Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Supports
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
Speaker 1: and I'm Kristin, and we'd like to welcome you to
Speaker 1: Weird Parental Psychology Week. Here on the podcast. Today we're
Speaker 1: talking about Mama's Boys, and Kristen and I learned in
Speaker 1: reading all of these sources reading up on this topic
Speaker 1: that you know there there is a social stigma against
Speaker 1: Mama's Boys, but it is so it comes from like
Speaker 1: a really deeply ingrained place that goes way back and
Speaker 1: have some very questionable dark origins. Yeah, and not to
Speaker 1: jump too far ahead, but the next episode we're going
Speaker 1: to do in Weird Parental Psychology Week will be Daddy's Girls.
Speaker 1: And pay attention in this episode because there will be
Speaker 1: some similar psychoanalytic threads that run throughout both episodes. So,
Speaker 1: when it comes to the cultural history of Mama's Boys,
Speaker 1: when we started getting and by we I mean socially
Speaker 1: began growing more mistrusting perhaps of this mother son relationship.
Speaker 1: It seems to really ramp up in the post World
Speaker 1: War two era with all of these changing ideas about masculinity,
Speaker 1: the fear of men becoming feminized as they returned to
Speaker 1: the domestic front, and also the evolution of women's roles.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting to to sort of watch the evolution
Speaker 1: of this concept as a negative thing, particularly not not
Speaker 1: as a positive. Yeah, mom is supporting her son, and
Speaker 1: it really stems from a lot of ideas about performing masculinity. Right,
Speaker 1: will this boy grow up to be sort of weak
Speaker 1: or too feminine if he loves his mom too much?
Speaker 1: There were also fears about if mom was too distance,
Speaker 1: so it's like there's no winning for mom. There were
Speaker 1: also a lot of fears about if a close relationship
Speaker 1: between a boy and his mother would make him grow
Speaker 1: up to be gay. A lot of uh social fears
Speaker 1: that were circulating around this time. That we're behind this theory,
Speaker 1: And of course we have to mention Freud and the
Speaker 1: Oedipus complex, which of course is based on the Greek
Speaker 1: myth about Oedipus who ends up killing his father to
Speaker 1: marry his mother, which is the fulfillment of his prophecy.
Speaker 1: And oh no, and then Freud was like a ha,
Speaker 1: now I have figured out all the all of the things.
Speaker 1: So basically, the Oedipus complex is this idea that boys
Speaker 1: in their early phases, are you know, developed this intense
Speaker 1: love for their mothers are threatened by their fathers, And
Speaker 1: if there is a sister in the house, he'll see
Speaker 1: that she doesn't have a penis, and then he will
Speaker 1: develop castration anxiety because he won't know why she doesn't
Speaker 1: have a penis and will assume that it must have
Speaker 1: been cut off. At some points he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: all right, I better get my act together and stop
Speaker 1: falling in love with my mother because my dad is
Speaker 1: really the man of the house. And then he grows
Speaker 1: up and I guess um transfers his love on to
Speaker 1: someone else. That's that'll be three thousand dollars, ladies and
Speaker 1: gentlemen for Christian's psychology class that she just gave you.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, we bring up Freud these days.
