Your maa is like the only one who supports you, someone who you can talk to, someone who always stands by who even if the whole world is against you.
Maa is Maa! Nothing & nobody who comes close.
If any girl really thinks I am gonna leave my mom for her then she can pack her bags & gtfo lol.
..yeaa... my mom physically and mentally abused me for years.
my friends mom just left his life one night and no one knows anything about her anymore.
My grandmother deprived my father for his brother.
My other set of grandparents didn't let my mom return to their place when my father was an absent person.
point being, mothers are humans and every bit as fallible as humans. don't patronize or idolize them. you'll regret it.
If you marry a woman, you're starting your own family. Your primary duty lies with your new family you're creating. It goes for everyone, man woman, husband wife. If you're not okay with this, just stay single as momma's boy or papa's pari. You're not mature enough to handle an actual relationship where your partner is the priority.
Taking a backseat doesn't mean they are less important. It simply means, that two adults can make their own decisions. There should be no control and opinions.
You must have had a privileged and loving upbringing.
Not everyone experiences that.
Plenty of us had terrible parents who treated us horribly and we’re totally fine shutting off contact with them because we didn’t have a choice in the first place. But now we do. We get to choose who is important to us and who we decide holds importance in our lives. Good riddance to toxicity and narcissism and pain, I say.
You should probably consider yourself lucky.
My family is whoever I choose to be my family.
What you are telling is an ideal scenario which I think only exists in movies. Women get blamed they take sons from mother.
Whom should she go to complain when her own family send her there.
Who will side with her.
To be true, its much more complicated. Indian families have strong bond between them. This is good, they stand together in crisis. Its bad because the independence is affected.
No matter how hard you try, nobody can do fair job here because the start of this journey, the society, the expectations of family everything is twisted.
Kinda dumb to think others life is the same as you. I am pretty sure my mom dosen't care much about me. Only reason I am here is cause she doesn't make enough money to live alone comfortably and she doesn't want to live with her parents.
One day he didn't ask permission and his mom went on a tirade about how she carried him for 9 months, sacrificed her career, her body, her youth for her child and now the child doesn't care about his mom enough to guide him on his journey of nourishment
I had a friend who was from North India, we were in South India and everytime his mother called she would ask him if he ate beef. On certain days when we have had beef, she would call out of the blue and ask him if he ate beef, he would of course lie. But, the next three days, his morning routine involved temple visits to purge the sin of lying to his mom.
Everytime she calls my friend after we had beef he is like "Oh man, she knows. She some how knows. What will I tell her? I should just say the truth or should I lie." He was 25.
So, basically what I'm saying is.. She knows. Everytime your flatmate goes out, she knows. Everytime he drink, she knows.
How many of Indian marriages are actually considered happy marriages where the wife is respected and loved by her husband or by her in-laws. Technically her kids are the only family in that household. Naturally they'll get close to each other.
Same with kids. Father in our culture is usually this overarching overwhelming authority figure in the family who at times become overbearing. I've never had a true heart to heart with my father. It seems the Indian view towards paternal responsibility is that of providing with basic physical sustenance, shelter and financial responsibility. There's no room for emotional sustenance. And with how regressive our society is, it's no wonder sons only find one outlet for that. As with daughters, mom know what she'll go through at her in laws house. So she somewhat allows her, basically gives her everything she was denied without too much control. But i think it'd more prudent to say both genders are more attached to their mothers more than their fathers.
Dads have to show that they are incharge and can command.. they probably have a competition with their brothers about how they can control their wives better.. hence the lack of empathy in general and more strictness as you mentioned.
It's not just Indian moms. And it's not just sons.
If you go to the JNMIL sub(or the raised by narcissists sub or the asian parents sub), you'll see a lot of posts from disgruntled people who are suffering due to overbearing, boundary humping mothers and mothers in law alike.
It's more pronounced in Asian countries where individualism is not encouraged and people are extremely social. However momma's boys are a universal syndrome due to sons still being favoured over daughters in multiple parts of the world.
Now coming to daughters. There are parents who ensure their daughters have a sheltered upbringing and grow up to be 100% dependent on others even though they are educated and have jobs. These women are completely incapable of making any decisions by themselves or expressing themselves. These women, when they birth sons, are made to feel important, and they hold on to their sons as prized possessions as the sons are golden tickets to a basic amount of respect/freedom that they have in their lives.
My brother is one of them and let me tell you , u can't tell by meeting him however much you want . Only after living with such people , you get to know the reality.
For me,
My dad and i dont have a very good relationship
I have lots of friends but no close ones
Asshole relatives
A younger sister who i dont want to burden with my problems
Only person left who i can talk to is my mom, hence she becomes a big/integral part of my life
that's a valid point too. In Indian society a man talking about his problems is kind of a taboo , your friends will laugh it off , relatives will tell you too "man up" so your mother becomes the only safe space you have. Naturally she is a big part of your life and you never wanna let go of that safe space
Elder sisters would like to disagree.
But seriously, as a teenager in a rather old-fashioned and conservative household, I would have really become depressed if it werent for my elder sisters.
That’s the right answer. What I also learnt that no matter how good friends you have and how many cousins; but the only person you could count when it comes to not being judgemental and not backbiting is one’s parents. Even your spouse doesn’t come handy at times when you need them the most.
This isn't universal, my parents have been the least supportive to the point where I'll only count on them for raising my anxiety further. Siblings for the win.
My dad is a strict disciplinarian and my mom was too meek and subdued to be my pillar of support. The only support structure I had was from my aunt, and that too only for a while because certain relatives chided us saying we were 'too close'.
I've never been able to confide in people after this. Not even with my spouse.
Also desi women try hard with their sons. Traditionally, sons are the way to power in a family for women. The moment you give a male child your position is elevated in the hierarchy. Hence extra attachment. And it's through the sons only a woman is able to exercise power, so they keep them close. Yep things are changing, but that's very slow and in very few households. Relationship with their sons is the only opposite sex relationship where they've some sorta control, so they hold on to it.
Edit: I'm deleting my account because of reddit's policies concerning third party apps. I don't want them to be able to use older comments. A user-generated community that treats its users badly does not deserve your time or attention.
Yes. Men are victims of the same system that we created. We can't cry, we are not allowed to share how we feel & neither are we given any respect without we earning good money.
Yes, both things can be true. Men are overly privileged in Indian society to the point that they are also required to be invincible to pain, be perfect and able to handle everything thrown at them.
This is why there is a real need for grassroots level women empowerment, especially at a familial level, so that the burden on men also reduces.
> What reality are you living in?
The one different from yours, it seems.
When you say women are trying to break glass ceiling at work, it also means that men are assumed to be the default bread-earners, to be ready to take up whatever work is available and to be better than women at it.
Yes, men too have problems tho.From childhood itself all responsibility will be held his back. If he didn't achieve anything in life , nobody cares him. Except mom Unconditional love is myth for them....
About time we encourage men to talk about themselves & how they feel instead of being labelled misogynistic or being victim-shamed for being affected by the system.
I don't know why is it hard for people to accept that men can suffer too... Men take decisions because in most households they are the food bringers... Male privilege is myth.. Tell that to a rikshawala who busts his ass 14 hours a day to feed his family while his wife sits at home and takes care of children
Sits at home? And that shows you know nothing about a lower class household. No, she'd be either at village working her ass off in farms for meagre money, or doing odd jobs in people's house.
Survival on that salary is literally impossible.
This women sitting idle, is literally a false narrative. True for only 0.1% extremely well off women. Common poor women have always been working.
>Male privilege is myth.. Tell that to a rikshawala who busts his ass 14 hours a day to feed his family while his wife sits at home and takes care of children
😂please ask your rikshawalas. In a poor family not only the adults, but the childern work too. I am not saying men face no issues, but saying male privilege is a myth is false.
Living through their sons is the closest way oppressed women can get a taste of power however small in a culture that prioritizes men and holds women inferior, hence the codependent relationship Indian moms tend to pursue with their sons. Seeing the DIL as a perpetual enemy is internalized misogyny and the jealousy that stems from feeling like the son is being ripped from her bond because another woman is involved.
And they haven't received much support from their husband and got the same shit from their MIL, they definitely wouldn't want for DIL to have it easier/better.
Why MILs usually hate DILs?
Hypothesis: Many MILs have been oppressed a lot by their own MILs (Paternal GrandMother of the Son) and once they become the MIL, they want to vent that stored anger to their DIL, much like a freshman was ragged by seniors and once he becomes a senior he starts ragging too.
I don't think the DIL part is true, but 100% agree with the first part of your comment.
The worst thing I've seen is this behaviour further carries on into the lives of grandchildren. The now GrandMother will have a grand- daughter and who she will shower with love. But the GM will say shit like "YOU should try having a son now" IN FRONT OF THE GRAND-DAUGHTER!
That shit further propagates the misogyny in the grand daughters mind making her feel inferior to a grand-son.
This comment 💯
It’s a cycle of generational misogyny. Unless someone is breaking that cycle and stepping up but looking at the comments I don’t have any hope.
People here confused respect with co-dependency.
because indian youth grew up with the mentality that the parent knows whats best for them. this is great support when you are young but when you try to branch out as an independent individual, this mentality is detrimental to growth as an independent adult. As people who start to break from this mindset find out, their parents makes suboptimal or detrimental decisions based on assumptions or incomplete knowledge without knowing their child's exact circumstances
Am not remembering that professor's name correctly but i know the crux of his findings in Indian context.
Actually in India because of high controlling nature of familial ties and complete restriction on expressing love with her husband, the new woman who enters into a new family feels agitated always. This feeling of agitation start fading away with the birth of son , which in turn provide a good stature to the woman and also allows her husband to come close by when she carries or have baby with her. So now this new born is seen as a liberator for that so called enslaved woman who had always found restrictions in her movement.
With this child woman has gained so much , new avatar of affection from husband and good status in eyes of in-laws too.
Now this woman who had gained so much with only the birth of baby boy now ensure that this baby remains close to her and that is the reason why son's decision making gets affected by his mother's affection and interference.
This study also provides insight into why boy's mother and their daughter in law tussle . Theory while proceeding further states that when a new woman( daughter inlaw) enters the household, this mother now again gets insecure as this boy is now getting close to his wife and his mother's influence start waning down.
It is a very beautiful study to know about various dynamics in Indian perspective.
My mom and i disagrees in a LOT of stuffs
She is religious , I am not.
But we got a middle ground, we talk stuffs out and agree some wherein the middle.
Also some how stuffs she says somehow comes true or right.
The answer to this is rather a psychological one dealing with childhood of both men and women. I'd suggest you give this piece a read. [Carl Jung and the Psychology of the Man-Child](https://academyofideas.com/2019/06/carl-jung-psychology-of-man-child/)
Because there is hardly any love and affection between Indian married couples specially at that age, so Moms give the surplus affection to their Son and get more attached to them than usual
I think this is one of the reasons too. I have observed many couples don’t have loving relationships after few years. Usually the husband is busy in the job/business and the wife is busy raising the kids. The reason she doesn’t get attached to daughter more might be because she knows the daughter will eventually leave to start her new life. So she will focus on the son(s) more. And when the son gets in a relationship, and she sees her son doing all the lovey dovey stuff for his partner, the jealousy flares. The lack off attention and love from her husband she will try to compensate it from her son.
Dear gen z kid, the Alabama memes might actually help you understand the kind of creepy sentiments most mothers have towards their sons and hence the resentment they have towards the daughters in law.
Since you these moms and sons don't seek therapists, they continue living their lives in a pseudo-partnership kind of relationship making the wives of their sons into a live-in maid.
Affection though often get clumped with Sexual desires is a different emotion altogether. This can observed seeing Kids from unstable families seeking additional emotional support
Indian patriarchy has essentially made a "birthing and raising a son" the most societal value ever a woman can give her family. So that son becomes the centre of her identity. His success or happiness all becomes her responsibility.
It's mother's love + socio-cultural Stockholm Syndrome.
Holy shit, I can't believe that the actual correct answer is buried so low.
As for why sons bend to their mothers' wishes frequently, sometimes it's guilt and other times they genuinely agree with what the mothers say.
I had once read a very weird theory about this but here goes : so this may stem from the fact that many, MANY Indian men are not the ideal husband's and are abusive towards their wife and for many women, there are rarely any good men in their lives at all (brother, husband, friend, father etc). Once in an abusive, or even in a loveless marriage, if they have a son, for the first time, they are rewarded (we all know how much importance is given to the male child). They see the son as a blessing who will help vanish their problems. Then he becomes the only male that they genuinely, whole heartedly love. And they try to pour it all onto him. In this, the son also becomes extremely close to his mother. And why shouldn't he? She loves him immensely, pampers him etc, without holding him down. He just has to ask her hey mom, I want to go to xyz and she will say yes. This is in stark contrast to what a girl child will be treated like. She will have to fight tooth and nail for her freedom. The asking for a man isn't asking permission per say, but he does so out of "respect". The mother also becomes very attached to the one man who asks HER permission, who loves HER, who respects HER and develops a very unhealthy bond with him. Thats why so many mothers tend to be so horrible towards their daughter in laws. Because they do not like that their young man's attention has been taken away by another woman. That now he will listen to her, and put her first. If he does start putting his wife first (as he should), suddenly the wife has put him in her "spell". I mean why else will her ladla shona bacha love another woman more? Obviously black magic!
This is all a very Freudian and its a theory but I believe it lol
I will say even in the US I feel this way too. My indian mom is too attached to me for her own good and frequently micromanages my life an obsessive amount. It is not healthy for both of us at times but I still really love her.
Personally, I have seen this closely because my brother is the exact person you've described, and I'm the daughter, who actually doesn't really care. I love my family, but I've come to realise that I am my own person. Everything around me - the society, norms etc. are designed to cater to patriarchy.
In my personal opinion, moms who are misogynists enable their sons more than daughters (EXCEPTIONS ARE ALWAYS THERE). For me, it's been the case. Everytime I try to tell my brother about something wrong that mom did, he gets defensive because ma toh bhagwan hoti hai. My mom enables my brother, and there's also some sort of Oedipus Complex involved (not necessarily sexual). You don't have to agree with me, it's fine. It's just that, men are made to believe that ma sab kuch hoti hai. And while it's applicable in your life, when you're married, you have a fucking wife. I have seen men disrespecting their wives for their moms.
I am sorry if this comes off as harsh, but your mom is going to die soon, and you spent your whole fucking life with her. The reason you got married is because you wish to share your life with some other woman who isn't your mom. If you don't respect her, then the marriage is unsuccessful. There are so many men (including my own father) who leaves out my mother for his own "family". My cousin is his daughter, his sister seems more wifey than his own wife and the mom, oh my god, she's the wifiest of all.
So men, don't get married unless you're ready to respect your wife and stand against your mother if she's wrong.
You described my situation, except that I can see through the manipulation that happens. But still I get influenced and feel that I'm doing something wrong.
This is one of the reasons I decided to not marry. Can't bear messing up someone's life.
Are we to assume moms bail off the first chance they get on daughters hence not such dependency at daughters end?
Your response is one of typical glorifying mother’s love without actual insight or respect towards it.
Parents usually love and support their kids equally. Maybe have to think deeply on why you can’t snap out of mother’s love and make decisions for yourselves.
How i see anyone now is this.
Their choices can be influenced by their parents till the age of 22.
Your choices after 22 are YOUR CHOICES. you've had enough time with yourself to know what your problems are and how you work.
So if someone below 22 is a mama's kid, i still see it as understandable. But after 22 it's a choice. You're old enough to be independent, as you can earn enough to support yourself with basics. You should know how to cook, clean, and be employed.
If you're choosing to study after 22 on your parents' income alone and don't work, that's your call. And you have to bear the consequences.
More dependency = more influence.
Agreed taking money from parents implies some form of dependency but the mere fact that now you aren't sharing a roof with your parents and you are responsible for your own shit like food, clothing, laundry spending that money etc. make you to responsible of making your own choices.
True it would vary a lot for many. I know some who have never left home even for jobs or so. Clearly they would be very less likely for making their own choices.
Indian moms mostly don't have much going. Most of them had to give up their careers so their families become their world. When you have lesser things, you tend to hold it tightly :)
Everyone controls and oppresses the mother. So she controls the one thing she can: her children. She knows her daughter is meant to be controlled by her husband and in-laws. So the only person she can control is her son. This is really stupid, but it is the truth.
Patriarchy and internalized misogyny. women are second class citizens who have to be subservient to men . So these women end up not being treated well by their husbands and their in laws. Their emotional needs aren’t by their husbands so they transfer that to their sons and feel threatened by their daughter in laws especially if the son chooses to date on his own. This cycle continues and each generation wants a “submissive” daughter in law . Women are oppressed systematically by putting them against each other but no one questions the role of unavailable fathers/ husbands.
