Othermother
Encyclopedia
For the fictional character "Other Mother", see Coraline
An othermother is a woman caring for children who are not biologically her own.
communities in America since early as slavery
and has roots in the traditional Africa
n world-view. “Care” could be in the form of providing a meal, essentially adopting the child, or simply supplying guidance. Othermothers believed that “good mothering” comprises all actions, including social activism, which addressed the needs of their biological children as well as the greater community.
Stanlie M. James defines the concept of the community othermother as the women in African-American communities who assist blood mothers in the responsibilities in child care for short to long-term periods, in informal or formal arrangements. James finds that othermothers are usually over the age of 40 because they must have a sense of the community’s culture and tradition before they can exercise their care and wisdom on the community. Othermothers are politically active in their community, as they critique members and provide strategies to improve their environment.
A study by sociologist Cheryl Gilkes examines women leaders in a Northern, urban community. Gilkes suggests that community othermother relationships can be essential in stimulating black women’s decisions to become social activists. Many of the black women community activists in her study became involved in community organizing in response to the needs of their own children and of those in the neighborhood.
Patricia Hill Collins
discusses the othermother relationship and references Gilkes study. Patricia Hill Collins explains othermothers as women who held the family
infrastructure
together by their virtues of caring, ethics, teaching, and community service. They can be sisters, aunts, neighbors, grandmothers, cousins, or any other woman who steps in to relieve some stress of intimate mother-daughter relationships. They are considered to be the backbone of the black race and give anything that they can to communities, and often what they cannot. Collins also discusses the “mothering the mind” relationships that can develop between black othermothers and other females who effectively become their students. These relationships move toward the mutuality of a shared sisterhood that binds black women as community othermothers. Community othermothers have made dramatic contributions by creating a new type of community in often hostile political and economic situations. Collins concludes by stating that othermothers’ participation in activist mothering demonstrates a rejection of individualism
and adapts a different value system where ethics
of caring and personal accountability move communities forward.
Today, the concept of the othermother is present within the urban elementary schools, and African American female educators play an integral role in fulfilling the psychological and educational needs of the urban child.
In the United States
, Second-parent adoption is a process by which a same-sex partner can adopt her or his partner's biological or adoptive child without terminating the first legal parent's rights. Second-parent adoption was started by the National Center for Lesbian Rights
(formerly the Lesbian Rights Project) in the mid-1980s. California
, Connecticut
, Illinois
, Maine
, Massachusetts
, New Jersey
, New York
, Pennsylvania
, Vermont
, Washington State and Washington, D.C.
explicitly allow second-parent adoption by same-sex couples statewide, either by statute or court ruling. As of May 2007, Colorado
allows second-parent adoption by same-sex couples. Courts in many other states have also granted second-parent adoptions to same-sex couples, though there is no statewide law or court decision that guarantees this. In fact, courts within the same state but in different jurisdictions often contradict each other in practice. See LGBT rights in Australia for a discussion of the legal rights of lesbian othermothers in Australia.
Coraline
Coraline is a horror/fantasy novella by British author Neil Gaiman, published in 2002 by Bloomsbury and Harper Collins. It was awarded the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novella, the 2003 Nebula Award for Best Novella, and the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers...
An othermother is a woman caring for children who are not biologically her own.
Scope
Othermothers are women, including mothers, who provide care for children who are not biologically their own. The institution of othermothers was a common practice in African AmericanAfrican American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
communities in America since early as slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
and has roots in the traditional Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n world-view. “Care” could be in the form of providing a meal, essentially adopting the child, or simply supplying guidance. Othermothers believed that “good mothering” comprises all actions, including social activism, which addressed the needs of their biological children as well as the greater community.
Stanlie M. James defines the concept of the community othermother as the women in African-American communities who assist blood mothers in the responsibilities in child care for short to long-term periods, in informal or formal arrangements. James finds that othermothers are usually over the age of 40 because they must have a sense of the community’s culture and tradition before they can exercise their care and wisdom on the community. Othermothers are politically active in their community, as they critique members and provide strategies to improve their environment.
A study by sociologist Cheryl Gilkes examines women leaders in a Northern, urban community. Gilkes suggests that community othermother relationships can be essential in stimulating black women’s decisions to become social activists. Many of the black women community activists in her study became involved in community organizing in response to the needs of their own children and of those in the neighborhood.