Speaker 1: It seems like as almost in like a cliche way,
Speaker 1: but Freud Freudian psychology and psychoanalysis sort of had American
Speaker 1: culture in a chokehold in the mid century. I mean,
Speaker 1: we were really basing a lot of how we were
Speaker 1: living our lives and understanding the dynamics of family families
Speaker 1: in our households based on Freud. Yeah, so it's interesting
Speaker 1: how how ingrained this whole concept of mama's boys and
Speaker 1: mother's son relationships was in society, because if you look
Speaker 1: back to nineteen thirty four, Vanity Fair ran an article
Speaker 1: talking about Hitler being a mama's boy. And granted this
Speaker 1: was in ninety four, this way before the war, before
Speaker 1: the US involvement in the war, and before Hitler had
Speaker 1: committed mess genocide. But in the same breath that Vanity
Speaker 1: Fair talks about how Hitler weeps easily, they also talk
Speaker 1: about how he hated his father but loved his mother
Speaker 1: with a fanatic devotion, which is the same language you
Speaker 1: see a lot of psychologists and sociologists around this time
Speaker 1: starting to use regarding mama's boys well, and to drive
Speaker 1: home the point about how culturally ingrained, even in thirty four,
Speaker 1: this idea of the Oedipus complex was just take this
Speaker 1: quote from that article. Undoubtedly Hitler grew up with a
Speaker 1: very strong Oedipus complex. Almost everyone has this to some extent,
Speaker 1: but in Hitler it was more than normally pronounced so right,
Speaker 1: the writer was talking about how Hitler was chained to quote,
Speaker 1: chained by an immense bond to the woman who is
Speaker 1: the most important factor in his life and talking about
Speaker 1: how he was driven not only by his yearnings to
Speaker 1: fulfill the great historical mission that his mother basically gave him,
Speaker 1: but subconsciously trying to prove to his then deceased father
Speaker 1: his right to independent success and power. Oh boy, so
Speaker 1: Hitler the ultimate mom's boy, and this podcast all the
Speaker 1: parents listening are terrified. Well yeah, but I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's it's interesting to talk about it from this
Speaker 1: perspective about how an American writer and an American publication
Speaker 1: was talking about this guy in these terms, because I
Speaker 1: think it illustrates how from the get go, being a
Speaker 1: mom's boy was a negative. Yeah. And a little bit
Speaker 1: after this, we have the coining of the term mom
Speaker 1: is um, and we learned about this in the book
Speaker 1: Mama's Boy, moms Um and Homophobia and Postwar American Culture
Speaker 1: by role Van been Over Watt in two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: And and and it was in two that this social commentator
Speaker 1: named Philip Wiley writes this book called Generation of Vipers,
Speaker 1: in which he coins the term mom is um in
Speaker 1: a chapter and titled Common Women and Generation of Vipers
Speaker 1: turned out to be this surprisingly successful book and was
Speaker 1: reprinted a bunch of times, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: were reading it, and this particular chapter on women and
Speaker 1: moms got a lot of attention because Wiley in it
Speaker 1: attacks mothers for instilling in their sons a supposed quote
Speaker 1: uncritical tendency toward mother worship, and he blamed technology giving
Speaker 1: women more free time in the home that made essentially
Speaker 1: shifted their focus from you know, taking all day to
Speaker 1: clean and cook and make sure that the house was
Speaker 1: ready for their husband when he came home to ben
Speaker 1: overdote on their children. Right, it's it's it's his language
Speaker 1: is dripping with misogyny. Honestly, ah, he sort of is
Speaker 1: just blaming mothers for societies ills. And this is a snowball.
Speaker 1: This really snowballs over the next couple of years. But
Speaker 1: Wiley talks about how Mom steals from the generation of
Speaker 1: women behind her that part of her boy's personality, which
Speaker 1: should have become the love of a female contemporary, Mom
Speaker 1: transmutes it into sentimentality for herself. And he even coming
Speaker 1: full circle, compares Mom to Hitler, Like, seriously, seriously, people,
Speaker 1: I bet no one knew we would be mentioning Hitler
Speaker 1: so much. And I thought, hey, I didn't realize that either,
Speaker 1: But just the next year in psychiatrist David Levy publishes
Speaker 1: a study in which he catalogs all of the harmful
Speaker 1: effects of overprotective mothers, you know, according to him, basically
Speaker 1: everything from poor eyesight from reading too much to disobedience
