The first episode of the third season of Orange is the New Black is called "Mother's Day". Not only does it work as a description of the episode, it is a summation of the series' major themes: the inner lives of women. Traditionally, women are defined by their maternal instincts. A woman is either Medea or the virgin Mary. Orange... takes that trope, plays off it, and subverts it.
Women on OITNB are rarely defined by their offspring or lack of. They are merely defined by who they are as a person. However, there's an intense focus on the maternal narrative over the paternal narrative: Poussey's mother is dead; Big Boo's, Piper's, and Nicki's mother is WASP-y; Taystee's mother figure sent her to prison.
The characters of OITNB are almost always intensely traumatised by their mothers. Their mothers are neglectful or actively malicious: as Alex says in "Empathy is a Boner Killer", "we're all good guys in our heads". Even though the mothers of Orange... are awful, they are never demonised. The show always leads us to understand that nobody is a monster.
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