Patricia Hill Collins
Patricia Hill Collins
Patricia Hill Collins, is Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, former head of the Department of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati and past President of the American Sociological Association Council...
discusses the othermother relationship and references Gilkes study. Patricia Hill Collins explains othermothers as women who held the family
Family
In human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children...
infrastructure
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
together by their virtues of caring, ethics, teaching, and community service. They can be sisters, aunts, neighbors, grandmothers, cousins, or any other woman who steps in to relieve some stress of intimate mother-daughter relationships. They are considered to be the backbone of the black race and give anything that they can to communities, and often what they cannot. Collins also discusses the “mothering the mind” relationships that can develop between black othermothers and other females who effectively become their students. These relationships move toward the mutuality of a shared sisterhood that binds black women as community othermothers. Community othermothers have made dramatic contributions by creating a new type of community in often hostile political and economic situations. Collins concludes by stating that othermothers’ participation in activist mothering demonstrates a rejection of individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
and adapts a different value system where ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
of caring and personal accountability move communities forward.
Today, the concept of the othermother is present within the urban elementary schools, and African American female educators play an integral role in fulfilling the psychological and educational needs of the urban child.
Lesbian co-parenting
A parallel form of 'othermothering' is the concept of the lesbian co-mother. According to journalist Kathy Paige
When lesbians have children, they create not only a child, but two moms. One is the birth mom and the other, the non-biological mom. What these non-bio moms go through is quite unique. Some feel invisible as the "Other Mother."
In the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Second-parent adoption is a process by which a same-sex partner can adopt her or his partner's biological or adoptive child without terminating the first legal parent's rights. Second-parent adoption was started by the National Center for Lesbian Rights
National Center for Lesbian Rights
The National Center for Lesbian Rights is a national non-profit, public interest law firm that advocates for equitable public policies affecting the LGBT community, provides free legal assistance to LGBT clients and their legal advocates, and conducts community education on LGBT legal issues. It...
(formerly the Lesbian Rights Project) in the mid-1980s. California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
, Washington State and Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
explicitly allow second-parent adoption by same-sex couples statewide, either by statute or court ruling. As of May 2007, Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
allows second-parent adoption by same-sex couples. Courts in many other states have also granted second-parent adoptions to same-sex couples, though there is no statewide law or court decision that guarantees this. In fact, courts within the same state but in different jurisdictions often contradict each other in practice. See LGBT rights in Australia for a discussion of the legal rights of lesbian othermothers in Australia.
Historical and fictional othermothers
As a member of not only the black population but also of the Northern, urban community, one might assume that Mamie Till Bradley partook in these othermother relations, which would explain her rise to social activism. Bradley publicly exposed her personal tragedy in order to mobilize outrage and a movement towards civil rights. As an othermother, Bradley saw the brutality and injustice enacted on her son, Emmett TillEmmett TillEmmett Louis "Bobo" Till was an African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was from Chicago, Illinois visiting his relatives in the Mississippi Delta region when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married...
, not only as affecting her son, but all of the black children living during the time of the Jim Crow south. In a demonstration of her outrage, which sparked the beginning of the Civil Rights movementCivil rights movementThe civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
, Bradley acts as an othermother for the entire black activist community at this time.
Mrs. Rice acts as an othermother to Anne MoodyAnne MoodyAnne Moody is an African-American author who has written about her experiences growing up poor and black in rural Mississippi, joining the Civil Rights Movement, and fighting racism against blacks in the United States beginning in the 1960s-Life:Born Essie Mae Moody, she was the oldest of nine...
in her memoir Coming of Age in Mississippi. Mrs. Rice, Moody’s homeroom teacher, patiently answers Moody’s questions concerning Emmett Till and the NAACP after slight apprehension. Despite the fact that informing a student about such controversial issues could cost her her job, Mrs. Rice invites Moody over for Sunday dinner where Moody spends hours with Mrs. Rice. By inviting Moody into a world of insight, Mrs. Rice provides Moody with a sense of community, which she has not truly experienced before. Not only does Mrs. Rice facilitate her student through knowledge, but she also indirectly helps all of the children of the neighborhood, or race, by recruiting a social activist who in later years risks her life for the advancement of the lives of her community.
See also
- MotherMotherA mother, mum, mom, momma, or mama is a woman who has raised a child, given birth to a child, and/or supplied the ovum that 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...
- Women
- Interpersonal relationshipInterpersonal relationshipAn interpersonal relationship is an association between two or more people that may range from fleeting to enduring. This association may be based on limerence, love, solidarity, regular business interactions, or some other type of social commitment. Interpersonal relationships are formed in the...
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating CommitteeStudent Nonviolent Coordinating CommitteeThe Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ' was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960...
- MississippiMississippiMississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
- Black matriarchyBlack matriarchyBlack matriarchy was a popular stereotype in the 1950s and 1960s that exemplified black American family structure. This ideology depicted traditional black American households as being dominated and controlled by outspoken and emasculating women....