Mother's Day: How the non-nuclear family celebrate the occasion

There are cards to grandmothers, grandmas and nans too. There's even a nod to multicultural Britain with cards to Mummy-ji, but missing from the goodwill being showered on mothers everywhere today are any prefixes or plurals. But you'll have to look very hard along the card shop shelves to find a note to My Best Foster Mum, the Best Step-Mum in the world or My Favourite Two Mummies, for as far as the cardmakers are concerned the nuclear family is the only kind of family.

However, while the wordsmiths who sum up our special occasion sentiments might be stuck in the mid-20th century, up and down the country family dynamics have moved on in ways for which Hallmark just hasn't found the words. There are thousands of children who don't live with their birth mother, who are adopted, fostered or living with step-parents, then there are those who have two mums – a birth mother and her female partner.

According to the Fostering Network, there are currently 4,500 children and young people in foster care in Scotland, looked after by some 3,300 foster families. There are step-families, blended families, adoptive families, single parents, families where both parents are of the same gender and grandparents assuming the role of parents.

So what about the houses where traditional role models don't hold sway, where the apostrophe on the cards is moved one digit to the right and Mothers' Day means there are two adults to be served up raw eggs and cold tea in bed by their well-meaning children? Is Mother's Day still relevant in extended, blended families, households with a mother and another, where traditional stereotypes no longer apply and family ties go beyond biology?

THE STEP-MOTHER

Devin Mitchell, 30, Glasgow

Mitchell became a step-mother a year and a half ago, when she met her husband online. Based in Seattle, she wrote a lifestyle blog and shared a server with her future husband, also a blogger. Now married and living in Glasgow, she works as a tour guide and is step-mother to two boys, aged eight and 11, who split their time between their father's and mother's homes. Mitchell still blogs, but her posts no longer reflect the life of a single career girl, but that of a new step-mother. "I went from having a completely single career life to being married, having stepchildren and living on the other side of the world in a short time.

"Because immigration rules don't allow long visits, we came to the decision to marry more quickly than other couples. We knew each other for less than a year and had spent about a month in total in each other's company before we married, although we were in constant touch through phone calls and e-mail," says Mitchell.

Mitchell regards the role of step-mother as being different to that of a natural mother and can see advantages as well as disadvantages in the situation. "You don't have that sentiment towards them. They're wonderful and I adore them, but at the end of the day I'm not their mum. We do have a great bond, but they adore their mum and I respect that and how they feel about her. And sometimes it's easier when they're not yours. I'm not hard on them but I'm not a pushover either. When I was young we had our mother wrapped round our little fingers, but there's something to be said for a degree of removal. Not having that instant maternal bond is a big plus and a big minus too," she says. "I never expected to see myself in this situation. It's something people don't plan for and it's not something people dream about, but it has been amazing getting to form a bond with these guys and watching them growing up. The more time I get to spend with them the more exciting this is."

She makes it a rule not to mention the children's names in her blog nor delve into any negative elements of her new life. Not for her the territory explored in some of the "I might be their step-mother but I don't have to love 'em" online step-mum sites. "The blog helps me cope. It has been wonderful to have a community of other step-mothers online, a sisterhood sharing my common experiences and giving advice and support, some privately," she says.

"I don't share any of the struggles, as I think a lot of bloggers overshare with the whole world, and I make it a general rule never to put in anything that the boys would be upset about if they found out. You wonder with many bloggers why they took on the role. And then to blog about it seems callous. If they're too negative I back away. It's like those families who do Wife Swap. It doesn't seem fair to the kids."

Mitchell's main focus online is what it's like to be in a new domestic situation and how she managed to adjust. "It definitely took time as I was living alone and had time to myself, and now I'm in a situation that is the opposite and for the most part it's great. We took to each other straight away," she says.

Mitchell leaves Mother's Day to the boys and their mother but is a fan of Step-Mother's Day, which is the Sunday after Mothering Sunday, on a completely different occasion, giving other mothers their day in the spotlight. "It's good to have a separate day because they have one mum and that's the bottom line. But that doesn't mean you can't be close too."

www.suddenlystepmom.blogspot.com

THE FOSTER MOTHER

Maggie Wood, 52, Edinburgh

Wood became foster mother to Sarah Hepburn, now 20, six years ago. At the time she and her husband, both social workers, also had a 14-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter. "We noticed there was a child from our own community who required foster care," says Wood "After being given up for adoption at birth and having no contact with her birth mother, Sarah's father was given custody but had died that year."

Hepburn says, "I knew Maggie because I was at school with her son. It was very quick and they immediately made me feel so much part of their family."

As a social worker, Wood was well versed in the challenges of fostering but enjoyed putting the theory into practice. "What we don't acknowledge about being a parent is that your children automatically accept your world view but when a child comes into your home they come with a different map. Sarah took a lot on board because she's thoughtful and also she didn't have a mum, so she's really accepting of how I was as a mother," says Wood.