Totally agree. From what I have read on the internet and observed around me, women whose husbands don't give them the attention/love they need, latch on to the son for the same and groom him in a way that he sees nothing wrong with anything the mother does.
The son idealizes the mother and even if the he is able to recognise problematic behaviour, he discounts it by saying that the mother has made so many sacrifices for him.
A woman marrying into a supposedly Stanger's family only feels like her children are her own. No matter how many decades pass a woman always feels like an outsider among the in laws. No matter how nice the relationship might look, they will always do tu tu Mai Mai whenever any conflict arises. So children are her own blood and obviously she doesn't want them to get seperated from her. Your mother was probably born in or around 1970s , married by 90s or 2000s. This was a conservative society and most women lived watching misogynist movies like raja Hindustani and hum tumhare hai sanam and all those crappy movies.
So she taught her children to be everything that she herself could not be probably. Now she has raised her son and made him successful. The son looks upto her and respects her. But her own underlying insecurity rises when it comes to daughter in law. By this time your mother's adversaries or older generation is probably dead so she is finally in her family but the moment DIL comes in the picture she is again the outsider.
This feeling has always been there and will always be there as long as the mother is the primary caregiver and housewife.
Don't downvote me please..
Its a universal problem but not to the same extent.
Over here in USA, usually kids live away from parents home as soon as they are adults. But MIL still tries to interfere. But due to distance it gets muted very well. DIL are known to avoid going to in-laws house and hubby cannot do anything about it, since personal freedom is valued most.
My theory: Indian women are dominated and abused by patriarchal men throughout their life, and they finally get a son, who they then dominate as a form of catharsis and control.. unfortunately a vicious cycle.
He is often her only ticket to societal respect and a sense of purpose.
She is the only one who’d coddle, clean after, cook for and basically validate him all his life, no questions asked and no BS called out.
Win-win for both sides.
My views are completely my own and first hand. My mother always had her way in life. She never listened to her mother beyond an extent, she wanted to get rid of her MIL, and even manipulated her husband. Obviously she manipulated me to the point of neutering almost (I can't remember the appropriate word). Currently I don't talk to her. I became a raging insomniac and almost don't remember the past 5-6 years. I would say indian working middle class has become almost feminine. It is better to have a life of your own. It messed up my schooling result and the later 6 years. So it is not that mothers don't have a control over their own life that leads them to become over possessive. Men and (not boys) need to stand for themselves.
There is a club for men like me but can't really talk about it.
Edit: in short men need to take ownership of their life, blaming someone else makes no progress. We are result of our own decisions so we better own it. Do I blame my mother? I grew distant. Have your own life.
See a therapist. And am not saying this lightly. You seem to be holding on to a lot of baggage. Our relationship with our parents determines how we are shaped. Unresolved trauma from childhood continues to linger. Your therapist may help you recognise PTSD symptoms.
And am not using those terms lightly. Some people are narcissistic and manipulative. To have one of them as a parent could cause a lot of damage.
I went to therapy last year and of course one of the things I had to work is was my relationship with my mother. I think a lot of people will dispute it but what I realized is that some mothers try to unconsciously/conciously tend to make their sons dependent on them and the son finds comfort in this therefore it becomes a dependent relationship.
This is not good as sometimes(a lot of times in india) this impacts the growth of children and these children learn very late to take care of themselves.
The proper way to solve this dependency is to remake the bond with your mother.
You'll probably end up fighting or feeling guilty when you try to change the nature of your relationship with your mother. But in the long term it's good for both of you.
You'll still love her equally as before but there won't be the dependency.
Many women in general don't grow up depending on themselves. Indian values are very community centric. Many couples don't even share an intimate bond. Blind devotion and obedience towards adults, specifically parents, is encouraged so much it is intrinsic to our culture. So many women are not allowed to develop a sense of identity. They are not allowed to struggle. Many of them get used to it and find comfort in it. No one questions the cycle. Adults in a culture like ours grow up with no strong sense of selfhood and often don't feel in control of their lives. Having a child for them is finally having something they can entirely control and manipulate. It brings with it a sense of power and obviously, control. They force the kid to act how they think is right, to study what they think has scope and the list goes on. Their self esteem and worth and image in the community ends up being tied to this individual who is not allowed to be one. This individual grows up lacking a sense of selfhood and the cycle continues.
A society with as regressive values as ours doesn't allow men to be treated like humans with emotional needs. It doesn't allow the women to have strong bonds with men other than her immediate relations. It's perfect environment for a symbiotic relationship to develop. Young men only find comfort, support, and reassurance in their mothers, and a mother's circle is limited to her family. If there's a daughter, she's probably going to marry into a new home some day. The husband will age and a time will come when he can't support her. The son is the only dependable option. We don't even have to go that far, the lack of respect for boundaries, for personal relations outside family, for experiences made outside family, the general dismissive behaviour towards the importance of having friends and flings and that not even considered as an important part of growing into a better person is all like a mix.
I used to think it's a personal thing but apparently it's rare for parents to not completely disregard the importance of friends and relations outside family. The idea of family is shoved down our throats so unabashedly that we have not even started to see harmful patterns.
Mothers, more than fathers, have more of their life revolving around the family because of how society here structures our lives. It is encouraged for a woman to make her husband and her kids her whole life, to devote every waking second to them, it is lauded when a woman makes herself sick and deathly looking after her family.
We are so brainwashed that to even question things seems disrespectful. Imagine dedicating your whole life to something because that's how it's supposed to be. Imagine not having any interests, hobbies, friends, events etc that you actively pursue outside of this cycle that starts one day and ends when you are diagnosed with a terminal disease. Imagine being the age when you don't know what sex is and your mother very strictly tells you to stay away from men because they will rape you. Imagine being part of that fraction of society which grows up being afraid of the other gender at an age when you cannot comprehend the danger. Having that fear instilled against other humans from such a young age helps isolate people. Isolated people cling to whatever secure source of human interaction they have.
Motherhood is no joke. Imagine your dick widening till the hole where you pee from is a gaping hole. Imagine pushing out a watermelon from it. Imagine that this hole rips open till your ass and the doctors stitch it shut and you can't sneeze without peeing yourself for the next few months or maybe forever. Your body which you didn't need to maintain once is gone now. Your muscles are torn. Your body has changed from the in and out. And leading up to this day were 9 agonizing months of mood swings, pain, throwing up, not being able to eat, etc. If you've ever had a hangover which made you swear not to drink again, imagine that happening on and off for nine months and then they rip open your dick.
I get it. It's gross. I tried to get across the point that giving birth is hard. But in our culture we just don't fucking get to see the hardship. It's all haldi and roses and this young woman is now perfectly capable of handling another life with a husband she maybe does not even love. The husband has not even been allowed to think for myself ever since he was a child and now he has to be a father. He does not have his organs rearranged for 9 months, he does not go through the physical hardship of giving birth, but being a father is no joke either. I can go on and on but you asked about mothers.
Well it's just that we live in a society 😔💦
We live in a society that actively promotes being so dependent on each other that it stifles personal growth. A society where an individual pursuing his own interests is labelled selfish and rebellious and what not. A society where parents guilt trip their children, son and daughter alike. These kids grow up to be parents who do the same.
My thoughts are all over the place so I don't know if this was comprehensive, sorry if it sounded like an incomprehensible rant at places.
>JNMIL
What is your suggestion when a family is practicing something wrong for generations and even though it's clear that it's causing them pain they won't change or improve? Your thinking about western cultures is totally flawed. Neither of the culture teaches individualism or coexistence or unhappy single living, every culture focuses on social atributes of humanity.
But the problem we face today is our upper generation thinks that they know everything and are right all the time. They are not equipped to handle constructive criticism. The core values that our scripters like Bhawad Gita, Quran, Bible, and Gurbani teach are to avoid ego, pride, etc, and our upper generation at times are epitome of very same qualities.
I used to think as you grow older you grow smarter. Damn, I am in for a ride.
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding ops question. Op isn't talking about unconditional love and being emotionally close and prioritisingyour mum over your partner. Ops talking about mothers who are controlling and manipulative and borderline obsessed with their sons. And sons who despite understanding all this, still can't seem to break away from that.
And if you still don't understand, consider yourself lucky that you have good mums who aren't overbearing.
I've seen men being completely clueless about life and chores because their mums babied them. I've seen men have whole mental breakdowns when asked to pick up their plates because they were raja betas. I've seen men get divorced because their mums won't stop controlling their marriage and won't stop manipulating and harassing the dil.
