{ "id": "epwpwn68yt", "slug": "mother", "title": "Mother", "updated": "2026-10-21", "topic_path": [ { "id": "life", "label": "Life and health", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/life" }, { "id": "life.health", "label": "Human health and medicine", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/life.health" }, { "id": "life.health.wellbeing", "label": "Nutrition and personal wellbeing", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/life.health.wellbeing" }, { "id": "life.health.wellbeing.reproductive-wellbeing", "label": "Reproductive wellbeing", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/life.health.wellbeing.reproductive-wellbeing" }, { "id": "life.health.wellbeing.contraception.effectiveness-safety", "label": "Contraception effectiveness, safety, and comparisons", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/life.health.wellbeing.contraception.effectiveness-safety" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.nongeo.nodate.life.health.wellbeing.reproductive-wellbeing", "label": "Non-geographic · Not dated: Reproductive wellbeing", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.nongeo.nodate.life.health.wellbeing.reproductive-wellbeing", "path": [ { "id": "geo.nongeo", "label": "Non-geographic", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.nongeo" }, { "id": "geo.nongeo.nodate", "label": "Non-geographic · Not dated", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.nongeo.nodate" }, { "id": "geo.nongeo.nodate.life", "label": "Life and health", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.nongeo.nodate.life" }, { "id": "geo.nongeo.nodate.life.health", "label": "Human health and medicine", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.nongeo.nodate.life.health" }, { "id": "geo.nongeo.nodate.life.health.wellbeing", "label": "Nutrition and personal wellbeing", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.nongeo.nodate.life.health.wellbeing" }, { "id": "geo.nongeo.nodate.life.health.wellbeing.reproductive-wellbeing", "label": "Reproductive wellbeing", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.nongeo.nodate.life.health.wellbeing.reproductive-wellbeing" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Mother: a female parent (also a religious superior, a source, or a fermentation starter). Motherhood is a universal social status whose meaning, norms, and practices vary across cultures, history, and biology.", "snippet": "Mother: a female parent (also a religious superior, a source, or a fermentation starter). Motherhood is a universal social status whose meaning, norms, and practices vary across cultures, history, and biology.", "node": "life.health.wellbeing.contraception.effectiveness-safety", "markdown": "# Mother\n\nA **mother** is a female parent: a woman who has borne, or who raises and nurtures, a child. The word also carries extended senses, including a woman in authority such as the superior of a religious community, a source or origin (as in \"necessity is the mother of invention\"), and, in fermentation, the gelatinous mass of bacteria and yeast used as a starter for vinegar and kombucha.[1](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mother) Beyond the dictionary sense, motherhood is a status recognized in all societies and one that most women hold, and scholars across anthropology, sociology, history, and communication studies treat it as both a set of embodied experiences and a social institution shaped by culture, economics, and law.[2](https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412979276.n133) • [3](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61798/chapter-abstract/546191096)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Core definition | A female parent; the verb \"to mother\" means to give birth to or to care for and protect like a mother[1](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mother) |\n| Social reach | Motherhood is an important status recognized in all societies and a position most women hold; in many cultures it is a primary means of increasing a woman's social status[2](https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412979276.n133) |\n| Biology and culture | Childbirth has a referent in biology, but the meaning and practice of motherhood are mediated through culture, with no universal beliefs or practices[2](https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412979276.n133) |\n| Intensive mothering | Sharon Hays's 1996 book *The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood* described an ideology calling on mothers to provide time-intensive, expensive, expert-informed care[4](https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/soc4.13095) |\n| Contemporary norms | A review of 115 papers from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) countries (2001–2021) identified five norms: the present, future-oriented, working, public, and happy mother[5](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jftr.12488) |\n| Maternal health | About 287,000 women died during or following pregnancy and childbirth in 2020, and about 140 million births take place each year[6](https://www.who.int/health-topics/maternal-health) |\n| Animal context | Only in mammals is mothering so rich in behavioral complexity and protracted in length; hormonal, sensory, and neural factors of pregnancy, parturition, and lactation underpin maternal behavior[7](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4546863/) |\n\n## Biology of maternal care\n\nMaternal care has a biological substrate that scholarship on mammals has mapped in detail. Female mammals lactate, and this capacity, together with high maternal motivation, usually means the mother takes on the care of offspring, whose survival and development depend on it.[7](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4546863/) Decades of research on laboratory rats and sheep show that the endocrine, sensory, reward-related, emotional, and neural factors intrinsic to pregnancy, parturition, and lactation are also fundamental for the display of mothering behaviors.[7](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4546863/) In sheep, maternal care quickly becomes exclusive: the mother accepts only the familiar lamb at the teats and often violently rejects an alien lamb that tries to suckle.[7](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4546863/)\n\nThe picture is not one of a fixed female instinct. Among mammals, only about one in ten species exhibit direct male care, but where females are freed from pregnancy and lactation, males can become heavily invested; among birds, roughly 90% of couples share care, and among fish, single fathers do the nursing in almost two thirds of species.[8](https://time.com/6330821/maternal-instinct-myth-animal-kingdom-essay/) Neurobiological work in rodents indicates that several brain regions and circuits regulating parental care are shared by both sexes, though some components of what researchers call the maternal brain appear innate and sex-specific.