Our Philosophy of Service

Birth is a time of major transition and every family deserves the support of its community when a new baby arrives. Many Mothers exists because:

New Mothers usually leave the hospital 24-48 hours after giving birth.

Extended families are often no longer available to offer consistent and needed support.

Bonding and attachment are essential for a baby’s development.

When you mother the mother, she is more available to mother her infant.

With all the joy and excitement that accompanies the birth of a baby, there can also be isolation, a sense of being overwhelmed, exhaustion, and, sometimes, postpartum depression.

Providing support for families with newborns is hardly a new idea. It has been a way of life the world over for millennia. However, in the last twenty-five years the support provided by extended families has changed as more and more women are working away from the home, and families in our mobile society often live far from each another.

Many Mothers, as a volunteer, free-of-charge, community-based service is the 21st century version of the extended family, and is available to any family with a newborn regardless of income level. Many Mothers believes the family knows best what kind of help they need and Many Mothers works to provide it.

New research on women and stress, such as the study by Laura Cousino Klein, Ph.D, demonstrates the effectiveness of woman-to-woman interaction. The natural stress reliever, oxytocin, is released when women are together. When acts of service are incorporated stress is further reduced providing the mother the opportunity for healthy bonding with the baby. The Many Mothers program of women-to-women care is designed to ensure that new mothers are afforded every opportunity to appropriately attach to their infants.

Many Mothers is not a franchise. It is a framework providing a practical reminder that women have always known how to support each other during major transitions. As Rachel Naomi Remen said in Kitchen Table Wisdom,

“Women have always been present at these times,
at death and birth and in many of the other transitions in life.

Women have gathered at the moment of transitions,
as comforters and companions, as witnesses to mark the importance of the moment.”