Mamakulu and the Spider Monkey: On Finding New Names for Old Mamas

The still-reigning ideology of motherhood requires of women to be "good," "perfect" or at least "intensive" mothers, while providing them with little assistance in the process. At the same time, the pressure brought to bear upon women to become "biological" mothers has increased, augmented by a burgeoning industry of reproductive treatments that may exploit the bodies of two or three women in order to achieve biological motherhood for one. The solution proposed here to these twin sets of problems is to expand the existing boundaries of motherhood, which still tends to be defined as primarily biological and occurring within the confines of the nuclear family. By describing and then drawing upon personal life experience, this article proposes recognition of the mothering that is carried out by people who are not our biological mothers but who have cared for us, taught us and loved us. Further to this aim, and in good feminist tradition, it calls for the naming of these other mothers, and even suggests a number of possibilities.