Speaker 1: and finickiness about food, basically placing any and all anxieties
Speaker 1: about our sons on the mother's shoulders. Yeah, because there
Speaker 1: isn't too much focus at the time on the mother
Speaker 1: daughter relationship, because I mean, you don't really need to
Speaker 1: raise strong daughters who will be independent and go out
Speaker 1: and fend for themselves in the nineteen forties, So it's
Speaker 1: all focused on the sun's And in addition to a
Speaker 1: lot of these texts being you know, dripping with misogyny,
Speaker 1: they're also dripping with homophobia. Because the undercurrent of most
Speaker 1: of this fear of mom is um is that these overprotective,
Speaker 1: you know, overly affectionate mothers are raising these boys who
Speaker 1: will turn out to be gay because they associate men
Speaker 1: being gay with femininity. And what two more terrible things
Speaker 1: could there possibly be in American society in n I no, God,
Speaker 1: I just wish all of America were nothing but strong,
Speaker 1: brawny men. I'm sure that would work out really well. Well, Caroline,
Speaker 1: we have so much more fascinating research findings to share
Speaker 1: when we come right back from a quick break. But so,
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty six, psychiatrist Edward A. Strecker blamed not
Speaker 1: only mothers. It's not just mom's fault, it's also mom's
Speaker 1: substitutes faults. So he said that there were all of
Speaker 1: these people and institutions in American society that were to
Speaker 1: blame for keeping men quote immature, things like weak fathers, grandmothers,
Speaker 1: mothers in law, governesses, nurses, and school teachers, basically other women. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in a few week, dads, but really just other
Speaker 1: other women. Really women are terrible. And so then the
Speaker 1: structures I found, the structures that he blamed really interesting,
Speaker 1: everything from religious fanaticism to political isolationism, the army itself,
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany, Kristen and Imperial Japan, and on and on
Speaker 1: and on, all of these things that are keeping men
Speaker 1: from realizing their true masculinity. And then in ninety seven
Speaker 1: the following year, sociologist Ferdinand Lundberg and psychologist Marianna Farnum
Speaker 1: ramp things up even more and they argue that women
Speaker 1: were quote one of modern civilization's major unsolved problem, which
Speaker 1: just makes me think about that song from the Sound
Speaker 1: of Music. How do you solve a problem like all
Speaker 1: of women? All of women? Yeah? Yeah, um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they compare. They put women on par like women, all
Speaker 1: of women on par with social ills like crime, poverty,
Speaker 1: and epidemic diseases. And they took a nice look back
Speaker 1: and said that, hey, guys, things are really started going
Speaker 1: downhill around the Industrial revolution to chnology coming up again technology.
Speaker 1: And they point to good old Mary woolstone Craft because
Speaker 1: they said that it was out of her quote illness
Speaker 1: arose the ideology of feminism. Yes, she the author of
Speaker 1: Vindication of the Rights of women. And so when they
Speaker 1: fast forward to the nineteen forties when they were writing,
Speaker 1: they said, the manifestation of all of these womanly induced
Speaker 1: ills his mom, this is mom, just a horrible, horrible
Speaker 1: mom who's vacuum cleaner has really cut down too much
Speaker 1: on cleaning time exactly, because if mom were focused more
Speaker 1: on cleaning and less on, you know, being a dissatisfied housewife,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't make her child pay the price for her dissatisfaction.
Speaker 1: Talking about how she's neurotic, she has penis envy, and
Speaker 1: it's all the feminist movements fault. And so with all
Speaker 1: of this commentary and academic mumbo jumbo seeping into our
Speaker 1: cultural consciousness, you have these theories developing that are taking
Speaker 1: the perils of mama's boys even farther from the internal
Speaker 1: effects of you know, hampering their social and psychosexual development,
Speaker 1: to then blaming mother's too close relationships to their sons
Speaker 1: for things such as asthma, autism, and schizophrenia. But but
Speaker 1: worst of all, of course, in in their eyes at
Speaker 1: this time, is being gay right, And sort of the
Speaker 1: the manifestation of all of these social anxieties about gay
Speaker 1: people would be people like sex police, people like Joseph McCarthy, who,
Speaker 1: in the same breath that he denounced communism, was also
Speaker 1: denouncing gay people in the United States at the time.
