Motherhood can mean birth, genes, or raising a child
A mother is a female parent—by giving birth, by raising a child who is not biologically hers, or by contributing an egg. Expectant mothers gestate a fertilized ovum; the adjective maternal pairs with paternal for fathers as the male counterpart.
Everyday language stretches from mom and mummy to legal and medical senses. A biological mother contributes genetically through intercourse or egg donation and may or may not gestate or rear the child. Adoption, step-parenting, and assisted reproduction multiply pathways into the role.
Pregnancy marks one route: a woman carrying a fertilized egg becomes a mother-to-be in common speech before birth. The verb to mother can mean nurturing as well as procreating, showing how care work and biology share a word. The process of becoming a mother has been called matrescence. In well-nourished girls the first period usually arrives at about 12 or 13, and human gestation typically lasts around nine months before labour. The word also covers women who are not the biological parent but do the main work of raising a child, such as a stepmother or adoptive mother, and some communities speak of an othermother.
Adoption predates civilization itself, though modern statute-based systems date from the twentieth century; in 2001 the United States recorded more than 127,000 adoptions, close to half the world total. In vitro fertilization made surrogacy possible, splitting motherhood between a genetic mother who supplies the egg and a gestational mother who carries the baby, and since the 1970s it has allowed pregnancy far past natural age limits. The 2013 total fertility rate ranged from 7.03 children per woman in Niger to 0.79 in Singapore, with the United States at 2.06; there, in 2011, women averaged 25.6 years at a first birth and 40.7 percent of births were to unmarried mothers. The World Health Organization counts a maternal death as one during pregnancy or within 42 days after it ends, from causes tied to the pregnancy.
Source: Mother
