Authors:
  1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. S
  4. Simone de Beauvoir
  5. Children

Simone de Beauvoir Quotes about Children

All Simone de Beauvoir Quotes Adventure Age Aging Arrogance Attitude Children quotes Choices Cleaning Country Defeat Destiny Diversity Dying Earth Evil Existentialism Feelings Feminism Giving Heart Heaven Home Humanity Husband Ideology Inspiration Inspirational Justice Life Literature Loss Luck Lying Marriage Memories Old Age Oppression Past Philosophy Pleasure Reality Retirement Revolution Risk Sleep Spring Struggle Technology Time Today Victory War Weakness Work Writing
One can hardly tell women that washing up saucepans is their divine mission, [so] they are told that bringing up children is their divine mission. But the way things are in the world, bringing up children has a great

One can hardly tell women that washing up saucepans is their divine mission, [so] they are told that bringing up children is their divine mission. But the way things are in the world, bringing up children has a great deal in common with washing up saucepans.

Simone de Beauvoir
Children, Women, World
Alice Schwarzer, Simone de Beauvoir (1984). “Simone De Beauvoir Today”, Not Avail

No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.

Simone de Beauvoir
Children, Home, Choices
"Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma". Interview with Betty Friedan, The Saturday Review (pp. 12-21), June 14, 1975.

The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength -each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.

Simone de Beauvoir
Marriage, Dream, Children
"The Second Sex". Book by Simone de Beauvoir, translated by H. M. Parshley. Book 2, Part 5, Chapter 2: "The Mother", p. 522, 1972.

When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].

Simone de Beauvoir
Children, Book, Despair
Simone de Beauvoir (1971). “The woman destroyed”

What is an adult? A child blown up by age.

Simone de Beauvoir
Birthday, Time, Children
"'Une femme rompue' ('A Woman Destroyed')". Book by Simone de Beauvoir, 1967.

I'm not against mothers. I am against the ideology which expects every woman to have children, and I'm against the circumstances under which mothers have to have their children.

Simone de Beauvoir
Mother, Children, Circumstances
Alice Schwarzer, Simone de Beauvoir (1984). “Simone De Beauvoir Today”, Not Avail

Therefore the misfortune which comes to man as a result of the fact that he was a child is that his freedom was first concealed from him and that all his life he will be nostalgic for the time when he did not know it's exigencies.

Simone de Beauvoir
Children, Men, Firsts
Simone de Beauvoir (2011). “The Ethics of Ambiguity”, p.20, Open Road Media

Every time a man dies, a child dies too, and an adolescent and a young man as well; everyone weeps for the one who was dear to him.

Simone de Beauvoir
Children, Men, Young
Simone de Beauvoir (1977). “Force of Circumstance: Hard times”

It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself. It seems unfair. You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do --or don't do.

Simone de Beauvoir
Being Yourself, Children, Responsibility
Simone de Beauvoir (1968). “Les Belles Images”

I think that feminism permits women to speak among themselves, instead of simply being resentful, having personal complaints, which get them nowhere and which make them sick and ill-tempered, depressive and poison the lives of their husbands and children. It's much better to arrive at a collective consciousness of this problem, which is both a kind of therapy and the basis for a struggle.

Simone de Beauvoir
Children, Husband, Struggle
Source: www.iaphitalia.org

There was a time, in the nineteenth century, for example, when women spoke mostly about the house, children, birth, and so forth, because it was their domain. That's changing a little, now.

Simone de Beauvoir
Children, House, Littles
Source: www.iaphitalia.org

It is not mere chance that makes families speak of a child who is 'extraordinary for his age' and also of an old man who is 'extraordinary for his age'; the extraordinariness lies in their behaving like human beings when they are either not yet or no longer men.

Simone de Beauvoir
Children, Lying, Men
Simone de Beauvoir (1972). “La vieillesse”

You May Also Like: