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Is "stepmother treatment" Indian English?

English Language & Usage Asked by Bravo on February 11, 2021

When I googled stepmother treatment, I found that it was mainly used in India to refer to neglect, disregard or inattention. Most of the other non-Indian links talked about the literal treatment by the relative.

Does this phrase/idiom belong only to Indian English? In India, stepmothers carry this stereotype of being vile women, by the way.

4 Answers

If you mean that in India it is a common, well-understood idiom meaning neglectful treatment, then no, in America it does not have any such well-established meaning. However, stepmothers get a pretty bad rap here in America too, so if you used it in a sentence, "I really got the stepmother treatment from my boss" or some such, I think people would get the idea. The phrase "wicked stepmother" is so commonly used in fairy tales that it is something of an idiom.

Answered by Jay on February 11, 2021

Here in the US it is "foster parent treatment" that is more prevalent. It is very common for foster parents to treat their bilogical children differently than their "income" children. With such a high divorce rate here in the US, practically everyone is a stepmother nowadays.

Answered by user38107 on February 11, 2021

In Indian English, the word/phrase stepmotherly, with its variants step-motherly, and step motherly is so pervasive, that I initially thought that it was a part of BrE.

The word/phrase's etymology probably comes from the Hindi phrase 'Sauteli Ma', which means stepmother, and is commonly used in the language to denote an uncaring or oppressive treatment. There is a quote from the well known Indian film Sholay - "Main mausi hoon, sauteli ma nahin", which translates to "I am an (maternal) aunt, not a step mother".

Answered by ranban282 on February 11, 2021

Not all step mother's are bad, so the words/phrase do not make any sense in any country as lots of good families with step moms exists and the word " step mother treatment" got its popularly negative meaning/concept through movies & tales that spiced up it's stories.

Answered by Longman on February 11, 2021

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