Historically, nursing literature has been heavily laden with "mother blaming" messages, particularly for mothers of incest victims. The author was interested to discover the origin of this "mother blaming" ideology. Because nursing has frequently adopted the beliefs and practices of medicine, a review of selected literature on incest from psychiatry and psychiatric nursing was conducted in an effort to identify the epistemics and ontology of nursing knowledge pertaining to an underlying "mother blaming" philosophy. The potential negative implications these allegations of maternal culpability have on female clients will be explored. Finally, nurses will be encouraged to adopt a feminist nursing perspective in formulating and providing care to mothers of incest survivors.