Speaker 1: But these anxieties became so pronounced that they started coming
Speaker 1: through in our literature and movies and other pop culture
Speaker 1: at the time. And that author vanden Over, who Kristen
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, looked at four texts in his book, and
Speaker 1: they all had a dominant mother figure with what he
Speaker 1: called a queer son Figure. They included Suddenly Last Summer,
Speaker 1: The Grotto, Portnoise Complaint, and Psycho, and he talked about
Speaker 1: how all four featured the Sun's sexual transgressions, everything from
Speaker 1: homosexuality to pedophilia and cannibalism. And then he looks at
Speaker 1: Psycho in particular, which came out in nineteen sixty and
Speaker 1: points out that Norman Bates, who is the cross dressing,
Speaker 1: mom obsessed, voyeuristic murderer character spoiler alert boiler and another
Speaker 1: author Alexander Doughty, in his book Flaming Classics Queering the
Speaker 1: film Canon, talks about how Norman, the character of Norman
Speaker 1: Bates is understood to be perverse somehow, quote he is
Speaker 1: the quintessential mama's boy gone horribly bad. But this incestuous
Speaker 1: mama's boy coding is also the basis for reading Norman
Speaker 1: as homosexual. And so there was a lot of literature
Speaker 1: around this time, a lot of this pop culture stuff,
Speaker 1: as in Psycho, where people were equating mama's boy being
Speaker 1: a mama's boy not only with homosexuality and their fears
Speaker 1: about that, but just like all of that being taken
Speaker 1: to a really evil level. Well, and then there's also
Speaker 1: the real life application of these assumptions about how, you know,
Speaker 1: the potentially devious effects of this mother's son relationship. In
Speaker 1: the case of the Boston Strangler in the early nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: the police were essentially basing their idea of the Boston
Speaker 1: Strangler as this, you know, murderer who had to be
Speaker 1: the product of an overbearing mother based on i'man sure
Speaker 1: there were pop cultural cues going on, but what we've
Speaker 1: just talked about this legacy, you know, for decades now
Speaker 1: of all of these horrific theories about the mama's boy,
Speaker 1: and it turns out when he was caught, his mother
Speaker 1: didn't fit the profile at all. No, but this allowed
Speaker 1: did terrible nous that she apparently had, and her son's
Speaker 1: assumed obsession with her had really already infiltrated society's imagination
Speaker 1: because keep in mind, they made a movie based off
Speaker 1: of the Boston Stranglers, like Psychiatric Case File before he
Speaker 1: was even caught. So the mama's boy guilty before proven innocent? Right?
Speaker 1: Is that the right way? Is it? Sure? So? Thanks
Speaker 1: to Freud and are deeply ingrained societal and securities around
Speaker 1: this time, being a mama's boy even today is super loaded,
Speaker 1: and you know, Kristen and I wanted to look into why,
Speaker 1: and as you might imagine, a lot of it has
Speaker 1: to do with gender norms and expectations. And this is
Speaker 1: something that Alana Nash talks about briefly in her book
Speaker 1: American Sweethearts teenage Girls in the twentieth century popular culture,
Speaker 1: which focus is obviously more on girls in the idea
Speaker 1: of the daddy's girl, which we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: in our next podcast. But Nash writes, because of the
Speaker 1: cultural insistence upon heterosexuality, and because heterosexual masculinity is popularly
Speaker 1: imagined to forge itself through separation from feminine influence, a
Speaker 1: boy overly identified with his mama transgresses against gender expectations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she writes about how like being a daddy's girl
Speaker 1: is more socially acceptable even if we do have all
Speaker 1: of these societal assumption is tied up, and what did
Speaker 1: daddy's girl means? It's still more socially acceptable because she says, quote,
Speaker 1: it's a diminished female paired with a dominant male that
Speaker 1: is socially normal quote unquote, and it's not pathologized the
Speaker 1: same way that a mama's boy is. Well, and there's
Speaker 1: a whole thing too when it comes to daddy's girls.
