Why Was Eren Mothered By His Foster Family In Attack On Titan?

There’s a warmth that sticks with me when I think about how Hopper mothered Eleven — it felt like watching a shy, bruised kid slowly get permission to be human. He gave her rules, meals, a hideaway with a door and a name on the mail slot, and those small, clumsy routines mattered. After being mothered by him she carried a new kind of safety: less of the constant, laboratory paranoia and more of the ordinary anxieties of a kid who has chores and curfew and someone who nags about haircuts. That ordinary life was radical for her, and it changed how she placed trust in the world and in people who hurt, then tried to make amends. But it wasn’t only comfort. I also see how being mothered complicated her edges. Learning to rely on Hopper meant she had to reckon with losing him — and with the fact that safety can be fragile. She gained warmth and playfulness, sure, even a goofy teenage awkwardness, but trauma didn’t just vanish. The tenderness Hopper offered made her more vulnerable to heartbreak, guilt, and fierce protectiveness. She started to feel things that weren’t only about survival: embarrassment at not knowing normal teen rituals, joy at small kindnesses, and fury when her world was threatened. In the long run, being mothered by Hopper gave her a vocabulary for family that she could choose to use or reject. She learned to love and to guard that love fiercely, and those lessons shaped the ways she later pushed back against the people and institutions that had tried to control her. It left me with a soft spot: she became both softer and harder at once, which is a messy, beautiful combination.

If you mean biologically, Ciri was mothered by Pavetta — she’s the daughter of Queen Calanthe of Cintra and the woman who gave birth to Cirilla. Pavetta’s marriage to Duny (the man who later becomes Emhyr var Emreis) is the whole backstory that sets Ciri’s lineage in motion: that Law of Surprise scene from the early short stories is basically the seed that creates the whole tangled family tree. Pavetta isn’t the one who really raises Ciri through her childhood, though. After Pavetta’s early absence from Ciri’s life, Calanthe (her grandmother) steps in and brings her up as the princess of Cintra. Later Geralt claims Ciri via the Law of Surprise and she becomes his ward, while Yennefer eventually becomes the real maternal figure in terms of guidance and training. So when fans talk about who ‘mothered’ Ciri, Pavetta is the biological mother, but Ciri’s upbringing is shared between Calanthe, Geralt, Yennefer and a whole cast of guardians and mentors. If you’re revisiting the books, passages in 'The Last Wish' and 'Blood of Elves' flesh out the background and the law-of-surprise origin, and the family dynamics keep echoing through 'Time of Contempt' and the later novels. I always find that split between blood and chosen family is one of the most touching things about Ciri’s arc.

Thinking about how Harry was mothered after his parents died always makes my chest tighten in a weirdly warm way. In the most literal and magical sense, Lily Potter continued to mother Harry through that sacrificial protection she left on him — the protection that kept Voldemort from killing him as a baby and anchored itself to the Dursley home because Petunia was Lily’s sister. That enchantment wasn’t a person’s care, but it was maternal in effect: it shielded him, shaped where he had to live, and set the conditions for who could try to actually raise him. On the human side, the Dursleys were his legal guardians but hardly mothering in any nurturing sense. Petunia provided shelter and rigid rules, not warmth; it read to me like a duty born of guilt and bitterness rather than love. Real mothering for Harry came in pieces from many people over the years: Mrs. Figg’s odd little kindnesses, the Weasleys’ riotous, homey maternal energy (Molly’s cooking, her fierce protectiveness), and the school-family vibe at Hogwarts where teachers like Professor McGonagall and Dumbledore offered guidance, discipline, and sometimes that soft, steady concern a child needs. Hermione and Ginny later filled in lots of emotional gaps too — practical care, fierce loyalty, the small daily comforts that count. So he was mothered by a blend: a magical, sacrificial protection from his actual mother; grudging guardianship from Petunia; and a montage of surrogate, fiercely human mothers in the Weasleys and Hogwarts. It’s messy, imperfect, and oddly beautiful — like a found family stitched together by love, snacks, and a lot of screaming matches.

There’s a quiet thrill I always get when the show finally fills in the missing pieces of Naruto’s origin, and Kushina’s role as his mother is revealed across a series of flashbacks tied to the Nine-Tails attack. The core reveal comes during the flashbacks about the night of the Kyuubi’s assault on Konoha—those scenes show Minato and Kushina defending the village and eventually sealing the beast, and that’s where Kushina is explicitly shown as Naruto’s mother. In the anime those memories are expanded and given real emotional weight in the mid-to-late arcs of the story, especially when Naruto interacts with his parents’ memories inside Kurama’s consciousness. In the manga the same backstory is unfolded across the chapters that revisit the attack and the Fourth Hokage’s sacrifice. I was oddly teary the first time I watched the Kushina scenes; the way the creators layered her personality—fiery, stubborn, but so tender with baby Naruto—changed how I saw his loneliness and drive. If you want to experience it raw, follow the storyline that revisits the Nine-Tails sealing: that’s where the flashbacks land, and Kushina’s identity as Naruto’s mother is not just stated, it’s shown through her actions and her final moments. It’s one of those moments that turns plot facts into something heartfelt.

