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logantmartin 's review for:
The Second Sex
by Simone de Beauvoir
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
While reading this, a lot of things crossed my mind: things that were in the news, like the latest red-state abortion ban or the way Justin Trudeau says the word "feminist;" things that were happening around me, like any interaction with my boss or the men I overheard in a Chinese restaurant discussing how to keep a woman from leaving you (their conclusion was quite Beauvoirian in a way, as they determined it is not violence but rather the threat of violence that keeps her in line). But the one thing I kept returning to more than anything was my mother.
Specifically, since I finished this during the holiday season, I've been thinking about the gift I'm giving her for Christmas. Every year, this is the most important part of the holidays for me, and I've often wondered why. Her gift is always much more valuable, both financially and emotionally, than the one I give my father. And I know it's not just me; culturally, we understand that the gifts we give our dads are fairly generic: a tie, a watch, power tools, something masculine and utilitarian, whereas our moms get something they, you know, actually want. Why is that?
The easy answer is that we are raised by our mothers. This is something Beauvoir points out as a problem, and things haven't changed much since 1949. Women today are still responsible for nearly all childcare responsibilities, even when they work as many hours as their husbands. We spend more time with our mothers as children, and the impact of that is hard to overstate.
But a gift is not a reward for time spent with us as children. It's an expression of gratitude and connection, and our relationships with our mothers are colored by the fact that we spent so much time with them. We know she's nurturing, tender, and affectionate; but she's also vindictive, over-protective, quick to anger, unforgiving, and neglectful. She held power over us at a delicate time in our lives, and all too often she weaponized that power to get us to behave. She was short-sighted in administering discipline, preferring an immediate solution to the problem we were causing over the development of our consciences in the long run. It is she who is responsible for the way we turned out. Everything, from the fact that we eat too much ice cream to the terrible people we date, is all her fault.
Our fathers were much easier to understand. He was the fun one, the one who arrived back home wanting to play outside, the one whose punishments were swift and carried the air of officialdom. He never worried about a scraped knee, about us wandering off too far; he grew up in a world that was far less dangerous than the one his wife did. Men, we learn from this, are far less complicated than women.
And yet we celebrate Mother's Day with noticeably more enthusiasm than we do Father's Day. We remember Mom's birthday whereas she has to remind us of Dad's, and her Christmas gift is always better than his. Why is that?
Well, because we understand that she tried her best. She herself was raised by her mother, and she had to cope with the fact of being the weaker sex, an object in every sense of the word. Her opinion was not asked often enough. Her relationship with our father, even in the most loving and equitable context, was built around the assumption that she would bear his children, that she would help him carry on his family name. Even if she had career aspirations, as most of our mothers did, it was evident that these were of secondary importance. She was allowed to be a teacher or a nurse or even the CEO of a Fortune 500 company only after she had been a woman to the sufficient fulfillment of society's expectations.
And then she had us, and she was permitted to feel that she had control over something. Don't get it wrong, we were still our fathers' children, but she had custody of us. For once, she had responsibilities. She vowed to make us the smartest boys, the prettiest girls anyone had ever seen. We would behave ourselves, get good grades, and charm her friends with our precocity.
But, of course, every mother aspires to have the perfect children. Wanting something and knowing how to get it are two different things. When we started crying, pitching fits, drawing on walls, she was surprised; were these her kids? But she remembered that she had authority, and like any authoritarian unfamiliar with the instruments of power, she misused them. She shouted, hit us, made threats, but even worse, she cried and told us she was at her wit's end. She didn't know where she'd gone wrong, she said; she wondered what she was going to do, whether she had been fit to be a mother after all. Looking back, we realize she was somewhere between play-acting and confessing.
But we grew up. We turned out fine, just as she'd turned out fine, just as everyone always turns out fine. And every year, to prove to her and to ourselves how fine we turned out, we spend a great deal of money ensuring that our mothers get the very best Christmas gift.
Specifically, since I finished this during the holiday season, I've been thinking about the gift I'm giving her for Christmas. Every year, this is the most important part of the holidays for me, and I've often wondered why. Her gift is always much more valuable, both financially and emotionally, than the one I give my father. And I know it's not just me; culturally, we understand that the gifts we give our dads are fairly generic: a tie, a watch, power tools, something masculine and utilitarian, whereas our moms get something they, you know, actually want. Why is that?
The easy answer is that we are raised by our mothers. This is something Beauvoir points out as a problem, and things haven't changed much since 1949. Women today are still responsible for nearly all childcare responsibilities, even when they work as many hours as their husbands. We spend more time with our mothers as children, and the impact of that is hard to overstate.
But a gift is not a reward for time spent with us as children. It's an expression of gratitude and connection, and our relationships with our mothers are colored by the fact that we spent so much time with them. We know she's nurturing, tender, and affectionate; but she's also vindictive, over-protective, quick to anger, unforgiving, and neglectful. She held power over us at a delicate time in our lives, and all too often she weaponized that power to get us to behave. She was short-sighted in administering discipline, preferring an immediate solution to the problem we were causing over the development of our consciences in the long run. It is she who is responsible for the way we turned out. Everything, from the fact that we eat too much ice cream to the terrible people we date, is all her fault.
Our fathers were much easier to understand. He was the fun one, the one who arrived back home wanting to play outside, the one whose punishments were swift and carried the air of officialdom. He never worried about a scraped knee, about us wandering off too far; he grew up in a world that was far less dangerous than the one his wife did. Men, we learn from this, are far less complicated than women.
And yet we celebrate Mother's Day with noticeably more enthusiasm than we do Father's Day. We remember Mom's birthday whereas she has to remind us of Dad's, and her Christmas gift is always better than his. Why is that?
Well, because we understand that she tried her best. She herself was raised by her mother, and she had to cope with the fact of being the weaker sex, an object in every sense of the word. Her opinion was not asked often enough. Her relationship with our father, even in the most loving and equitable context, was built around the assumption that she would bear his children, that she would help him carry on his family name. Even if she had career aspirations, as most of our mothers did, it was evident that these were of secondary importance. She was allowed to be a teacher or a nurse or even the CEO of a Fortune 500 company only after she had been a woman to the sufficient fulfillment of society's expectations.
And then she had us, and she was permitted to feel that she had control over something. Don't get it wrong, we were still our fathers' children, but she had custody of us. For once, she had responsibilities. She vowed to make us the smartest boys, the prettiest girls anyone had ever seen. We would behave ourselves, get good grades, and charm her friends with our precocity.
But, of course, every mother aspires to have the perfect children. Wanting something and knowing how to get it are two different things. When we started crying, pitching fits, drawing on walls, she was surprised; were these her kids? But she remembered that she had authority, and like any authoritarian unfamiliar with the instruments of power, she misused them. She shouted, hit us, made threats, but even worse, she cried and told us she was at her wit's end. She didn't know where she'd gone wrong, she said; she wondered what she was going to do, whether she had been fit to be a mother after all. Looking back, we realize she was somewhere between play-acting and confessing.
But we grew up. We turned out fine, just as she'd turned out fine, just as everyone always turns out fine. And every year, to prove to her and to ourselves how fine we turned out, we spend a great deal of money ensuring that our mothers get the very best Christmas gift.