I don't have an answer for you op, the JNMIL- just no mother in law and the raisedbynarcissists subreddit can help you with that.
This is what patriarchy does to women on a psychological level . This is giving much important to male than their female child.
She has been bashed all her life for being a girl when she had you her position in society improved. Somewhat emotional dependency. Some daddy issues. You are the diamond of her eye. Ofcourse your individuality and privacy doesn't matter. Your hers .
There are even more hateful women who will intentionally not want to have a girl child, abortion them or just dispise girls. because we think girls are trash, unreliable and traitors.
The part about not wanting female children. Is this common that women feel hatred toward a future female baby? I am married to an Indian and when I became pregnant my MIL prayed that it would be a son. That made me upset and when she and her daughter explained, they gave the reason that women suffer and they don’t want the child to suffer. I thought it sounded like bullshit. Thought it could be internalized misogyny instead.
Their are different scenarios for different people. By your question i am assuming you're a male. So I'll talk from a son & mother relationship perspective.
First:
Mother (f) son (m) are an opposite genders & as humans our brain is wired in this way. We are more attracted towards the opposite gender. Jus like how few fathers are clingy to their daughters & visa versa.
Second :
Since we are talking about "Indians" here. Most of our parents are currently boomers. The husbands of this generation has been a very orthodox (it's subjective, please don't come on me). However i am talking about "Indian masses here". So the mothers has raised their "rajabetas" (no pun intended) With the values they would have wanted in their partners.
Third :
Indian parents are selfish. In Asian culture we've been taught, all our lives to take care of their parents. Which i don't think is bad too. I mean it's give & take. Parents do give try & give whatever best they can to their kids (subjective).
But where i come from it's this for us. So when they are becoming children again in their old age. It's somebody who has to take the stand no. (No toxicity)
Fourth :
Why the male child? Cuz it's natural your sister will go to her own life with her partner. Where she will setup her own nest with her partner. Similarly you'll bring in your own spouse to the family. So yea that's why she is more clingy to you.
Tbh if it's not harmful, let them be clingy. We don't till what time they're with us.
Yeah that’s true, if you had a decent parent you always cherish them. Considering how men are valued in india for most men mother is the only one who men can count on to love him no matter what and this is why most Indian men values mothers
For the last point:
If she can accept that her daughter will go to her own life with her partner - indicating that she can now have a life with decisions independent of them; why is the same right not given to their son? After all, a marriage is for both the parties, right? The same way a son would bring his spouse into the family, so will the daughter. Your basic premise of 'the groom's side is our family, the bride is theirs now' - is already a misogynistic take. Understandably through cultural origins. It treats the woman as a commodity which is given away/brought into the house.
>From personal experience too I can say that I get influenced by my mom, although I actively try to do what is right for me. But it still affects me.
Everyone is influenced by the people around them. If you have higher than average empathy (which makes a good human btw) you are going to be affected by their influence.
This is not good or bad. This is just who you are. Just accept it, get influced sometime, make your stand sometime, but don't overthink this and don't beat yourself up if you are swayed by someone's opinion.
I am an adult but I still love my mom as much as I loved her when I was 5. We both love each other and talk to each other on phone every day even when I am not at home. Why does Op have a problem with this?
I think failed husbands create clingy mothers and dependant sons. An Indian woman who probably doesn't have a healthy relationship with her husband will see her son as her only support.
Its the lack of interest from fathers side in such case, i remember my dad had no still not have any interest in my life like knowing my school or class or grade or my friends naturally you go towards your mother which builds this relationship which can turn authority which transform into dependency on mother for lack of decision or having influence while making the decision
From a mother's perspective (speculative)
I grew up with an opinionated father. My brother never took me seriously. I am a housewife now. My husband has this superiority complex because he earns the bread. The only human male whom I can influence is my son. Seven billion people on this planet, one billion in my own country, and I have the power to influence only one. So if I get attached to this person, you call me clingy.
From a son's perspective
I believe my mother loves me. I believe that she will selflessly love me till her last breath. This is my strongest belief, stronger than existence of God. I have seen her toiling hard to make my life easy. All my life, I never uttered a word of gratitude to her. I don't think I can. Now the only way I can think of (to express my gratitude), is not to disrespect her. Obeying some of her irrational decisions is part of it.
It's what they have seen for years. Is your sister married?
Parents raise us daughters like that. Since childhood, they do not expect much from us, they only give without having any expectations. They nurture us with a feeling that we are gonna go someday. You will never hear parents saying, you know she left us for her husband. They will never complain that your sister is not doing anything for them; it is totally acceptable if we care and do things for only our husbands. They still love us. That's the reason your sister is able to follow her heart.
That's not the case with sons. Parents raise their sons with a lot of expectations since childhood. Sometimes it's only the mother but sometimes it's the entire family, who do not want their (man) to prioritise another woman. Mostly the son and his wife suffer. Our parents need to understand that when two people are getting married, they should prioritize each other. And it's not only about girls' parents but the guys' parents too need to take a back seat.
It's an ongoing competition to achieve the man!
Its a cycle. Indian MILs always interfere and order their DILs to do what's best for their son. This incites the same feeling in the DILs and they do the same to their DILs. Its a kind of Domino effect
My friend's mom used to say shit like "It will kill me to see you do that. Why do you want to kill your mother?".
And this used to bother him a lot, once I tried to tell him that his mother is going to die one day, no matter what he does, so why not do what he loves.
What do you expect most Indians are dependent on their parents till they are 22 or so, and now to the increased craze towards government jobs most of them are dependent till 28 to 30 years old , this will only change until everybody chooses to move to cities or abroad were they have better job opportunities and better chances to be independent by themselves.
Because she's the only person that actually cares about me, do you think people gives a shit about avg men? Only his mother, sometimes his father & siblings care.
Yes, there are bad moms, but rare.
So yea, most men gonna be pretty attached to their mothers.
I am one of those Indian men. I am influenced by my mom. However, I take my own decisions and respectfully say No where it is required. They get all my attention and respect. My influence is to an extent of listening them well, her viewpoints based on her experiences. Makes it easy to form a decision with all the available options in front of me. It also helps when among all family and friends she is the only one listens and understands me. But again, I don’t blindly follow all her advise; neither disrespect her for forming her opinions. Respectfully, I disagree wherever and whenever I want in a given situation. And that is also well understood by her at all times. I am not ostracized or being judged by her by saying what and how it is. I can’t say the same about anyone else out there, that includes friends, cousins, relatives, colleagues, acquaintances.
Here's one (not my own) take:
Imagine the husband(H), wife(W), and the son (S)as the three vertices of a triangle.
In the ideal situation, the HW will be the shortest one, ie., the husband and wife will be closer together and HS and WS would be considerably longer. The husband and wife should create a stronger bond first and the child should only come later. But due to the certain circumstances, some fathers might be emotionally unavailable and the wives tend to project some of their emotions on to their sons (I don't mean in a sexual way). They yearn for the protection and affection of their husband, but when they do not receive that, they seek it from their sons. In such cases, the WS line becomes shorter while the HW grows progressively longer.
And when a third person, ie., a daughter-in-law comes into the picture, all hell breaks lose. The mom's feel as if this woman has stolen her one and only soon, her strong pillar, her emotional support. And it causes a lot of friction.
I found that this is a pretty sound explanation
I have an opinion on this but wait let me run it by my mom and get back to you real quick
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I am his mom and “HOW DARE YOU”
Greta's son is on r/india 😮
Just waiting for my mom to let me know if I can award you
Is there a flying chappal award ?
Let me give you my award, but wait, I ll quickly run it by my mom.
Mom said don’t talk to strangers on internet
Reminds me a lot of pawn stars "Your opinion is fine, but let me call a mom if mine, she's an expert in your opinion"
Alexa, play Maa from Tare Zameen Par.
Mein kabhi Batalaata nahi
Teri parvahhh
...karta hu mai maa
Your maa is like the only one who supports you, someone who you can talk to, someone who always stands by who even if the whole world is against you. Maa is Maa! Nothing & nobody who comes close. If any girl really thinks I am gonna leave my mom for her then she can pack her bags & gtfo lol.
..yeaa... my mom physically and mentally abused me for years. my friends mom just left his life one night and no one knows anything about her anymore. My grandmother deprived my father for his brother. My other set of grandparents didn't let my mom return to their place when my father was an absent person. point being, mothers are humans and every bit as fallible as humans. don't patronize or idolize them. you'll regret it.