Speaker 1: There's this idea that and it makes total sense that
Speaker 1: it should be. You know, it's good for a girl
Speaker 1: to have a solid relationship with her father because he is,
Speaker 1: you know, the primary model of what a especially speaking
Speaker 1: in heteronormative terms, the primary model of what uh, loving,
Speaker 1: caring future mate should look like. You don't see the
Speaker 1: same kind of thing talked about though, in terms of
Speaker 1: mother modeling the ideal mate for her son. No, that's
Speaker 1: what we get into arrested development territory of mother boy dances,
Speaker 1: and it's horrifying. And maybe though that's because of the
Speaker 1: fact that culturally, women as they age and become mothers,
Speaker 1: tend to lose their sexual currency, whereas obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: as men grow older, they can continue to procreate and
Speaker 1: still you know, are are more sexually alluring um in
Speaker 1: their older years. There's so much wrapped up in it,
Speaker 1: and so it seems like overall, my mama's boys are
Speaker 1: more stigmatized and have been historically stigmatized more than the
Speaker 1: idea of a daddy's girl, which is really interesting to
Speaker 1: compare the two. Yeah, but a lot of research, well
Speaker 1: research and also just conversations have been happening in the
Speaker 1: past couple of years about how it's really not as
Speaker 1: bad as everybody's panicking about. Yeah, thankfully we are at
Speaker 1: this point in the twenty one century, maybe finally moving
Speaker 1: on just a little bit from Freud. It is a
Speaker 1: time of it, and we will talk more about that
Speaker 1: and more of the positive sides of this whole mama's
Speaker 1: boy thing, because it is not all bad, as sons
Speaker 1: and mothers of sons listening can at test when we
Speaker 1: come right back from a quick break. So one woman
Speaker 1: who got really really fed up with this whole mama's
Speaker 1: boy stigma is New York Times contributor turned author Kate Lombardi,
Speaker 1: who in two thousand twelve wrote the book on it,
Speaker 1: the Mama's boy myth While keeping our sons close makes
Speaker 1: them stronger, And it got a lot of people talking.
Speaker 1: I mean, she she had a ton of press for
Speaker 1: this book, which I think says a lot right because
Speaker 1: she was one of the first major people to come
Speaker 1: out and loudly proclaimed that you guys are overreacting. There
Speaker 1: is nothing wrong with a mother having a close relationship
Speaker 1: with her son. In fact, it's incredibly healthy for him.
Speaker 1: And it also seemed like in all the articles we
Speaker 1: read about her or by her, everything was prefaced with
Speaker 1: kit Lombardi has a son. They're very close. But it's
Speaker 1: not like creepy close. It's just, you know, like they're
Speaker 1: close and it's healthy. I mean, even the fact that
Speaker 1: that who wasn't writing over in the parenting blog over
Speaker 1: the New York Times was talking about how it's unfortunate
Speaker 1: that that that distinction even has to be made, and
Speaker 1: that gets to the heart of why she even wrote
Speaker 1: this book, calling it a myth in the first place,
Speaker 1: right and writing for Time magazine, Lombardi side a study
Speaker 1: from the journal Child Development where they found that baby
Speaker 1: boy is who don't form strong attachments to their mom
Speaker 1: end up becoming more aggressive and destructive children as they
Speaker 1: get older. She also cites sociologist Michael Kimmel, who writes
Speaker 1: about how when young sons are encouraged to separate prematurely
Speaker 1: from their moms, they end up becoming anxious and carry
Speaker 1: a fear of intimacy and betrayal into their adult years.
Speaker 1: But you know, you don't hear about that talked about
Speaker 1: the same way that you hear a woman talked about
Speaker 1: who has quote unquote daddy issues if she is insecure, anxious,
Speaker 1: or has a fear of intimacy. Well, that might have
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that these ideals of hyper
Speaker 1: masculinity are still very strong within our society. This was
Speaker 1: something that Carlos Santos, professor at Arizona State University, investigated
Speaker 1: for a study he presented to the American Psychological Association
Speaker 1: in two thousand and ten, and he found that as
Speaker 1: boys enter adolescents, they tend to embrace these hyper masculine
Speaker 1: stereotypes more, being influenced mostly by culture, not by this
Speaker 1: hardwiring as we often hear about. Right, and so he
Speaker 1: says that the boys that he looked at who remained
Speaker 1: close to their moms didn't end up acting as tough
Speaker 1: and we're more emotionally available, and then those same boys
Speaker 1: went on to have better rates of mental health through
Speaker 1: middle school. And the mom in this situation is is
Speaker 1: key because closeness to dad's didn't have the same effect
Speaker 1: on the boys. And he positive that it could be
Speaker 1: that dads are reinforcing intentionally or not reinforcing gender roles,
Speaker 1: and that expected typical masculine behavior and so analyzing his study,
Speaker 1: Time Magazine is talking about his findings and talks about
Speaker 1: how these like quote unquote typical masculine traits lead men
Speaker 1: to seek less medical help when it's needed, for instance.
