, it helps both mother and child enter a new state of being.

This isn’t just an ode to breastfeeding. Mothers who do not breastfeed also experience difficulty feeding their babies – preparing bottles, responding to hungry cries, worrying about how much they’ve eaten – and also witness the transformative calmness of a fully fed baby.

Pregnant Pause For Thought

Pregnancy, like breastfeeding, can, in and through being a physical experience, also be a catalyst for the mother’s transformation, or in Beauvoir’s word, transcendence.

In the chapter of The Second Sex titled ‘The Mother’, Beauvoir, in brief moments, seems to recognize that pregnancy is profound. She says that it is an act of creation that makes a women feel “as vast as the world” – but at the same time, “this very richness annihilates her.” So, Beauvoir seems to see pregnancy as a profound spiritual experience but a fleeting one, as pregnancy does not allow a woman to dwell indefinitely in this feeling. Ultimately, the pregnant woman sinks into the sphere of the physical and animal: she is ‘annihilated’ as an individual by the burden she bears for the species.

“The mother… does not really make the child,” Beauvoir further writes, “it makes itself within her, her flesh engenders flesh only.” The point seems to be that the fetus is not shaped purposefully by a mother seeking to promote a value by creating him. Rather, his creation happens without the design and creativity of the woman: the pregnant mother “engenders [the child] in the generality of his body”. She doesn’t create the particular person the child will go on to be, or the particular values that the child will promote and embody. She doesn’t create the kind man, the just woman, the doctor, the teacher. Specifically, she doesn’t promote any particular values that are defined by her individually, through the uniqueness of her being, by having a baby. And for Beauvoir, creation has to bear the mark of the individual to be meaningful, authentic, transcendent.

When she says that pregnancy makes a woman feel as ‘vast as the world’, Beauvoir seems almost to recognize that a woman can be excited by the fact that she carries life within her. However, in Beauvoir’s view, this feeling is misplaced; a woman would do well not to mistake the natural biological process that unfolds within her as having anything to do with her. Yet a mother does participate in the creation of a person who will articulate and act upon values in the world: who will choose to be kind or just, who will choose to be a doctor or a teacher. She is not simply the vehicle for the unfolding of a purely biological phenomenon. And this is where pregnancy, like breastfeeding, can become a source of fulfillment for her. When life is recognized for the profound phenomenon that it is, for the immense potential that it has, for its capacity to promote values, the feeling of the slow growth of life within her can be fulfilling. And when the woman perceives the creation of life as more than just a simple animal phenomenon, the physical sensations that go along with pregnancy become more meaningful, too. She actively observes and feels the slow creation of life inside her, and recognizes the tremendous potential this life has, feeling pleasure through being a witness of, and a vessel for, this slow growth. So with pleasure she senses the first stirrings of movement at the beginning of her pregnancy, and more exuberant movements later on: movement that is significant not only because it indicates the presence of physical life, but because this very being will later move in the world in ways that will change it, hopefully for the better. These legs, this mouth, these hands – all will continue to move outside the womb in meaningful ways. When a woman contemplates the humanity of her fetus, and the fact that her baby will become a force in the world that creates value, pregnancy becomes profound. Movement and growth become more than just physical. And this all leads her to experience a fulfilled state of being. A physical experience leads to a non-physical, spiritual transformation.

Just as breastfeeding teaches a woman about calm, and allows her to feel a sense of calm, so pregnancy teachers her about satisfaction, and allows her to feel it from observing and participating in the creation of human life, and having a closer-than-front-row seat to the miracle of growth of a now human being.

Mother with Child by Mikuláš Galanda, 1932

Beauvoir’s Insights

At this point I would like to pause to ask this: If Beauvoir missed so much about the ethical, spiritual, and emotional benefits of pregnancy and breastfeeding, why should a mother read her writings at all? Are her words simply a foil against which we celebrate the beauty of motherhood?

No. Even if she did not fully comprehend the ways in which motherhood is transformational, Beauvoir teaches us a great deal about motherhood, and about how mothers should be treated.

The truth is that motherhood, even while freeing, is, indisputably, also constraining. It is not as constraining as Beauvoir says it is, but it is constraining. So she is correct to draw our attention to the physical investment involved in motherhood. Even while breastfeeding teaches us what calmness is, it also draws us back to our babies, or to a pump, every few hours. Skip feedings, and the woman feels engorged, and eventually, loses her supply. It can feel like being on a leash. And pregnancy teaches us about the miracle of life and about satisfaction, but it also is physically impairing. Try teaching a class while feeling nauseous during the first trimester – as I did; or try writing an article, as I also did, while feeling more tired than you’ve ever been in your life, during the last trimester. Like so many things in life, motherhood is a mixed bag – you’re weighed down in some moments, uplifted in others.