[9](https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-neuro-072116-031447) In humans, experience matters more: the emphasis on experiential factors in human parenting does not preclude a biology for these behaviors, but permits greater environmental contributions to the process.[7](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4546863/)\n\n## Motherhood as a cultural institution\n\nWhile mothering is often assumed to be a natural role determined by biology, it develops in specific social contexts and in conjunction with networks of other relationships, duties, and activities.[2](https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412979276.n133) The ethnographic record shows extensive diversity from conception to childcare, and even within a single society motherhood varies by race, class, and ethnicity.[2](https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412979276.n133) Cultures differ in how they understand conception itself: the Trobriand Islanders, a Pacific people, believe a fetus forms from maternal blood combined with the spirit of an ancestor on the matrilineal line who comes back from Tuma, and they assign fathers no meaningful part in it.[2](https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412979276.n133) [Childbirth](https://www.edgepedia.org/childbirth) practices differ too; in Japan, women are expected to be silent as they give birth, with loud expressions of pain considered shameful.[2](https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412979276.n133) In the West, assisted reproduction has made defining motherhood more difficult: while conception used to require a single man and a single woman, it can now directly involve up to five people: the social parents, an egg donor, a sperm donor, and a gestational surrogate.[2](https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412979276.n133)\n\nCritical scholars treat motherhood as more than an individual role. In the words of one Oxford Research Encyclopedia review, motherhood is both a complex set of experiences individuals embody and a symbolic social institution used to regulate human behavior through cultural norms and social scripts that are discursively struggled over across history; it is embedded in cultural, economic, and legal systems and is central to how the domestic and public spheres are defined.[3](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61798/chapter-abstract/546191096) Black feminist, liberal feminist, radical feminist, Marxist, queer, postcolonial, and decolonial theories are all mobilized to analyze motherhood as an experience, a practice, a performance, or an ideology.[3](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61798/chapter-abstract/546191096) Work in Spanish-language scholarship makes the same point from a different tradition: motherhood is not a \"natural fact\" but a culturally constructed phenomenon, defined and organized by norms arising from the needs of a specific social group at a defined moment of its history.[10](https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5202329)\n\n## Norms of the \"good mother\"\n\n**Intensive mothering.** In 1996 the historian and sociologist Sharon Hays published *The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood*, describing an ideology of intensive mothering that calls on mothers to engage in a time-intensive, expensive, and expert-informed style of childrearing.[4](https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/soc4.13095) A 2023 review argues that this ideology must be decentered: enactments of motherhood form a mosaic informed by mothers' social locations, including their positions in racialized and classed hierarchies, and among some privileged, predominantly White mothers an even more intense version is practiced, with mothers positioning themselves as experts whose specialized knowledge surpasses that of medical and educational professionals.[4](https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/soc4.13095)\n\nA 2023 scoping review of 115 Social Science Citation Index-referenced papers published from 2001 to 2021 in WEIRD countries reconstructed the social norms mothers navigate. It identified five contemporary norms, reflecting both stability and increasing differentiation: being attentive to the child (the present mother), securing the child's successful development (the future-oriented mother), integrating employment into mothering (the working mother), being in control (the public mother), and being contented (the happy mother).[5](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jftr.12488) Although the societal roles of mothers and fathers have become blurred, the division of labor and responsibilities in families has remained gendered.[5](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jftr.12488)\n\n## Historical study\n\nMotherhood became an academic subject in its own right in the 1970s. A grant proposal submitted by Ann Oakley to the British Social Science Research Council in 1973 led to a study that established the academic status of motherhood as a social institution and mothering as social practice; a historically comparative follow-up with a new set of first-time mothers ran from 2007 to 2011, thirty-three years after the first.[11](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00380261261463358) Historical scholarship since has treated motherhood as a category of analysis: a 2026 review of modern British history traces a movement from maternalist literature to maternity policy, to motherhood and activism, and finally to experiential histories, and argues that motherhood is not a stable identity but one asserted, contested, and performed in response to particular historical contexts.[12](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/revisiting-the-politics-of-motherhood-in-modern-british-history/8559B3CA3D4101E1FE474129F0308954) Earlier work on Britain and France between 1750 and 1914 examined the historical creation of \"motherhood\" itself and women's responses to it.[13](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22619789/) In the ancient world, motherhood played a central role in Greece and Rome despite the virtual absence of female participation in public life, with mothers wielding influence as the reproductive bodies of society and culture.[14](https://utpress.utexas.edu/9780292729902/)\n\nMotherhood has also been a site of coercion. A research network on \"Mothering Slaves,\" which met in the United Kingdom and Brazil in 2015 and 2016, examined enslaved women's relationship to reproduction in Atlantic slave societies, both the experiences of pregnancy, birth, and infant care and the policies of slaveholders and states that aimed to manage population through the regulation of women's bodies and reproductive potential. In slave societies, motherhood compounded the exploitation of women's labor with oppression in the most intimate aspects of their lives, while also providing space for relationships that could enable survival.