Talk:Mother Hen

Definition
I was recently called a mother hen. I have never quite understood what that means. Here's the definition:

"A person who fusses over others in an overprotective manner."

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

I can't figure out why a mother hen would be a bad thing. She takes care of her chicks and she leads them around. What's overprotective about that? Then I started thinking about how the word "mother" is used in a derogatory way as well. How could the word for the parent that bears the children and generally makes the world go round become an insulting word?

Since there's no mother hen entry on wikipedia, I thought I would enlist your help to understand how this came to be... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.169.171.66 (talk • contribs) 14:30, July 7, 2008 (UTC)