What is a mommy kink, and why is everyone a mother now?

This story is an extract from PULP: Issue 2, an erotic, queer zine made by Megan Wallace and Jack Rowe. Order your copy now.

Every once in a while, something major changes in the sexual zeitgeist. Remember when everyone’s boyfriend got into pegging? Or eating ass became a standard entrée on the foreplay menu? How about the entry of (often poorly practised) kink-lite into the sex lives of the formerly vanilla – who now turned, en masse, to the internet in order to work out how to do wax play?

Often, we don’t talk too much about these changes until they’re well and truly enshrined in our collective sex lives and just about everybody seems to be doing it. Which is why it’s time to chat about a trend that has been brewing in our sexual subconscious for a while: the mommy kink.

Yep: while many of us are still fawning over Pedro Pascal, others are worshipping mother figures like Rachel Weisz, Julianne Moore and Lucy Liu – not just as screen icons, but as sexual fantasies. Having a mother kink shares plenty of parallels with daddy fetishes: the idea of a strong figure to boss you about and allow you to occupy a more vulnerable emotional and erotic space.

In lesbian contexts, it also kind of feeds into the Electra complex which, coined by Carl Jung in 1913, is a process of psycho-sexual competition between mother figures and daughter figures. But there’s also a switchiness to mother dynamics – you don’t just offer yourself up to someone to control and discipline you, you open yourself up to care and they allow themselves to explore a maternal energy that can be full of softness and tenderness on their part.

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This kind of scenario is explored in the films Maman and Maman II by the porn auteur Vex Ashley, one of the founders of the erotic arthouse film project Four Chambers. Mixing in all things mommy kink with queer longing and desire (as well as induced lactation) these films are a great primer to everyone looking to explore the beautiful and horny moments enabled by a mothering exchange.

As she explains, mommies are different to traditional femdommes in myriad ways – mostly related to the level of tenderness between sub and domme in a way that collapses these roles altogether. ​“Lots of traditional femdomme dynamics tend to be about pushing someone away or keeping a distance or maybe pain or violence,” Vex says. “[Mother kinks] are about submission and obliteration of the self through caring for someone really deeply and almost reducing them to a kind of needy baby.”

Vex also thinks the move towards exploring mother dynamics in the erotic world is partly a step towards a more nuanced understanding of gender dynamics in the wider world. ​“I think mommy issues for a lot of people are so much more complex than daddy issues. There’s almost this idea in society that you presume that fathers are going to be absent or uncaring but the bond you have with your mother is so primal. It’s the first kind of connection that you feel,” she adds.

And, of course, there’s the opportunity to fuck with gendered norms which strip women of their sexuality once they have children and quickly position them on the Virgin Mary side of the virgin/​whore dichotomy. ​“Society puts mothers on a pedestal and treats them as totally desexualised, as perfect, as chaste objects to be preserved. To really play with that, to buck that and to take that space for yourself is really interesting.”

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Admittedly, as someone involved in thinking about and exploring emerging sexual dynamics, Vex’s approach to the kink is probably more overtly cerebral than that of the people only just catching onto the joys of playing mommy or being mothered. So, what do these kink newbies embracing the maternal think about why these dynamics are so alluring?

Amy*, a 27-year-old bisexual with a sexual interest in mother figures thinks that her kink is rooted in a celebration of the feminine in all its forms, as well as a reappraisal of what power looks like in a social and sexual context. ​“Daddy kinks, to me, seem wrapped up in problematic patriarchal thinking, domination and control of bodies and money,” she says. ​“Whereas the idea of the mommy seems more a celebration of the feminine but with a masculine energy, soft dominance and care as power.”

There’s also her history with her own mother, which is inextricable from this kink. ​“On a subconscious level, I think my interest in mommies is probably tied to my own mommy issues – my mum always wore the trousers and it’s her I want to impress.”

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On the other side of things is Lara*, a 26-year-old femme lesbian who noticed that some of her sexual dynamics were veering towards the maternal – and that this really got her off. ​“One time I was basically cradling this masc [non-binary person] on my lap, stroking their hair while they sucked on my breasts. I remember thinking how fragile this normally tough-seeming person felt in that moment – how much more solid I seemed in contrast, and how powerful it felt to be creating this moment of vulnerability for them,” she says.

“After that point, I began to realise I craved this kind of power, the ability to flip gender roles and create a space where I can be in control but only by opening up an atmosphere of utmost softness and tenderness.”

While mommy kinks mean different things to Vex, Amy and Lara, there’s a common theme: tenderness can be hot as hell. If there’s anything to take away from the rising interest in mother fetishes, it’s this: sexual power isn’t always about being cold or closed off, or being the hottest person in the room, it can also be about emotional attunement, radical vulnerability and not being afraid to open up to people about the ways you want to be cared for. Long may the mommy kink live!

*Names have been changed.

Follow PULP on Substack, and order your copy of Issue 2 now.

Megan Wallace is a journalist and editor. Follow them on Instagram.

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