A mother and father figure (4)
I believe the answer is:
adam
'father figure' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'a mother' is the wordplay.
'mother' becomes 'dam' (female parent of an animal).
'a'+'dam'='ADAM'
'and' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for adam that I've seen before include "First guy" , "__ Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations" , "First man of Genesis" , "who transformed Palladian architecture?" , "First fruit-eater" .)