Ignore 'The Mama's Boy Myth': Keep Your Boys Close (NPR)
April 8, 2012
All Things Considered
The Mama's Boy Myth
There are plenty of pop culture references to the dangers of a close mother-son relationship. From the myth of Oedipus to the movie Psycho, narrative after narrative harps on the idea that mothers can damage their sons, make them weak, awkward and dependent.
But for millions of men, the opposite has turned out to be true, author Kate Lombardi tells NPR's Laura Sullivan. Lombardi — a mother herself — is the author of the new book, The Mama's Boy Myth: Why Keeping Our Sons Close Makes Them Stronger.
Lombardi's own relationship with her son was a major inspiration for the book. "For a long time, I thought that what we had was kind of unique," she says, "that I was somehow blessed with this especially sensitive, caring boy." But in her research for The Mama's Boy Myth, she discovered that she was far from alone.
http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2012/04/20120408_atc_06.mp3
(6 min 49 sec)
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BUT, to be bloody honest, a lot of this "oh you are a loser if you do not get out of the house" bit is nothing more than a carrot and stick used to make sure that men have no relations to anything but their job, and that their main source of self esteem is getting toys and bringing home bacon. They want people divided into so many "nuclear families" so that they feel they have no one to depend on but their stinking jobs. This keeps the power structure intact, as personal lives are often weak, with little of the talking that turns on the "eureka" bulb in people's heads ("Really, your job did that to you too?"
Of course, when they are silver haired, and retired, many men and women find that "family" is hollow, and that they have also sacrificed all the other relationships with friends and family. You have a man who has spent all his life thinking his duty was to "get a house", a woman who thought she was to "make a home", and a bunch of kids who resent Mom and Dad because their parents never understood how the whole "keeping up with the Jones" crap did damage. Then, with the approval of the spouse, the son or daughter suffles these folks into a nursing home, and this young married couple becomes well on their route to be the next group of parents dumped at the Nursing home.
Meanwhile, it's very funny how those One percenters have a habit of living in extended family situations, in their estates and mansions. Funny how no one calls the rich people "mama's boys." Can it be that they realize that in the modern age, extended families get an edge?