Rabenmutter

Rabenmutter (lit. raven mother) is a German expression used to denote a bad mother, who does not take sufficient care of her children, often because she is combining family with work. This derogatory term is used for a ‘loveless, hard-hearted mother who neglects her children’ or for an egoistic woman who refuses to have children due to economic or emotional circumstances (Duden 2020). According to an old German belief, the raven cares little for its offspring and pushes them out of the nest when it no longer wants to feed them. The term reinforces the traditional division of roles where women are supposed to dedicate themselves to the family while men are the breadwinners. Even in present-day German-speaking Europe, highly educated women stop working or work part-time once they have children in order to provide ‘sufficient’ care to their families. The reasons underlying the perception that combining work and motherhood is bad are deeply rooted in the historical, social, and economic context.