A mother (or mum/mom) is a woman who has raised a child, given birth to a child, and/or supplied the ovum that united with a sperm which grew into a child. Because of the complexity and differences of a mother's social, cultural, and religious definitions and roles, it is challenging to specify a universally acceptable definition for the term. The male equivalent is a father.
Read more about Mother: Etymology, Biological Mother, Non-biological Mother, Motherhood in Same-sex Relationships, Social Role, Heath and Safety Issues, Religious, Mother-offspring Conflict, Mothers in Art, Synonyms and Translations, Famous Motherhood Figures
Famous quotes containing the word mother:
“[My mother told me:] “You must decide whether you want to get married someday, or have a career.”... I set my sights on the career. I thought, what does any man really have to offer me?”
—Annie Elizabeth Delany (b. 1891)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“The mother must teach her son how to respect and follow the rules. She must teach him how to compete successfully with the other boys. And she must teach him how to find a woman to take care of him and finish the job she began of training him how to live in a family. But no matter how good a job a woman does in teaching a boy how to be a man, he knows that she is not the real thing, and so he tends to exaggerate the differences between men and women that she embodies.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)