Simone de Beauvoir's career was profoundly shaped by her relationship with her parents, who encouraged her intellectual development and independence. Growing up in a middle-class family in France, she was instilled with a passion for education and critical thinking. Her father's appreciation for literature and her mother's feminist disposition influenced her later writings on existentialism and feminism. De Beauvoir's familial influences fostered her desire to challenge societal norms and advocate for women's rights, ultimately leading to her groundbreaking work, "The Second Sex," which intertwined personal experience with philosophical discourse.