Speaker 1: But those boys who ended up having closer emotional connections
Speaker 1: relationships with their mom, those relationships provided a sense of
Speaker 1: safety and emotional security that ended up reducing stress and
Speaker 1: fostering good health. And that makes sense because if you're
Speaker 1: more emotionally literate, basically, if you're more willing to talk
Speaker 1: about how you feel, that greatly reduces stress forming those
Speaker 1: connections with people. Well. And there is though, one thing
Speaker 1: in a lot of the stuff we read, particularly with
Speaker 1: uh Mama's Boys, that maybe research just hasn't caught up
Speaker 1: to or what, but the fact that there are a
Speaker 1: growing number of families in the United States and elsewhere
Speaker 1: where there are no moms in the house because there
Speaker 1: are two dads. So I think that the one caution
Speaker 1: with this kind of research, particularly when it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, boys can only get this particular kind of
Speaker 1: love and care and attention from a mother figure. They
Speaker 1: can only learn this sort of you know, derive this
Speaker 1: kind of emotional security from that softer feminine force. I
Speaker 1: think that I take that with a grain of salt,
Speaker 1: because I think studies have shown that two fathers can
Speaker 1: also provide that kind of openness and caring and kindness
Speaker 1: as well. Sure, well, this definitely this research definitely focuses
Speaker 1: purely on relationships where it's a woman and a man,
Speaker 1: and the woman is providing that softer feminine mothering nurturing
Speaker 1: influence and the dad and the research is definitely more
Speaker 1: stereotypical male. Yeah, he's mowing the lawn, right, He's always mow.
Speaker 1: Why won't he hug me? Well, when we're talking about
Speaker 1: the nature versus nurture with the whole Mama's boy thing,
Speaker 1: when it comes to nurture, we have to look at
Speaker 1: Italian culture because this is something that comes up a
Speaker 1: lot in Mama's Boy literature, because there is even a
Speaker 1: word in Italian for the close bond between mothers and sons,
Speaker 1: and it is amsmo, that's right, And those men who
Speaker 1: are in those super bonded relationships with mom are called
Speaker 1: the momoni, which is Italian for mamas balls. So in
Speaker 1: I love that there's stats on this fifty of Italian
Speaker 1: men between the ages of thirty four were still living
Speaker 1: at home compared to American men in that age group
Speaker 1: and researchers, mom's sons, everybody. They cite the economy that
Speaker 1: they're saving money, or they're going to school or things
Speaker 1: like that. But back in two thousand seven, the country's
Speaker 1: economic minister was like, I've had it. I've had it
Speaker 1: with this thing where you live with your mom, and
Speaker 1: he said it was time to quote get those big
Speaker 1: babies out of the house. Well, and I also found
Speaker 1: that I'm not sure what year it was, but it
Speaker 1: was in the past couple of years that members of
Speaker 1: the athlic Church delivered similar messages saying, Okay, MAMMONI your
Speaker 1: mom will be there, you maybe need to get a
Speaker 1: little more independent, and probably having to say the same
Speaker 1: thing as well to the moms because the moms feed
Speaker 1: it as well, both literally. And figured I would love
Speaker 1: an Italian Mondica for me. But Italian psychologist Julianna Proietti
Speaker 1: looked at why Italian mama's might be fostering this whole relationship,
Speaker 1: this whole living with mom nous and she found that
Speaker 1: the concept of mimesmo has its roots in the traditional
Speaker 1: role of the Italian and then way back Latin woman
Speaker 1: who often felt unfulfilled before career and divorce, we're options.
Speaker 1: So it's like she's, you know, filling some void with
Speaker 1: her son. Yeah, I mean that kind of that kind
Speaker 1: of makes sense. It makes sense, I guess. But the
Speaker 1: interesting thing about me mismo is that it seems to
Speaker 1: be a trait that is still considered endearing within the culture.