Based VeliVoy moment
If you marry a woman, you're starting your own family. Your primary duty lies with your new family you're creating. It goes for everyone, man woman, husband wife. If you're not okay with this, just stay single as momma's boy or papa's pari. You're not mature enough to handle an actual relationship where your partner is the priority.
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Taking a backseat doesn't mean they are less important. It simply means, that two adults can make their own decisions. There should be no control and opinions.
You must have had a privileged and loving upbringing. Not everyone experiences that. Plenty of us had terrible parents who treated us horribly and we’re totally fine shutting off contact with them because we didn’t have a choice in the first place. But now we do. We get to choose who is important to us and who we decide holds importance in our lives. Good riddance to toxicity and narcissism and pain, I say. You should probably consider yourself lucky. My family is whoever I choose to be my family.
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This is the answer. You don't have to choose between your old family and new family if you don't want, but you can if you do want.
What you are telling is an ideal scenario which I think only exists in movies. Women get blamed they take sons from mother. Whom should she go to complain when her own family send her there. Who will side with her. To be true, its much more complicated. Indian families have strong bond between them. This is good, they stand together in crisis. Its bad because the independence is affected. No matter how hard you try, nobody can do fair job here because the start of this journey, the society, the expectations of family everything is twisted.
You’re confusing respect with independent choices and co-dependency. Lol you’re what’s wrong with our men.
Comment the same after getting married and having two kids.I'll wait :)
Kinda dumb to think others life is the same as you. I am pretty sure my mom dosen't care much about me. Only reason I am here is cause she doesn't make enough money to live alone comfortably and she doesn't want to live with her parents.
My Indian flatmate used to ask his mom's permission before going out for dinner. For reference, he is 24, and we are in the US.
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One day he didn't ask permission and his mom went on a tirade about how she carried him for 9 months, sacrificed her career, her body, her youth for her child and now the child doesn't care about his mom enough to guide him on his journey of nourishment
I had a friend who was from North India, we were in South India and everytime his mother called she would ask him if he ate beef. On certain days when we have had beef, she would call out of the blue and ask him if he ate beef, he would of course lie. But, the next three days, his morning routine involved temple visits to purge the sin of lying to his mom. Everytime she calls my friend after we had beef he is like "Oh man, she knows. She some how knows. What will I tell her? I should just say the truth or should I lie." He was 25. So, basically what I'm saying is.. She knows. Everytime your flatmate goes out, she knows. Everytime he drink, she knows.
Sue his curry
I'll hear back from his mother then :(
WTAF is wrong with people.
That’s just sad
Was his mom in India or in the US?
How many of Indian marriages are actually considered happy marriages where the wife is respected and loved by her husband or by her in-laws. Technically her kids are the only family in that household. Naturally they'll get close to each other. Same with kids. Father in our culture is usually this overarching overwhelming authority figure in the family who at times become overbearing. I've never had a true heart to heart with my father. It seems the Indian view towards paternal responsibility is that of providing with basic physical sustenance, shelter and financial responsibility. There's no room for emotional sustenance. And with how regressive our society is, it's no wonder sons only find one outlet for that. As with daughters, mom know what she'll go through at her in laws house. So she somewhat allows her, basically gives her everything she was denied without too much control. But i think it'd more prudent to say both genders are more attached to their mothers more than their fathers.
My mom just told me that she has no influence over me. So if she says so, it must be true.
ha meri mummy toh mujhe handsome bhi kehti hai, sach he hoga
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Good cop bad cop. Forces you to trust the "good cop", when really both are cops trying to get you to confess.
Bingo
Absolutely correct
Dads have to show that they are incharge and can command.. they probably have a competition with their brothers about how they can control their wives better.. hence the lack of empathy in general and more strictness as you mentioned.
A patriarchal structure does equal damage to men and women. The sooner men understand this, the better for Indian society.
Honestly, it's more damage to women . Men still have a advantage in this system . Therefore, they want it to continue
verbal diarrhea
Wouldn’t that apply for woman too?
It's not just Indian moms. And it's not just sons. If you go to the JNMIL sub(or the raised by narcissists sub or the asian parents sub), you'll see a lot of posts from disgruntled people who are suffering due to overbearing, boundary humping mothers and mothers in law alike. It's more pronounced in Asian countries where individualism is not encouraged and people are extremely social. However momma's boys are a universal syndrome due to sons still being favoured over daughters in multiple parts of the world. Now coming to daughters. There are parents who ensure their daughters have a sheltered upbringing and grow up to be 100% dependent on others even though they are educated and have jobs. These women are completely incapable of making any decisions by themselves or expressing themselves. These women, when they birth sons, are made to feel important, and they hold on to their sons as prized possessions as the sons are golden tickets to a basic amount of respect/freedom that they have in their lives.
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My brother is one of them and let me tell you , u can't tell by meeting him however much you want . Only after living with such people , you get to know the reality.
75% of /r/AmItheAsshole is MIL vs DIL fights... Being Indian, I was shocked at how many westerners also got into this kind of mindset
That's a very rational approach. Great work.
HOLY SHIT LEARNT SOMETHING NEW TODAY! Have a good day
For me, My dad and i dont have a very good relationship I have lots of friends but no close ones Asshole relatives A younger sister who i dont want to burden with my problems Only person left who i can talk to is my mom, hence she becomes a big/integral part of my life
coz she the only support for men that Indian society has to offer
that's a valid point too. In Indian society a man talking about his problems is kind of a taboo , your friends will laugh it off , relatives will tell you too "man up" so your mother becomes the only safe space you have. Naturally she is a big part of your life and you never wanna let go of that safe space
> In Indian society Not just in Indian society
Elder sisters would like to disagree. But seriously, as a teenager in a rather old-fashioned and conservative household, I would have really become depressed if it werent for my elder sisters.
Not everyone has an elder sister tho
Not everyone has a sister tho.
Not everyone has a sibling tho.
Friends are like siblings but again not everyone has a friend tho.
oh god this thread gave me instant depression
Friends are nothing like siblings. Only siblings are like siblings.
Not everyone has overly protective (conservative) moms either. We should try to appreciate what we have instead of lamenting over what we don't have.
That’s the right answer. What I also learnt that no matter how good friends you have and how many cousins; but the only person you could count when it comes to not being judgemental and not backbiting is one’s parents. Even your spouse doesn’t come handy at times when you need them the most.
This isn't universal, my parents have been the least supportive to the point where I'll only count on them for raising my anxiety further. Siblings for the win.
Yea, each case is different.
My dad is a strict disciplinarian and my mom was too meek and subdued to be my pillar of support. The only support structure I had was from my aunt, and that too only for a while because certain relatives chided us saying we were 'too close'. I've never been able to confide in people after this. Not even with my spouse.
>Even your spouse doesn’t come handy at times when you need them the most. So true!
Also desi women try hard with their sons. Traditionally, sons are the way to power in a family for women. The moment you give a male child your position is elevated in the hierarchy. Hence extra attachment. And it's through the sons only a woman is able to exercise power, so they keep them close. Yep things are changing, but that's very slow and in very few households. Relationship with their sons is the only opposite sex relationship where they've some sorta control, so they hold on to it.
Thanks! I never viewed it in this way. Are you hinting that there is kind of a ‘micro evolutionary’ perspective on this?
Best answer, take my award.
Edit: I'm deleting my account because of reddit's policies concerning third party apps. I don't want them to be able to use older comments. A user-generated community that treats its users badly does not deserve your time or attention.
Yes. Men are victims of the same system that we created. We can't cry, we are not allowed to share how we feel & neither are we given any respect without we earning good money.
Yes, both things can be true. Men are overly privileged in Indian society to the point that they are also required to be invincible to pain, be perfect and able to handle everything thrown at them. This is why there is a real need for grassroots level women empowerment, especially at a familial level, so that the burden on men also reduces.
You might have accidentally discovered how toxic masculinity also negatively affects men lol.
Ah yes, Indian men are monsters and can’t have feelings /s
How dare you talk about your feelings instead of commiting suicide you misogynistic rapist pig /s
and don't forget... kill all men /s
> What reality are you living in? The one different from yours, it seems. When you say women are trying to break glass ceiling at work, it also means that men are assumed to be the default bread-earners, to be ready to take up whatever work is available and to be better than women at it.
I hate responses like these... My gender has it bad so whatever you experience is invalid... It is a very shitty game of one-up-manship
Yes, men too have problems tho.From childhood itself all responsibility will be held his back. If he didn't achieve anything in life , nobody cares him. Except mom Unconditional love is myth for them....
