Dictionary

Camp Mother en · NOUN

Meanings

1. A woman employed to look after the youngest children at a summer camp.
   • It is no joke to be a "Camp Mother". When I think of it now, all the headaches she must have had. Here are some of the things she had to handle: — One girl was afraid of feathers; another girl afraid of cows; 1975, St. David's Presbyterian Church (St. John's, N.L.), The Dissenting church of Christ at St. John's, 1775-1975, page 203:
   • These nicknames ritualized relationships and ways of thinking about community and kinship outside traditional bounds; at many camps, counselors became “Aunt” or “Uncle,” while the youngest children were under the care of a “Camp Mother.” 2011, Miriam Forman-Brunell, Leslie Paris, The Girls' History and Culture Reader, →ISBN, page 95:
   • All campers swam, hiked, and attended campfires, but at many camps the youngest children had their own play spaces, a higher counselor-camper ratio, and the attention of a “Camp Mother” (often the wife or mother of the camp director), while the oldest children enjoyed special privileges such as later bedtimes or intercamp dances. 2010, Leslie Paris, Children's Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp, →ISBN, page 109:
2. A woman in charge of housekeeping and the supervision of campers at a summer camp.
   • The monstrous thought of going to the Camp Mother occurred to her ("Did you hear about Betsy? Went tearing off to old Auntie Jane to say her roommate was missing, and here all the time the poor girl was...") and she spoke to several other people, wondering and curious, phrasing it each time as a sort of casual question; 2014, Shirley Jackson, Just an Ordinary Day, →ISBN:
   • Some years at Camp Winsoki, our mother worked as the camp nurse, but more often she was something called Camp Mother, the woman who tended to the needs of several hundred Jewish children: their allergies, homesickness, bedwetting, ... 1997, Jay Neugeboren, Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness, and Survival:
   • At the bottom of the steep boat-house steps she paused a moment to gather strength, laboriously climbed them, passed under the mosquito-netting portiere, and, strolling leisurely toward the kitchen corner where Camp Mother was busily frying bacon and eggs on the blue-flame burner camp-fire. 1909, The Unitarian Register - Volume 88, page 1168:
   • Mrs. Reimann is a true "Camp Mother" to every boy in camp, caring for their intimate needs, helping them tide over lonesome times, sewing on buttons, and doing everything a mother is called on to do at home. 1929, Camp Charlevoix: A Character Camp for Boys:

Forms