Speaker 1: Whereas if we jump back to the nineteen forties in
Speaker 1: the US, when you do have so many moms who
Speaker 1: were stuck at home and we're perhaps you know, you
Speaker 1: pouring out their attention on their children because they had
Speaker 1: nothing else that they could really do, no other career options, divorced,
Speaker 1: frowned upon, etcetera. But in American culture it spirals into
Speaker 1: this idea of mom is um right. Yeah, I wonder
Speaker 1: what the nineteen forties psychologists. I wonder if they would
Speaker 1: just tear their hair out if they looked at Italian
Speaker 1: men and their mothers. But Italian men, though, are also
Speaker 1: and now I'm just speaking in broad stereotype, so warning,
Speaker 1: but it does seem like Italian men are also known
Speaker 1: to be more outwardly hyper masculine, you know, So there,
Speaker 1: perhaps it wasn't as much of that that fear that
Speaker 1: you're becoming gentle or soft. Yeah, yeah, that a feminine panic,
Speaker 1: the purple panic and trupport. But I I know that
Speaker 1: I have been friends with and dated men who have
Speaker 1: had interesting relationships with their mothers. Yeah, this point, the
Speaker 1: point of this podcast was not to explain away the
Speaker 1: fact that there can be perhaps troublesome mother son relationships
Speaker 1: that can negatively impact their relationships with other women against
Speaker 1: speaking head or normatively, although I'm sure that that also
Speaker 1: can influence relationships and in gay relationships as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I I dated one guy who was like almost
Speaker 1: afraid of his mom. He was terrified about what she
Speaker 1: would think about a lot of stuff, and that was
Speaker 1: stressful for me, just purely for me talking from a
Speaker 1: selfish perspective. Well, and there are also instances when some
Speaker 1: guys are so close to their moms, not in the
Speaker 1: sense of having to call them every day, but just
Speaker 1: not being able to make many decisions on their own
Speaker 1: without her first inserting herself in her opinion that that
Speaker 1: could be problematic. So, not surprisingly, there are plenty of
Speaker 1: relationship experts out there with lots of advice to give
Speaker 1: about how to navigate those, uh, those kinds of situations
Speaker 1: in which you're dating someone who has a parental relationship
Speaker 1: that sort of becomes a third party in your relationship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of these columns say, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: don't be don't be put off if he has a
Speaker 1: relationship with his mom. I mean that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: Says good things. If if a man can relate to
Speaker 1: a woman in a normal, healthy way, that's good. However,
Speaker 1: if he is like christ and said, like, you know,
Speaker 1: seeking her approval for everything, her input on everything. If he,
Speaker 1: you know, at thirty five, still goes home every week
Speaker 1: to do laundry and get a home cooked meal, it
Speaker 1: might be nice, though every week it can be a
Speaker 1: lot you can buy case faces case there's some of
Speaker 1: the advice does say like take into account his age,
Speaker 1: you know, if he's twenty one versus if he's forty.
Speaker 1: So just you know, thanks to keep in mind. Kristen
Speaker 1: apparently really really wants men to go go eat dinner
Speaker 1: at their mom's house all the time. No, I'm just
Speaker 1: saying that that can also be you know, if when
Speaker 1: parents are getting older, I have I know, people who
Speaker 1: see their moms every weekend, like that's the thing that
Speaker 1: they do. I don't and it's not, then they're perfectly
Speaker 1: well adjusted people. Just case by case. This case by
Speaker 1: case if it's problematic, and if it is something that
Speaker 1: cannot that can never be canceled. For instance, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're dating a guy and you know you want
Speaker 1: to go to some kind of special event or have
Speaker 1: a special day together, and it's on a day that
Speaker 1: he typically goes to see his mom and there's like
Speaker 1: no way he can ever, ever, ever cancel that, then okay,
Speaker 1: then that might be problematic. There you go, perfect example. Well,
Speaker 1: so I'm interested to hear from people, people who have
Speaker 1: had ex apariences with mama's boys, or maybe you think
Speaker 1: you're one. Yeah, yeah, and I mean, and I will say,
Speaker 1: from at least from my anecdotal dating experience, much better
Speaker 1: to have a guy who has a healthy and close
Speaker 1: relationship with his mom than to date a guy who
Speaker 1: hates his mom. If he hates his mom, he's it
Speaker 1: can be challenging. It can be challenging. Parents just in
Speaker 1: general are challenging. Yet again, this podcast triggers my fears
Speaker 1: about having children. So keep it coming, people, let us
Speaker 1: know your thoughts on Mama's voice, and yes, if you
Speaker 1: are one, and if you have been with one or
Speaker 1: currently with one, tell us all of your experiences, your
Speaker 1: tips were navigating it, all of your thoughts. Mom Stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com is our email address.