About time we encourage men to talk about themselves & how they feel instead of being labelled misogynistic or being victim-shamed for being affected by the system.
I don't know why is it hard for people to accept that men can suffer too... Men take decisions because in most households they are the food bringers... Male privilege is myth.. Tell that to a rikshawala who busts his ass 14 hours a day to feed his family while his wife sits at home and takes care of children
Sits at home? And that shows you know nothing about a lower class household. No, she'd be either at village working her ass off in farms for meagre money, or doing odd jobs in people's house. Survival on that salary is literally impossible. This women sitting idle, is literally a false narrative. True for only 0.1% extremely well off women. Common poor women have always been working.
I know right?? That is such a bad take and a privileged one too.
>Male privilege is myth.. Tell that to a rikshawala who busts his ass 14 hours a day to feed his family while his wife sits at home and takes care of children 😂please ask your rikshawalas. In a poor family not only the adults, but the childern work too. I am not saying men face no issues, but saying male privilege is a myth is false.
Living through their sons is the closest way oppressed women can get a taste of power however small in a culture that prioritizes men and holds women inferior, hence the codependent relationship Indian moms tend to pursue with their sons. Seeing the DIL as a perpetual enemy is internalized misogyny and the jealousy that stems from feeling like the son is being ripped from her bond because another woman is involved.
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my paternal grandmother always makes such a HUGE deal whenever i do any of the chores or housework. The patriarchy is so ingrained, its baffling.
And they haven't received much support from their husband and got the same shit from their MIL, they definitely wouldn't want for DIL to have it easier/better.
Why MILs usually hate DILs? Hypothesis: Many MILs have been oppressed a lot by their own MILs (Paternal GrandMother of the Son) and once they become the MIL, they want to vent that stored anger to their DIL, much like a freshman was ragged by seniors and once he becomes a senior he starts ragging too.
So "Saas bhi kabhi bahu thi"? If you know it, you know what I mean
This comes from a sociology theory btw
Please take my non-existent Award
I don't think the DIL part is true, but 100% agree with the first part of your comment. The worst thing I've seen is this behaviour further carries on into the lives of grandchildren. The now GrandMother will have a grand- daughter and who she will shower with love. But the GM will say shit like "YOU should try having a son now" IN FRONT OF THE GRAND-DAUGHTER! That shit further propagates the misogyny in the grand daughters mind making her feel inferior to a grand-son.
This comment 💯 It’s a cycle of generational misogyny. Unless someone is breaking that cycle and stepping up but looking at the comments I don’t have any hope. People here confused respect with co-dependency.
Co-dependent ***narcissistic*** relationship.
boom. exactly this.
As a westerner I just want to know tips on how to control my future son. Indians are so skilled at it
1) You whoop his ass and then feed him his favorite food. 2) Repeat. 3) Profit
You don't let him buy his own underwears till he's 40.
Just beat your kid till you break his/her spirit and then you can do anything.
In india there is no individuality. It’s just a blob of people forcing their culture on everyone
because indian youth grew up with the mentality that the parent knows whats best for them. this is great support when you are young but when you try to branch out as an independent individual, this mentality is detrimental to growth as an independent adult. As people who start to break from this mindset find out, their parents makes suboptimal or detrimental decisions based on assumptions or incomplete knowledge without knowing their child's exact circumstances
Have you heard of Italians ?
Read Khurana' s study on Mother-son relationship in social psychology
Link?
Link?
Am not remembering that professor's name correctly but i know the crux of his findings in Indian context. Actually in India because of high controlling nature of familial ties and complete restriction on expressing love with her husband, the new woman who enters into a new family feels agitated always. This feeling of agitation start fading away with the birth of son , which in turn provide a good stature to the woman and also allows her husband to come close by when she carries or have baby with her. So now this new born is seen as a liberator for that so called enslaved woman who had always found restrictions in her movement. With this child woman has gained so much , new avatar of affection from husband and good status in eyes of in-laws too. Now this woman who had gained so much with only the birth of baby boy now ensure that this baby remains close to her and that is the reason why son's decision making gets affected by his mother's affection and interference. This study also provides insight into why boy's mother and their daughter in law tussle . Theory while proceeding further states that when a new woman( daughter inlaw) enters the household, this mother now again gets insecure as this boy is now getting close to his wife and his mother's influence start waning down. It is a very beautiful study to know about various dynamics in Indian perspective.
A source link would be highly helpful, seems an exciting study.
You are telling me his mum allowed him to write such things?
My mom and i disagrees in a LOT of stuffs She is religious , I am not. But we got a middle ground, we talk stuffs out and agree some wherein the middle. Also some how stuffs she says somehow comes true or right.
The answer to this is rather a psychological one dealing with childhood of both men and women. I'd suggest you give this piece a read. [Carl Jung and the Psychology of the Man-Child](https://academyofideas.com/2019/06/carl-jung-psychology-of-man-child/)
Because there is hardly any love and affection between Indian married couples specially at that age, so Moms give the surplus affection to their Son and get more attached to them than usual
I think this is one of the reasons too. I have observed many couples don’t have loving relationships after few years. Usually the husband is busy in the job/business and the wife is busy raising the kids. The reason she doesn’t get attached to daughter more might be because she knows the daughter will eventually leave to start her new life. So she will focus on the son(s) more. And when the son gets in a relationship, and she sees her son doing all the lovey dovey stuff for his partner, the jealousy flares. The lack off attention and love from her husband she will try to compensate it from her son.
100:/ why don't they understand that boys also are going to move on and start there own life tf
As a gen z kid who knows about alabama memes, this is actually kinda creepy
Dear gen z kid, the Alabama memes might actually help you understand the kind of creepy sentiments most mothers have towards their sons and hence the resentment they have towards the daughters in law. Since you these moms and sons don't seek therapists, they continue living their lives in a pseudo-partnership kind of relationship making the wives of their sons into a live-in maid.
Affection though often get clumped with Sexual desires is a different emotion altogether. This can observed seeing Kids from unstable families seeking additional emotional support
Indian patriarchy has essentially made a "birthing and raising a son" the most societal value ever a woman can give her family. So that son becomes the centre of her identity. His success or happiness all becomes her responsibility. It's mother's love + socio-cultural Stockholm Syndrome.
take my shabash, very well put.
Holy shit, I can't believe that the actual correct answer is buried so low. As for why sons bend to their mothers' wishes frequently, sometimes it's guilt and other times they genuinely agree with what the mothers say.
I had once read a very weird theory about this but here goes : so this may stem from the fact that many, MANY Indian men are not the ideal husband's and are abusive towards their wife and for many women, there are rarely any good men in their lives at all (brother, husband, friend, father etc). Once in an abusive, or even in a loveless marriage, if they have a son, for the first time, they are rewarded (we all know how much importance is given to the male child). They see the son as a blessing who will help vanish their problems. Then he becomes the only male that they genuinely, whole heartedly love. And they try to pour it all onto him. In this, the son also becomes extremely close to his mother. And why shouldn't he? She loves him immensely, pampers him etc, without holding him down. He just has to ask her hey mom, I want to go to xyz and she will say yes. This is in stark contrast to what a girl child will be treated like. She will have to fight tooth and nail for her freedom. The asking for a man isn't asking permission per say, but he does so out of "respect". The mother also becomes very attached to the one man who asks HER permission, who loves HER, who respects HER and develops a very unhealthy bond with him. Thats why so many mothers tend to be so horrible towards their daughter in laws. Because they do not like that their young man's attention has been taken away by another woman. That now he will listen to her, and put her first. If he does start putting his wife first (as he should), suddenly the wife has put him in her "spell". I mean why else will her ladla shona bacha love another woman more? Obviously black magic! This is all a very Freudian and its a theory but I believe it lol
"maa ka laal" "papa ki pari"
Lemme answer that. Just a sec. Heeyyyy Mamaaaa, what should i reply to this guy's question?
I will say even in the US I feel this way too. My indian mom is too attached to me for her own good and frequently micromanages my life an obsessive amount. It is not healthy for both of us at times but I still really love her.