"Fostering is one of the most rewarding things anyone could possibly do. If you're not giving in your own home, community and society, you're not fulfilling your potential in life."

For Wood, fostering was always a long-term proposition, although she acknowledges that short-term, very positive intervention can be good for children too. "For me, if I'm going to invest, I invest fully. It's a lifetime commitment, although now she's an adult she doesn't need me as much," she says.

No one knows better than social workers the way society has been reconstructed and the challenges that families face, whatever their composition. "It's no longer mum, dad and the kids. Families are so different now and society has been reconfigured. So many of us are mothers in a different way and spend time with children we didn't necessarily give birth to. They should change the labels to reflect our society. We are not all mummies and daddies any more in this society. But we still care.

"The Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007 recognises the changes and practice of society and now care can be assumed by 'kith and kin'. Kinship care means children can be cared for by those who are not necessarily blood relatives, and includes friends and more distant relatives."

Hepburn went on to study for an HNC in beauty therapy and now has a one-year-old child of her own – Fraser – making Wood a grandmother. "We had a funny debate about whether to call me Granny," she says. "I joked that I'm far too young and funky to be Granny but Fraser needs to understand who I am in his life and Granny is better than My Mum's Foster Mum. Society already has a name for the role I was playing and that's Granny."

Given that Wood was also playing the role of mother, what did Hepburn call her, since terminology is clearly an issue for families. "We both knew we weren't mother and daughter," she says. "To my friends I would call her Maggie, but if it was someone who doesn't know me, I would just say, 'my mum'. She already had a daughter and a son. I didn't want to intrude on her being their mother."

While Hepburn didn't want to intrude, she did want to show her gratitude on Mother's Day with a card, and customised the standard ones available in the shops. "I did want to give her a card to say thanks. I always added 'foster' on to it and put it under her pillow privately, because of the other children.

"I had come into their lives and shared their home, and didn't want them to think they were now sharing their mother. I wanted them to know that she's their mother and my foster mother."

Foster or birth mother, Wood sees the end result of the process as being the same. "The aim is to have your children walk alongside you as separate individuals who can take a place in society."

TWO MOTHERS

Liz Wilson, 41, and Alison Hamilton, 43, Glasgow

Wilson, a full-time mother, and Hamilton, a health worker, have been together for 15 years and are civil partners. Wilson gave birth to Alice, who is now nine, and John who is five, then Hamilton gave birth to twin boys, who are now three, all through private IVF treatment. "We went for three children and ended up with four when Alison had twins, which was a bit of a surprise. John turned two years old four days after they were born, so it was pretty mad for that first year and we thought, 'How are we ever going to go to the shops again?'" says Wilson.

As a young adult coming to grips with her sexual orientation, Wilson was given a gift by her mother: the expectation of motherhood, the idea that she too could one day be a mother, despite the fact that at the time it was a complicated scenario for gay women. "My mother died when I was 22. She knew I was gay and said, 'Don't live all your life without having children. It doesn't matter how you accomplish it, but do it.' It wasn't something that was easy in the 1980s and I never expected to be able to have children, but now it's possible. Looking back it feels miraculous really that we managed to have so many."

The idea that other children might react to the idea of a family with two mothers has to be tempered by the realisation that nuclear families are increasingly no longer the norm. "When they go to nursery and school there's a bit of, 'Why have you got two mums?' because other children are curious. But they were all at nursery together and have grown up knowing us as a family, so it's not a big deal. Some of them might have single parents or new step-parents, and civil partnerships are something children all know about. They say, 'I wish I had two mums.'"

As far as male role models go, there is no shortage in Wilson's and Hamilton's families for their children. "I have five brothers and my partner has brothers and there are uncles, grandfathers and fathers of friends, so there are plenty of men in their lives and they make Father's Day cards for uncles and grandads," says Wilson.

In a double-mum household, who gets to be called Mum, and is there ever any confusion? "The older children call me Mum and my partner a nickname, and we imagine the twins will call me by my first name and her Mum because it's important where you come from. In the longer term, it matters," says Wilson.

And are there clearly defined roles, where one of the mothers performs a more traditional 'female' function? "Well, I didn't feel the need to physically give birth to the children – I would have happily adopted – whereas she wanted to be a birth mother. But I'm maternal in terms that I do the caring while she has to work to provide for us all, though she would be at home if she could. She's full-on when she comes home, feeding and bathing, and I get long lies at the weekend while she gets up with the children," says Wilson.

Wilson is in the unusual position of being a birth mother herself and having a partner who is also a birth mother to two of her children. Did she feel any different towards the children in terms of bonding? "It doesn't matter to me at all. It's about being a parent. I never experienced any difficulty of not connecting with the children who are not biologically mine. I had the same rush of love when they were born," she says.

And will there be Mother's Day cards today? "We don't buy Mother's Day cards," says Liz. "Not because you can't get them – you can buy double-mum cards off the web – we make them because with four children we're too tight!"

Names have been changed

This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday, March 14, 2010