“Mothering”

This entry explores the complex interplay between mothering and religion in ancient Greece and Rome, drawing on literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence. Moving beyond essentialist and biological definitions of motherhood, it adopts a maternal theory framework to examine how caregiving was a collective, gendered, and culturally regulated process. It considers both normative religious prescriptions and individual maternal practices, with attention to figures such as wet-nurses, adoptive mothers, grandmothers, and other female relatives. The study emphasizes the religious agency of mothers and caregivers through votive practices, rituals, and dedications related to conception, childbirth, breastfeeding, and infant care. Furthermore, it addresses how early Christianity reshaped maternal paradigms—introducing both spiritual motherhood and conflicting ideals of femininity. By integrating archaeological material and matricentric feminist theory, this lemma aims to shift the focus from abstract models to embodied maternal experience, expanding the scope of religious history and gender studies in antiquity.