tant. Demeter does not usually have a strong sexual drive. She is
often a warm, affectionate, feminine person who would just as soon
cuddle as make love—a “huggy” woman rather than a sexy woman.
Many Demeter women have a puritanical attitude toward sex. For
them, sex is for procreation, not for pleasure. Some Demeter women
think of sex as what a wife provides in the context of giving or nur-
turing—she is providing what her husband needs. And many De-
meter women keep a “guilty” secret to themselves—for them, the
most sensual physical act is breastfeeding their infants, not making
love to their husbands.
MARRIAGE
For a Demeter woman, marriage in itself is not an overriding pri-
ority, as it is for a Hera woman. Most Demeter women want to get
married mainly in order to have children. Unless she has Aphrodite
or Hera as active archetypes, the Demeter woman views marriage
as a simply necessary step that paves the way for children and the
best situation in which to have children.
CHILDREN
A Demeter woman feels a deep need to be a biological mother.
She wants to give birth and nurse her own child. She also may be a
loving foster mother, adoptive mother, or stepmother, but if she
cannot also have child of her own, a deep longing will go unmet
and she will feel barren. (In contrast, many Artemis or Athena wo-
men would just as soon inherit a ready-made family, by marrying
a man with children.)
Demeter women uniformly perceive themselves as good mothers
who have the best interests of their children in mind. From the
standpoint of their impact on their children, however, Demeter
women seem to be either superbly able mothers or terrible, all-con-
suming mothers.
When her adult children resent her, a Demeter woman is deeply
wounded and confused. She cannot understand why her children
treat her so badly, while other mothers have children who love and
appreciate them. She also cannot see that
Goddesses in Everywoman