This article concerns the relevance of maternal ethics to psychoanalytically inspired practice, particularly the work of protecting open futures. The signifier maternal is used here not as a designation of motherhood, biological or otherwise, but as a descriptor of a kind of dedicated caretaking experienced in a variety of dialogical relationships including that of patient and therapist/analyst. Both the maternal and ethical turns in psychoanalysis and the postmodern shifts in the definition of ethics contribute to a relational ethics that takes into account past, present, and future, and an appreciation of radical perspectives on otherness.