# The term "my baby mama" - Where did it come from? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 6, 2004, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-my-baby-mama-where-did-it-come-from/248969 "2004-06-06T16:54:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2004, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-my-baby-mama-where-did-it-come-from/248969/1 "2004-06-06T16:54:26Z")
I was listening to a comedy routine on XM radio yesterday, and the standup comedian (addressing a largely black, urban audience) used the term “my baby mama” several times to describe the (assumedly unwed) mother of his child. Intrigued by this phrase, I googled it up, and it appears throughout a lot of rap and hip hop lyrics. [There’s even this discussion of it below as a reflection of the changing nature of black families.](http://www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/3.10/970505-family.html) But where did it come from? It is simply the popular usage of a long standing term used in black communities. What’s the etymological origin of this phrase? > [@](#): > > The new term “baby mama,” as in “That’s my baby mama,” symbolizes how fragmented family relationships have become for young African Americans. Marriage used to mean the uniting of two families, but, living in the aftermath of slavery and the struggles of subsequent decades, few in the hip hop generation have a healthy sense of love and commitment. What’s needed now is community support and individual efforts to teach young people how to have strong relationships. Jeannine Etter is on the staff of YO! (Youth Outlook), a newspaper by and about Bay Area youth produced by Pacific News Service. > > The African family is still in shreds from the 90s version of the auction block. The new term to describe a family relationship is “baby mama,” as in “That’s my baby mama.” Lately I’ve heard of a shorter version–“BM”–often used to refer to someone who doesn’t get treated much better than the bodily function usually associated with those two letters. > > Not girlfriend, not fiancee, not wife, not even ex-wife: baby mama. Ex-husband, ex-wife was how our parents’ generation referred to each other; they left us with no clue to the universe of love and commitment. The ties that bind are only sex. What the hell happened? ---
**Author:** ![Freejooky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ba8739/32.png) [@Freejooky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freejooky)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2004, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-my-baby-mama-where-did-it-come-from/248969/2 "2004-06-06T18:30:32Z")
It’s simple and obvious - “My baby’s mama” + ignorance + it’s fashionable to sound ignorant when young and black by mispronouncing things = dropping the 's. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2004, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-my-baby-mama-where-did-it-come-from/248969/3 "2004-06-06T19:18:22Z")
> [@](#): > > The new term “baby mama,” as in “That’s my baby mama,” symbolizes how fragmented family relationships have become for young African Americans. Marriage used to mean the uniting of two families, but, living in the aftermath of slavery and the struggles of subsequent decades, few in the hip hop generation have a healthy sense of love and commitment. What’s needed now is community support and individual efforts to teach young people how to have strong relationships. Jeannine Etter is on the staff of YO! (Youth Outlook), a newspaper by and about Bay Area youth produced by Pacific News Service. > > The African family is still in shreds from the 90s version of the auction block. The new term to describe a family relationship is “baby mama,” as in “That’s my baby mama.” Lately I’ve heard of a shorter version–“BM”–often used to refer to someone who doesn’t get treated much better than the bodily function usually associated with those two letters. > > Not girlfriend, not fiancee, not wife, not even ex-wife: baby mama. Ex-husband, ex-wife was how our parents’ generation referred to each other; they left us with no clue to the universe of love and commitment. The ties that bind are only sex. What the hell happened? Listen to what Freejooky said. This excerpt is a complete load of crap more than a little offensive. I wouldn’t trust any article that 1) Considers the year 2004 to be “in the aftermath of slavery” and 2) Leaves the “American” out of African American and refers to black people simply as “Africans”. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2004, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-my-baby-mama-where-did-it-come-from/248969/4 "2004-06-06T21:13:54Z")
> [@Freejooky](#): > > It’s simple and obvious - “My baby’s mama” + ignorance + it’s fashionable to sound ignorant when young and black by mispronouncing things = dropping the 's. Is this something that’s been around awhile, or am I witnessing the genesis of a new compound noun in real time? ---
**Author:** ![Omega\_Glory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7c8e57/32.png) [@Omega\_Glory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omega_Glory)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-my-baby-mama-where-did-it-come-from/248969/5 "2004-06-07T01:28:23Z")
I doubt it’s that new since it’s counterpart “my baby daddy” was the name of a song that became moderately popular in 1997. The song mostly consisted of a man saying “Who that is?” and a woman saying “that’s just my baby daddy” over and over. [Here’s the lyrics](http://www.radio101.it/soulsystem/static/track.asp-track=5235.htm), so you can see just how stupid the whole thing really was. ---
**Author:** ![syncrolecyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f08c70/32.png) [@syncrolecyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/syncrolecyne)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-my-baby-mama-where-did-it-come-from/248969/6 "2004-06-07T05:08:14Z")
I think there is actually quite a bit of 's dropping in some dialects, not just in this phrase. [http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~cboone00/ebonics.htm](http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~cboone00/ebonics.htm) The use of the possessive marker: Where the Standard English speaker says “John’s cousin”; the Black English speaker might say “John cousin.” The possessive is marked in Black English by the “genitival” position of the noun and its possessor The third-person singular has no obligatory morphological ending in Black English, so that “she works here” is expressed as “she work here.” One example that I can think of is Aerosmith’s appropriation of the phrase “Mama kin” (Mother’s family) from old blues lyrics.