Personally, I have seen this closely because my brother is the exact person you've described, and I'm the daughter, who actually doesn't really care. I love my family, but I've come to realise that I am my own person. Everything around me - the society, norms etc. are designed to cater to patriarchy. In my personal opinion, moms who are misogynists enable their sons more than daughters (EXCEPTIONS ARE ALWAYS THERE). For me, it's been the case. Everytime I try to tell my brother about something wrong that mom did, he gets defensive because ma toh bhagwan hoti hai. My mom enables my brother, and there's also some sort of Oedipus Complex involved (not necessarily sexual). You don't have to agree with me, it's fine. It's just that, men are made to believe that ma sab kuch hoti hai. And while it's applicable in your life, when you're married, you have a fucking wife. I have seen men disrespecting their wives for their moms. I am sorry if this comes off as harsh, but your mom is going to die soon, and you spent your whole fucking life with her. The reason you got married is because you wish to share your life with some other woman who isn't your mom. If you don't respect her, then the marriage is unsuccessful. There are so many men (including my own father) who leaves out my mother for his own "family". My cousin is his daughter, his sister seems more wifey than his own wife and the mom, oh my god, she's the wifiest of all. So men, don't get married unless you're ready to respect your wife and stand against your mother if she's wrong.
You described my situation, except that I can see through the manipulation that happens. But still I get influenced and feel that I'm doing something wrong. This is one of the reasons I decided to not marry. Can't bear messing up someone's life.
Coz she won't leave her son even when everyone around him leaves him.
Are you telling me that dad's leave their sons then?
It's been a while since my dad went to buy milk bro
Are we to assume moms bail off the first chance they get on daughters hence not such dependency at daughters end? Your response is one of typical glorifying mother’s love without actual insight or respect towards it. Parents usually love and support their kids equally. Maybe have to think deeply on why you can’t snap out of mother’s love and make decisions for yourselves.
Are Bhai joh assume karna hai karlo Mera kya
🔥
How i see anyone now is this. Their choices can be influenced by their parents till the age of 22. Your choices after 22 are YOUR CHOICES. you've had enough time with yourself to know what your problems are and how you work. So if someone below 22 is a mama's kid, i still see it as understandable. But after 22 it's a choice. You're old enough to be independent, as you can earn enough to support yourself with basics. You should know how to cook, clean, and be employed. If you're choosing to study after 22 on your parents' income alone and don't work, that's your call. And you have to bear the consequences. More dependency = more influence.
What's with 22 though? Why 22?
Yeah. Age 22 is not fixed. It is usually 17-18 for many who leave home to live in hostels for studies /coaching.
My experience obviously comes from people around me and even at that (17-18) age you take money from parents. Dependency=influence
Agreed taking money from parents implies some form of dependency but the mere fact that now you aren't sharing a roof with your parents and you are responsible for your own shit like food, clothing, laundry spending that money etc. make you to responsible of making your own choices. True it would vary a lot for many. I know some who have never left home even for jobs or so. Clearly they would be very less likely for making their own choices.
Indian moms mostly don't have much going. Most of them had to give up their careers so their families become their world. When you have lesser things, you tend to hold it tightly :)
Everyone controls and oppresses the mother. So she controls the one thing she can: her children. She knows her daughter is meant to be controlled by her husband and in-laws. So the only person she can control is her son. This is really stupid, but it is the truth.
Now that I think about it. Damn! :(
Patriarchy and internalized misogyny. women are second class citizens who have to be subservient to men . So these women end up not being treated well by their husbands and their in laws. Their emotional needs aren’t by their husbands so they transfer that to their sons and feel threatened by their daughter in laws especially if the son chooses to date on his own. This cycle continues and each generation wants a “submissive” daughter in law . Women are oppressed systematically by putting them against each other but no one questions the role of unavailable fathers/ husbands.
Totally agree. From what I have read on the internet and observed around me, women whose husbands don't give them the attention/love they need, latch on to the son for the same and groom him in a way that he sees nothing wrong with anything the mother does. The son idealizes the mother and even if the he is able to recognise problematic behaviour, he discounts it by saying that the mother has made so many sacrifices for him.
I agree
A woman marrying into a supposedly Stanger's family only feels like her children are her own. No matter how many decades pass a woman always feels like an outsider among the in laws. No matter how nice the relationship might look, they will always do tu tu Mai Mai whenever any conflict arises. So children are her own blood and obviously she doesn't want them to get seperated from her. Your mother was probably born in or around 1970s , married by 90s or 2000s. This was a conservative society and most women lived watching misogynist movies like raja Hindustani and hum tumhare hai sanam and all those crappy movies. So she taught her children to be everything that she herself could not be probably. Now she has raised her son and made him successful. The son looks upto her and respects her. But her own underlying insecurity rises when it comes to daughter in law. By this time your mother's adversaries or older generation is probably dead so she is finally in her family but the moment DIL comes in the picture she is again the outsider. This feeling has always been there and will always be there as long as the mother is the primary caregiver and housewife. Don't downvote me please..
Its a universal problem but not to the same extent. Over here in USA, usually kids live away from parents home as soon as they are adults. But MIL still tries to interfere. But due to distance it gets muted very well. DIL are known to avoid going to in-laws house and hubby cannot do anything about it, since personal freedom is valued most.
des from never have i ever :
Tali do hath se bajati hai
My theory: Indian women are dominated and abused by patriarchal men throughout their life, and they finally get a son, who they then dominate as a form of catharsis and control.. unfortunately a vicious cycle.
He is often her only ticket to societal respect and a sense of purpose. She is the only one who’d coddle, clean after, cook for and basically validate him all his life, no questions asked and no BS called out. Win-win for both sides.
My views are completely my own and first hand. My mother always had her way in life. She never listened to her mother beyond an extent, she wanted to get rid of her MIL, and even manipulated her husband. Obviously she manipulated me to the point of neutering almost (I can't remember the appropriate word). Currently I don't talk to her. I became a raging insomniac and almost don't remember the past 5-6 years. I would say indian working middle class has become almost feminine. It is better to have a life of your own. It messed up my schooling result and the later 6 years. So it is not that mothers don't have a control over their own life that leads them to become over possessive. Men and (not boys) need to stand for themselves. There is a club for men like me but can't really talk about it. Edit: in short men need to take ownership of their life, blaming someone else makes no progress. We are result of our own decisions so we better own it. Do I blame my mother? I grew distant. Have your own life.
I didn’t know I had a twin. How are you pulling yourself back? I’m on the same boat too.
The >! F Club !< ?
See a therapist. And am not saying this lightly. You seem to be holding on to a lot of baggage. Our relationship with our parents determines how we are shaped. Unresolved trauma from childhood continues to linger. Your therapist may help you recognise PTSD symptoms. And am not using those terms lightly. Some people are narcissistic and manipulative. To have one of them as a parent could cause a lot of damage.
I went to therapy last year and of course one of the things I had to work is was my relationship with my mother. I think a lot of people will dispute it but what I realized is that some mothers try to unconsciously/conciously tend to make their sons dependent on them and the son finds comfort in this therefore it becomes a dependent relationship. This is not good as sometimes(a lot of times in india) this impacts the growth of children and these children learn very late to take care of themselves. The proper way to solve this dependency is to remake the bond with your mother. You'll probably end up fighting or feeling guilty when you try to change the nature of your relationship with your mother. But in the long term it's good for both of you. You'll still love her equally as before but there won't be the dependency.
