I am confused by seeing the definite article in sentences like "She is the mother of x" where x has not been mentioned yet. For example, "She lives in Pittsburgh and is the mother of two daughters and two stepdaughters." and many other examples found by this ngrams query.
Is the indefinite article acceptable here at all?
How is it different from "She is a teacher?" where we generally use the indefinite article? Is it a more general use case and how can I recognize it and avoid mistakes?