[15](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0144039X.2017.1316959) [Representations](https://www.edgepedia.org/representations) of mothers can be punitive in other ways: a study of United States clinical adoption literature from the 1940s to the 1990s found that both birth mothers and adoptive mothers were depicted as deviants who potentially failed to conform to dominant definitions of true womanhood and good mothering.[16](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277539596000970)\n\n## Maternal health\n\nThe health dimension of motherhood is a global policy field. The World Health Organization defines maternal health as the health of women during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period, and holds that each stage should be a positive experience.[6](https://www.who.int/health-topics/maternal-health) About 287,000 women died during and following pregnancy and childbirth in 2020; the most common direct causes are excessive blood loss, infection, high blood pressure, unsafe abortion, and obstructed labor, with indirect causes including anemia, malaria, and heart disease.[6](https://www.who.int/health-topics/maternal-health) Most maternal deaths are preventable with timely management by a skilled health professional working in a supportive environment.[6](https://www.who.int/health-topics/maternal-health) Deaths from complications of pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period declined by 38% in the two decades to the early 2020s, but the share of births attended by skilled health personnel, though up from 58% in 1990 to 81% in 2019, still leaves large gaps, and more than half of maternal deaths occur in fragile and humanitarian settings; sub-Saharan Africa and [Southern Asia](https://www.edgepedia.org/southern-asia) together accounted for 86% of the global total in 2017.[6](https://www.who.int/health-topics/maternal-health) In 2025 the WHO published a compendium on respectful maternal and newborn care, a decade after its 2014 statement on preventing disrespect and abuse during facility-based childbirth, noting that large-scale implementation of respectful care remains limited.[17](https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240110939/)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Mother, Merriam-Webster Dictionary](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mother)\n2. [Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Motherhood, Encyclopedia of Motherhood (Sage), edited by Andrea O'Reilly](https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412979276.n133)\n3. [Ashley Noel Mack (2018). Critical Approaches to Motherhood. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication.](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61798/chapter-abstract/546191096)\n4. [Krista Lynn Minnotte (2023). Decentering intensive mothering: More fully accounting for race and class in motherhood norms. Sociology Compass 17(8).](https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/soc4.13095)\n5. [Emilia Schmidt and colleagues (2023). What makes a good mother? Two decades of research reflecting social norms of motherhood. Journal of Family Theory & Review 15(1), 57–77.](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jftr.12488)\n6. [Maternal health, World Health Organization](https://www.who.int/health-topics/maternal-health)\n7. [Common and divergent psychobiological mechanisms underlying maternal behaviors in non-human and human mammals. Hormones and Behavior 73 (2015), 156–185.](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4546863/)\n8. [The Biggest Myths About Motherhood in the Animal Kingdom, TIME](https://time.com/6330821/maternal-instinct-myth-animal-kingdom-essay/)\n9. [Sexual Dimorphism of Parental Care: From Genes to Behavior. Annual Review of Neuroscience (2016).](https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-neuro-072116-031447)\n10. [Cristina Palomar Verea (2005). Maternidad: historia y cultura. La ventana 3(22), 35–68.](https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5202329)\n11. [Charlotte Faircloth, Ann Oakley, Kate Hague, Meg Wiggins (2026). Fifty Years of 'Becoming a Mother': The Social History of a Research Project Over Half a Century. Sociology.](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00380261261463358)\n12. [Anna Muggeridge and Ruth Davidson (2026). Revisiting the Politics of Motherhood in Modern British History. The Historical Journal.](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/revisiting-the-politics-of-motherhood-in-modern-british-history/8559B3CA3D4101E1FE474129F0308954)\n13. [E. J. Yeo (1999). The creation of \"motherhood\" and women's responses in Britain and France, 1750–1914. Women's History Review 8(2), 201–218.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22619789/)\n14. [Mothering and Motherhood in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Lauren Hackworth Petersen and Patricia Salzman-Mitchell (University of Texas Press, 2012).](https://utpress.utexas.edu/9780292729902/)\n15. [Camillia Cowling, Maria Helena Pereira Toledo Machado, Diana Paton, and Emily West (2017). Mothering slaves: comparative perspectives on motherhood, childlessness, and the care of children in Atlantic slave societies. Slavery & Abolition 38(2), 223–231.](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0144039X.2017.1316959)\n16. [In search of bad mothers: Social constructions of birth and adoptive motherhood. Women's Studies International Forum 20(1) (1997), 77–86.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277539596000970)\n17. [Compendium on respectful maternal and newborn care, WHO (2025).](https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240110939/)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Life and health › Human health and medicine › Nutrition and personal wellbeing › Reproductive wellbeing › Contraception effectiveness, safety, and comparisons*\n\n*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 21, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 21, 2026 · Last review: Oct 21, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/mother", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/mother.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Mother\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/mother. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Mother](https://www.edgepedia.org/mother)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/mother](https://www.edgepedia.org/mother). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Mother\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/mother. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Mother: a female parent. Motherhood is a universal social status whose meaning, norms, and practices vary across cultures, history, and biology." }