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Admin Comment by sikora on December 31, 2012 at 11:02am

Zhang Wenzhou, that's really interesting. I never knew any of those terms. 后妈 definitely sounds bad, even in English !

Top Member Comment by Zhang Wenzhuo on December 30, 2012 at 9:32am

About "stepmother", there are two translations in Chinese----后妈 and 继母

后妈：The woman who marries your father after your parents' divorce, generally, in this condition your father would not care about your feeling, even though your stepmom does or says something bad to harm you.  Obviously 后妈 is a derogatory term.

 

继母：1.The woman who marries your father after your biological mother passed away. In this condition, there is nothing more important than you, your father would never do anything to hurt you or let somebody or something to hurt you, he will always choose you than anything( including marriage). So this kind of stepmom would treat you as her own baby.

            2. You are adopted, the mom and dad you have are your 继父继母. We don't call them 后爸后妈。

 

We address stepmother as 妈妈 instead of 后妈 or 继母, if someone still can't accept his stepmom or stepfather, he would call them 阿姨 or 叔叔.

 

Nowadays, so many Chinese people think that 后妈 and 继母 have the same meaning, what do you think?

 

 

Comment by Ma Si Wen on December 30, 2012 at 4:00am

Great post Corinne. I thought I would share a similar post from my blog. Some readers might find this one helpful too.

http://mychinesenotebook.blogspot.ie/2011/10/chinese-relationship-t...

Blogger Comment by Corinne Dillon on December 28, 2012 at 1:07pm

Good question - I asked a friend about this and she said that you would either address your step-mom as 妈妈 or the more generic and obviously less intimate 阿姨.

Maybe someone else knows a better term?

Admin Comment by sikora on December 28, 2012 at 10:37am

Awesome list Corinne! How about the term "step" as in "stepmother." I think that's among the basics in the US at this point.