Speaker 1: You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
Speaker 1: messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
Speaker 1: to share with you right now. Well, I have a
Speaker 1: letter here from MICHAELA about our middle Child episode. She says,
Speaker 1: I have the pleasant double whammy of middle child syndrome
Speaker 1: by not only being a middle but being a twin
Speaker 1: in the middle. I have an older, younger and twin sister.
Speaker 1: It doesn't get much more middle e than that. So
Speaker 1: not only did I get my older sisters hand me
Speaker 1: down run down car when I got my driver's license,
Speaker 1: but I had to share it with my twin. The youngest,
Speaker 1: of course, got a shiny new one when her turn
Speaker 1: came around. See that resentment still shining through nearly a
Speaker 1: decade later. I think the most interesting thing about sharing
Speaker 1: middledom is that my twin and I have each veered
Speaker 1: in opposite directions. Whereas I tend more toward the oldest child,
Speaker 1: characteristics of being motherly and responsible. My twin tends toward
Speaker 1: the youngest placement, with the characteristics of being sociable and
Speaker 1: laid back. We're both definitely middle children, and my other
Speaker 1: sisters definitely fit their placement as well. I've always been
Speaker 1: the type to buy into the birth order dynamics. My
Speaker 1: family is a prime example. So thanks MICHAELA. And I've
Speaker 1: got a letter here from Kelly which got me so
Speaker 1: excited when I saw it in the Stuff I've Never
Speaker 1: Told You in box, because she was responding to our
Speaker 1: episode a while back Antarctic Women, in which we asked
Speaker 1: if any you Know listeners had been to Antarctica we're
Speaker 1: working there, and she has been, so Kelly writes, I'm
Speaker 1: playing catch up on the podcast and just got to
Speaker 1: the one about the history of women in Antarctica. I
Speaker 1: was particularly excited to hear this since I've worked in
Speaker 1: both the Arctic and Antarctic over the course of my
Speaker 1: MS and PhD. I've been to Antarctica four times, twice
Speaker 1: to Palmerciation on the South America Peninsula side and twice
Speaker 1: to McMurdo Station in the Australian New Zealand sector. Antarctica
Speaker 1: will always hold a place in my heart as well
Speaker 1: as it's where I met my husband. We were introduced
Speaker 1: by David Attenborough, a voice of Frozen Planet and Planet Earth,
Speaker 1: at the BBC's rap party for Frozen Planet. About a
Speaker 1: week after we started dating, insofar as you can date
Speaker 1: on ice, he found out he would be wintering over.
Speaker 1: He was on ice for six more months, fourteen months
Speaker 1: total for him, before we finally got to see each
Speaker 1: other again. We've been married for a little over a
Speaker 1: year now and it's always an adventure. I switched up
Speaker 1: polls for my dissertation research. I'm now studying preferential chemical
Speaker 1: weathering in front of the Greenland ice sheet. I've been
Speaker 1: to various parts of western Greenland for the last three summers,
Speaker 1: and I found my field work in the Arctic to
Speaker 1: be a lot more logistically challenging. So that's probably because
Speaker 1: I've been the one in charge of getting permits, making
Speaker 1: sure we all have our gear, finding places to stay,
Speaker 1: and just generally running the show. I have a lot
Speaker 1: of respect for the early explorers who had to figure
Speaker 1: out what they needed for months and have contingency plans
Speaker 1: when something inevitably went wrong. So thanks for bringing up
Speaker 1: the Antarctic. Well, thank you, Kelly. I love that letter.
Speaker 1: I love her story. I love that she's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm at my husband on Antarctica or whatever, whatever, whatever,
Speaker 1: No big deal, just Antarctica. I mean, come on, an
Speaker 1: antarctic love story. Have David Attenborough make a make a
Speaker 1: documentary about that? Voice it over. It's an idea. So,
Speaker 1: if you have any letters to send to us, mom
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuffworks dot com is our email address
Speaker 1: and for a links to all of our social media
Speaker 1: as well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts,
Speaker 1: which include links to sources that we cite throughout them.
Speaker 1: Head on over to stuff mom Never Told You dot com,
Speaker 1: or moral this and thousands of other topics. Is it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com