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We all have non-biological mums. This Mother’s Day, let’s celebrate them too | Nell Frizzell

A nursery school nurse giving a pupil a mouth spray in 1944.
A nursery school nurse giving a pupil a mouth spray in 1944. Photograph: Kurt Hutton/Getty Images

The woman who tucks in your label on the bus; the woman who packs up the leftovers for your lunch the next day; the woman who knits you a hat for winter; the woman who shows you where the kettle is on your first day; the woman who walks you to your first class in a new building; the woman who wipes toothpaste off your cheek before a big meeting; the woman who makes you a birthday cake; the woman who swearily, hilariously berates your ex: we all have many mothers, and are mothers to each other.

Mother’s Day is, often, a celebration of the heroic, generous, sturdy and brilliant women who pushed children out of their bodies in order for humanity to survive. And well it should – you literally cannot thank your biological mother enough for bringing you into being. I can’t think of a single item in the Argos catalogue that adequately says “this is in exchange for my existence”. But what of all the other mothers? The non-biologicals. The step mothers, the foster mothers, the mothers-in-law and office mothers. The mother hen friends and benevolent godmothers. The world is packed with mother figures, and only one of them, possibly, gave birth to you.

A stepmother can be an excellent valve for when your own blood relations become infected

First, the stepmother. A study brought out by Relate and Relationships Scotland a few months ago found that 57% of stepmothers reported a good relationship with their stepchildren, and I know plenty of people who cite their stepmother as a welcome bit of rational calm in their parental life. I’ve always had a good relationship with my own. Ever since the day she strolled up to me on our first meeting and announced, “I’m trying to reclaim the word cunt,” things have been, I think, grand.

Perhaps this is because she married my father when I was an adult; perhaps growing up in a “blended family” (this always makes us sound like we were auditioning for a Kenco advert) had prepared me for a better step relationship; perhaps I’m just lucky that she’s a nice woman; or perhaps – most likely – if children were educated away from the wicked stepmother archetype, a natural affection could be cemented under even the most unlikely situations. I mean, sure, she’s sleeping with your dad, and she might have a different set of rules than you’re used to, and she might even eat weird things on toast, but a stepmother can be an excellent valve for when your own blood relations become infected, as they sometimes do – an outside voice that’s still invested in your larger happiness.

As for that most-maligned of the non-bio mums, perhaps we could take Mother’s Day as an opportunity to recognise, too, the mother-in-law. I might not have one, in the strictest sense of having entered into a legal contract with their child, but boy oh boy have my boyfriends had mothers. And even single mothers of only sons, as in the present case, don’t deserve the over-protective, critical, passive-aggressive reputation so beloved of 1970s standup comics in maroon blazers. Sure, I’ve had boyfriend’s mums who’ve disliked me (my first boyfriend’s mother looked at me like a dog that had just skidded its bottom across her hall carpet).

But on the whole, the women who heaved into being the men I ended up with have been kind, sympathetic, funny and have welcomed me in as a daughter, not a dangerous hanger-on. After all, why wouldn’t you have an affinity with the woman who – to quite a large extent – built the person you have chosen to share your life with? To quote my old friend Charyn, she did most of the hard work and you’re just reaping the rewards.

Then, of course, there are the foster mothers – the women who choose to apply their mothering to some of the most vulnerable, most challenged, most in-need young people, both from Britain and abroad. Did you know that refugees, arriving alone and under the age of 16 to the UK should, legally, be placed with a foster parent? That means throughout Croydon, Leicester, Middlesbrough, Leeds, Essex, Liverpool and Scotland there are women opening their homes to children who have risked their lives walking out of warzones to try and find a place of safety. As one such woman I met recently put it, their job is simply to “love someone back to life”. Let’s hear it for them this Mother’s Day.

Not to mention the casual mothers who weave in and out of our lives like silk. My university mother was a student nurse, three years older and from my home town, who’d invite me round on empty Tuesday afternoons to drink tea, watch Dude, Where’s My Car? and eat various forms of potato. My work mum used to read through my article pitches, despite having a job of her own, and gently guide me towards sounding less like a Year 8 prefect with an overdue book report. My house mother was a long-term flatmate who not only taught me how to clean the oven but would occasionally sneak into my room when I was out to fold my clothes and throw away the shoes held together with gaffer tape. I have been mothered by women without number and, I hope, have done my part in return.

So, this Sunday, don’t just reserve those £3.99 hyacinths in a woven basket or that ring of Elizabeth Shaw chocolate thins for the woman who gave birth to you. Take this as an opportunity to celebrate all the mothers in your life; the biological and elected, the blood and the chosen.