Beauvoir famously writes that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” She argues that society defines womanhood in ways that benefit men – and then she shuts down debate by claiming that this definition simply captures who a woman is naturally. But throughout her writings, Beauvoir also reminds us of the ways in which women are born as women, and how constraining, and difficult, it can be to be a woman physically, even before we become mothers. She comprehends the vast extent of our physical investment when we do decide to become mothers. In short, she reminds us that in order to understand who is a woman, we must also understand, in Nancy Bauer’s words, “the experience of having a body with sexed features and not just the experience of having one’s society impose gender norms on that body” (‘Simone de Beauvoir on Motherhood and Destiny’, 2017).

Political Implications

One problem is that, too often, people (men in particular) don’t understand this ‘experience of having a body with sexed features’ in all its beauty and all its difficulty, the way Beauvoir understood it. This is reflected politically in maternity leave policies around the world.

The International Labor Organization (ILO), a UN agency that sets standards for fair labor practices, recommends that new mothers be guaranteed at least 14 weeks of paid leave. According to a recent ILO recent report, 120 countries meet or exceed this standard. However, 64 countries fall below it – meaning that in one in three countries around the world women do not have the ability to take the recommended time off. But even meeting the ILO standards may not be enough for many women. First, these 14 weeks are rarely fully paid; the ILO stipulates that salary during maternity leave be at least two-thirds of a woman’s regular salary. And for many women, even 14 weeks may not be an adequate length of time, given the compounded burdens of physically recovering from childbirth, sleep deprivation, breastfeeding, and regaining psychological well-being in a new and difficult reality (postpartum depression affects women within a year of childbirth). Moreover, the World Health Organization recommends that infants be breastfed for at least 6 months. Breastfeeding is notoriously difficult once a woman goes back to work, so going back after 14 weeks might jeopardize a mother’s ability to make it to the 6-month mark.

If you’re American it’s even worse. While many industrialized nations have generous maternity leave policies, the United States is an outlier: it is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee paid parental leave for its citizens.

While even women who are employed full time in stable careers don’t have access to adequate maternity leave benefits in the US, the problem is especially acute for those who work in temporary or ‘gig’ positions. When I got pregnant with my second baby, I was teaching at Stanford in a four-year position. I asked the administration to put the four-year clock on ‘pause’ so that I could have a position to return to when my baby was a little older, instead of returning to work just months before my term ended, which would have put me in the impossible position of looking for a new position and tending to a very young baby. But although the teaching staff and faculty in my program supported this plan, the higher-ups in the administration said that the clock must keep ticking, even though I was not asking to be paid in the meantime. This shows that there’s no institutional waiting on a new mother; no giving her time to regain her energy after her sacrifices to the species as Beauvoir would say; no giving her time to press the pause button on life and gain transcendent insight from moments spent with her baby, as I would add.

Conclusions

Simone de Beauvoir’s illumination of the ways in which the female body constrains – or, in her word, ‘annihilates’ women – underscores the need for laws that level the playing field for mothers in the workforce. It also underscores the need for a cultural change, so that individuals who aren’t mothers themselves understand the physical struggle of motherhood and so exhibit more sympathy toward expectant and new mothers. A lack of this sympathy, coupled with a narrow concern with financial gain, often leads to discrimination against women in the workforce, even when employers do provide generous maternity leave on paper. A recent lawsuit against Google, for example, alleges that the company fired women who were on maternity leave.

Women need, and deserve, the option to take a generous maternity leave. Beauvoir would have understood that. Our lawmakers, and anyone who cares about supporting mothers, should read her in order to better understand the tremendous physical sacrifice that goes along with becoming a mother. What Beauvoir will not tell them, however, is how this physical sacrifice can be a source of fulfillment. While she did perceive how the individual female body is swallowed up into the quest of the species simply to stay alive, she did not understand that we are never simply animals even when fulfilling this instinct. But motherhood is in fact a Beauvoirian ‘project’ that we may actively take on even as our bodies act as bodies do, and even through our bodies acting as bodies do.

Our attentiveness to our physical experiences as mothers can uplift us spiritually. We feel the physical drain of breastfeeding, we prepare and wash bottles hundreds of times over; but at the same time, we witness and comprehend the calm that we’re able to create by feeding our babies. We feel the physical drain of pregnancy, but at the same time, we feel the first signs of movement, contemplate the significance of this movement, and feel satisfaction that we’re helping to create movement in the world. We must come to a place culturally where we understand both the burden, and the meaning and significance, of motherhood, so that we give mothers both the support and the respect that they deserve.

Nura Hossainzadeh earned her PhD in Political Philosophy from UC Berkeley, and is a Research Fellow in the Department of Political Science at San Francisco State Uni.