Word.ws English Dictionary

mama's baby, papa's maybe

mama's baby, papa's maybe phrase: it is easy to know the biological mother of a child, but difficult to be sure who the biological father is.

Phrase (1)

mama's baby, papa's maybe

  1. It is easy to know the biological mother of a child, but difficult to be sure who the biological father is.
    • “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe” is how the black feminist critic Hortense Spillers describes the reproductive burdens of black women, and her words certainly seem to apply to Sally Hemings's experience.2009, Deborah Gray White, Telling Histories: Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower, →ISBN
    • As David Buss states in his book The Dangerous Passion, there's an African phrase that captures this male fear: “Mama's baby, papa's maybe.”2010, Eva Nagorski, The Down and Dirty Dish on Revenge, →ISBN

Phrase (2) capitalized: Mama's baby, Papa's maybe

Mama's baby, Papa's maybe

  1. Alternative letter-case form of mama's baby, papa's maybe.
    • What the guys all say? Mama’s baby, Papa’s maybe. Nah—I seen that nose, and she mine.1994, Susan Straight, “Confinement”, in Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights, New York, N.Y.: Hyperion, →ISBN, page 96
    • “[…] Your name is Chiquita?” […] “That’s Spanish for petite or small. You part Mexican?” / I laughed. “Not that I know of, but you never know. Mama’s baby, Papa’s maybe.”1996, Eric Jerome Dickey, “Chiquita”, in Sister, Sister, New York, N.Y.: Signet, published December 1997, →ISBN, page 229

Forms of mama's baby, papa's maybe

alternative formMama's baby, Papa's maybe

Questions about mama's baby, papa's maybe

What does mama's baby, papa's maybe mean?
Mama's baby, papa's maybe means it is easy to know the biological mother of a child, but difficult to be sure who the biological father is.
What part of speech is mama's baby, papa's maybe?
Mama's baby, papa's maybe is a phrase.

Words near mama's baby, papa's maybe in the dictionary

  1. mama put
  2. mama puts
  3. mama shop
  4. mama shops
  5. Mama Tata
  6. mama's baby, papa's maybe
  7. mama's boy
  8. mama's boys
  9. mama's girl
  10. mama-bear
  11. mama-pian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mama's baby, papa's maybe (page history and authors); Mama's baby, Papa's maybe (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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