I’ve spent more nights than I can count rewatching bits of 'Stranger Things' while making tea, and what struck me in season 4 is how clearly Joyce Byers steps into the mothering role for Eleven. Biologically Eleven was born to Terry Ives, who is her real mother in the sense of giving birth and being part of the tragic MKUltra experiments, but Joyce is the one who raises her, protects her, and gives her a home through most of the series. In season 4 that’s even more obvious: Eleven is living with Joyce and the Byers household, dealing with the loss of her powers and all the identity questions that brings, and Joyce is the steady presence in the background—scolding, comforting, worrying—just doing the messy day-to-day parent stuff that actually matters. Watching it, I found myself noticing small moments more than big plot beats: Joyce making sure Eleven eats, arguing with people who threaten her, trying to navigate the teen issues that pop up when you’ve been a lab subject for years. There’s emotional weight because Terry Ives is the tragic origin thread, but season 4 gives us Joyce as the functioning guardian. She’s not perfect, she’s frantic a lot of the time, but she’s the one keeping Eleven tethered to a family life. So if you’re asking who mothered Eleven in season 4, I’d say Joyce is the primary maternal figure on-screen, while Terry remains the biological mother whose story haunts Eleven’s past. That mix—biological trauma plus found-family care—is what makes Eleven’s arc hit so hard for me.

Wendy Darling is the one who traditionally takes on the mothering role for the Lost Boys, and that carries through into most of the modern film versions too. In J.M. Barrie’s original play and novel, she’s literally the children’s ‘mother’ in Neverland—telling stories, sewing buttons on, and tucking them into bed—and recent adaptations keep that emotional center. For example, Disney’s recent live-action 'Peter Pan & Wendy' leans into Wendy as the caregiver who brings a sense of home to the Lost Boys, showing how her presence fills the hole left by actual parents and gives the boys someone to trust and be nurtured by. That said, modern retellings like the 2015 film 'Pan' or the 1991 film 'Hook' play with or redistribute that role. In 'Pan' the focus is more on Peter’s origins and on other female characters like Tiger Lily who act as protectors rather than a maternal storyteller. In 'Hook' the Lost Boys have become older and rougher; Wendy’s role is more symbolic and nostalgic than hands-on. I find these variations interesting because they highlight different facets of chosen family: sometimes Wendy is the mom, sometimes motherhood is shared, and sometimes it’s subverted entirely — which makes each version feel fresh in its own way.

Watching 'Mad Max: Fury Road' felt like watching a war movie secretly about babies and gardens — which sounds weird until you realize how much of the story is powered by someone protecting the possibility of a future. I saw it in a cramped midnight screening with my sister, and between the engine roars I found myself fixating on small, caregiving moments: Furiosa bandaging a wound, the Vuvalini swapping stories, the Wives learning to lock a truck door. Those gestures are quiet, but they’re what make the violent chase feel urgent rather than just spectacle. Being mothered — or the lack of it — shows up as motivation and moral gravity. The Five Wives are treated as commodities because they represent reproductive hope; rescuing them is rescuing the chance for life beyond Joe’s tyranny. Furiosa’s protectiveness reads like someone who’s been taught to keep others alive at all costs, whether by blood or by chosen family. The older women (the Vuvalini) act as living memory-keepers, passing down survival skills and values the world tried to erase. If you watch it through that lens, the film becomes less about vehicular mayhem and more about who gets to care, who gets to decide the future, and how maternal networks can overthrow a system that hoards resources and reduces people to parts. It’s why that final return to the Citadel feels like planting a flag for nurture instead of domination — and why I cried a little when water finally flowed.

I still get a little tug in my chest thinking about the glimpses we do have — the films left Rey’s childhood deliberately sketchy, and most of the footage that got cut only deepens the feeling of absence rather than giving us a neat maternal figure. On the 'The Force Awakens' home release there are a few deleted Jakku moments and extended takes that show Rey’s daily life — longer scenes of her scavenging, more lonely shots of a young girl waiting at the wreckage, and a couple of extra flashback beats that underline how she was abandoned rather than looked after. Those clips emphasize solitude rather than showing a parent actively mothering her. What you do see in deleted or extended material are more examples of surrogate care: the scavenger community, bits of dialogue that hint at the people who tolerated and sometimes protected her, and later, cut lines that make the mentorship from people like Maz and Leia feel even more intentional. In practice, the most maternal influences on Rey are adults who teach or comfort her — Maz’s teahouse wisdom, Leia’s patient guidance in the later films — and some of those quieter, softer moments were expanded in deleted scenes or line cuts on the Blu-rays. So if you’re hunting for footage that explicitly shows Rey being mothered by her biological family, you won’t find it among deleted scenes. The cut material mostly reinforces the loneliness and the makeshift family she had on Jakku, while tie-in sources — novelizations and visual guides — help fill in emotional detail rather than produce an outright, cinematic mothering scene. For me, those gaps are part of the character’s texture: more haunting than consoling, and strangely powerful.