social mother


Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Legal, Encyclopedia.

mother

 [moth´er]
a female parent. With techniques of assisted fertility, three types of mother can be defined: (1) genetic, (2) gestational, and (3) social. A woman may be one, two, or all three types of mother to a child.
genetic mother a woman whose contribution to the child was the ovum, and hence genes.
gestational mother a woman whose uterus was used for the nurturing and development of an embryo into a baby.
social mother a woman who rears the baby after birth.

social mother

The woman who raises a newborn child, regardless of whether she is genetically related to it.
See also: mother
Mentioned in ?
References in periodicals archive ?
Finally, the stance of social mother could sometimes work against sisterhood, especially where the self-styled mother treated fully grown adult women from other social or ethnic groups as putative children who needed disciplining or advocacy but were too incapable to speak or act for themselves.
31) The new British social mothers rehearsed their analyses in the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science which had its sister-organisation the American Social Science Association, which offered a platform to nascent social workers and women professionals.
Constructing and contesting motherhood, 1750-1950
The close, emotional bond between such children and their social mothers shows that not only childhood, but motherhood itself is culturally constructed rather than a function of biological linkage.
A Tender Voyage: Children and Childhood in Late Imperial China

Medical browser ?
Full browser ?