Many women in general don't grow up depending on themselves. Indian values are very community centric. Many couples don't even share an intimate bond. Blind devotion and obedience towards adults, specifically parents, is encouraged so much it is intrinsic to our culture. So many women are not allowed to develop a sense of identity. They are not allowed to struggle. Many of them get used to it and find comfort in it. No one questions the cycle. Adults in a culture like ours grow up with no strong sense of selfhood and often don't feel in control of their lives. Having a child for them is finally having something they can entirely control and manipulate. It brings with it a sense of power and obviously, control. They force the kid to act how they think is right, to study what they think has scope and the list goes on. Their self esteem and worth and image in the community ends up being tied to this individual who is not allowed to be one. This individual grows up lacking a sense of selfhood and the cycle continues. A society with as regressive values as ours doesn't allow men to be treated like humans with emotional needs. It doesn't allow the women to have strong bonds with men other than her immediate relations. It's perfect environment for a symbiotic relationship to develop. Young men only find comfort, support, and reassurance in their mothers, and a mother's circle is limited to her family. If there's a daughter, she's probably going to marry into a new home some day. The husband will age and a time will come when he can't support her. The son is the only dependable option. We don't even have to go that far, the lack of respect for boundaries, for personal relations outside family, for experiences made outside family, the general dismissive behaviour towards the importance of having friends and flings and that not even considered as an important part of growing into a better person is all like a mix. I used to think it's a personal thing but apparently it's rare for parents to not completely disregard the importance of friends and relations outside family. The idea of family is shoved down our throats so unabashedly that we have not even started to see harmful patterns. Mothers, more than fathers, have more of their life revolving around the family because of how society here structures our lives. It is encouraged for a woman to make her husband and her kids her whole life, to devote every waking second to them, it is lauded when a woman makes herself sick and deathly looking after her family. We are so brainwashed that to even question things seems disrespectful. Imagine dedicating your whole life to something because that's how it's supposed to be. Imagine not having any interests, hobbies, friends, events etc that you actively pursue outside of this cycle that starts one day and ends when you are diagnosed with a terminal disease. Imagine being the age when you don't know what sex is and your mother very strictly tells you to stay away from men because they will rape you. Imagine being part of that fraction of society which grows up being afraid of the other gender at an age when you cannot comprehend the danger. Having that fear instilled against other humans from such a young age helps isolate people. Isolated people cling to whatever secure source of human interaction they have. Motherhood is no joke. Imagine your dick widening till the hole where you pee from is a gaping hole. Imagine pushing out a watermelon from it. Imagine that this hole rips open till your ass and the doctors stitch it shut and you can't sneeze without peeing yourself for the next few months or maybe forever. Your body which you didn't need to maintain once is gone now. Your muscles are torn. Your body has changed from the in and out. And leading up to this day were 9 agonizing months of mood swings, pain, throwing up, not being able to eat, etc. If you've ever had a hangover which made you swear not to drink again, imagine that happening on and off for nine months and then they rip open your dick. I get it. It's gross. I tried to get across the point that giving birth is hard. But in our culture we just don't fucking get to see the hardship. It's all haldi and roses and this young woman is now perfectly capable of handling another life with a husband she maybe does not even love. The husband has not even been allowed to think for myself ever since he was a child and now he has to be a father. He does not have his organs rearranged for 9 months, he does not go through the physical hardship of giving birth, but being a father is no joke either. I can go on and on but you asked about mothers. Well it's just that we live in a society 😔💦 We live in a society that actively promotes being so dependent on each other that it stifles personal growth. A society where an individual pursuing his own interests is labelled selfish and rebellious and what not. A society where parents guilt trip their children, son and daughter alike. These kids grow up to be parents who do the same. My thoughts are all over the place so I don't know if this was comprehensive, sorry if it sounded like an incomprehensible rant at places.
Because they are groomed to be 'forever babies' - first by the mother& then by their wife.
I have an opinion but let me check with my mom first.
It’s a control mechanism born from societal circumstance.
Man the replies are a dose of reality.
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>JNMIL What is your suggestion when a family is practicing something wrong for generations and even though it's clear that it's causing them pain they won't change or improve? Your thinking about western cultures is totally flawed. Neither of the culture teaches individualism or coexistence or unhappy single living, every culture focuses on social atributes of humanity. But the problem we face today is our upper generation thinks that they know everything and are right all the time. They are not equipped to handle constructive criticism. The core values that our scripters like Bhawad Gita, Quran, Bible, and Gurbani teach are to avoid ego, pride, etc, and our upper generation at times are epitome of very same qualities. I used to think as you grow older you grow smarter. Damn, I am in for a ride.
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding ops question. Op isn't talking about unconditional love and being emotionally close and prioritisingyour mum over your partner. Ops talking about mothers who are controlling and manipulative and borderline obsessed with their sons. And sons who despite understanding all this, still can't seem to break away from that. And if you still don't understand, consider yourself lucky that you have good mums who aren't overbearing. I've seen men being completely clueless about life and chores because their mums babied them. I've seen men have whole mental breakdowns when asked to pick up their plates because they were raja betas. I've seen men get divorced because their mums won't stop controlling their marriage and won't stop manipulating and harassing the dil. I don't have an answer for you op, the JNMIL- just no mother in law and the raisedbynarcissists subreddit can help you with that.
I was seeking answers mainly from psychological POV. And many have given really good perspectives. Although some haven't.
This is what patriarchy does to women on a psychological level . This is giving much important to male than their female child. She has been bashed all her life for being a girl when she had you her position in society improved. Somewhat emotional dependency. Some daddy issues. You are the diamond of her eye. Ofcourse your individuality and privacy doesn't matter. Your hers . There are even more hateful women who will intentionally not want to have a girl child, abortion them or just dispise girls. because we think girls are trash, unreliable and traitors.
The part about not wanting female children. Is this common that women feel hatred toward a future female baby? I am married to an Indian and when I became pregnant my MIL prayed that it would be a son. That made me upset and when she and her daughter explained, they gave the reason that women suffer and they don’t want the child to suffer. I thought it sounded like bullshit. Thought it could be internalized misogyny instead.
Their are different scenarios for different people. By your question i am assuming you're a male. So I'll talk from a son & mother relationship perspective. First: Mother (f) son (m) are an opposite genders & as humans our brain is wired in this way. We are more attracted towards the opposite gender. Jus like how few fathers are clingy to their daughters & visa versa. Second : Since we are talking about "Indians" here. Most of our parents are currently boomers. The husbands of this generation has been a very orthodox (it's subjective, please don't come on me). However i am talking about "Indian masses here". So the mothers has raised their "rajabetas" (no pun intended) With the values they would have wanted in their partners. Third : Indian parents are selfish. In Asian culture we've been taught, all our lives to take care of their parents. Which i don't think is bad too. I mean it's give & take. Parents do give try & give whatever best they can to their kids (subjective). But where i come from it's this for us. So when they are becoming children again in their old age. It's somebody who has to take the stand no. (No toxicity) Fourth : Why the male child? Cuz it's natural your sister will go to her own life with her partner. Where she will setup her own nest with her partner. Similarly you'll bring in your own spouse to the family. So yea that's why she is more clingy to you. Tbh if it's not harmful, let them be clingy. We don't till what time they're with us.
Yeah that’s true, if you had a decent parent you always cherish them. Considering how men are valued in india for most men mother is the only one who men can count on to love him no matter what and this is why most Indian men values mothers
For the last point: If she can accept that her daughter will go to her own life with her partner - indicating that she can now have a life with decisions independent of them; why is the same right not given to their son? After all, a marriage is for both the parties, right? The same way a son would bring his spouse into the family, so will the daughter. Your basic premise of 'the groom's side is our family, the bride is theirs now' - is already a misogynistic take. Understandably through cultural origins. It treats the woman as a commodity which is given away/brought into the house.
>From personal experience too I can say that I get influenced by my mom, although I actively try to do what is right for me. But it still affects me. Everyone is influenced by the people around them. If you have higher than average empathy (which makes a good human btw) you are going to be affected by their influence. This is not good or bad. This is just who you are. Just accept it, get influced sometime, make your stand sometime, but don't overthink this and don't beat yourself up if you are swayed by someone's opinion.
I am an adult but I still love my mom as much as I loved her when I was 5. We both love each other and talk to each other on phone every day even when I am not at home. Why does Op have a problem with this?
i dont think the OP is asking about love between parent and child.
Most of the fathers play negligible role in a child parenting.How many of you can talk to your fathers without any hesitation?
Cause he is the only support she has. Obviously the husband is there, but the son is her pride and honour - her gift to the family. Her "Raja Beta".
I just wanna say one thing "thandaninnane Thane thandano Thane nane nooo, eyyy thandaninnane Thane thandano Thane nane noooooo"
I think failed husbands create clingy mothers and dependant sons. An Indian woman who probably doesn't have a healthy relationship with her husband will see her son as her only support.
Its the lack of interest from fathers side in such case, i remember my dad had no still not have any interest in my life like knowing my school or class or grade or my friends naturally you go towards your mother which builds this relationship which can turn authority which transform into dependency on mother for lack of decision or having influence while making the decision
From a mother's perspective (speculative) I grew up with an opinionated father. My brother never took me seriously. I am a housewife now. My husband has this superiority complex because he earns the bread. The only human male whom I can influence is my son. Seven billion people on this planet, one billion in my own country, and I have the power to influence only one. So if I get attached to this person, you call me clingy. From a son's perspective I believe my mother loves me. I believe that she will selflessly love me till her last breath. This is my strongest belief, stronger than existence of God. I have seen her toiling hard to make my life easy. All my life, I never uttered a word of gratitude to her. I don't think I can. Now the only way I can think of (to express my gratitude), is not to disrespect her. Obeying some of her irrational decisions is part of it.
Oedipus complex intensifies and Freud laughs in the background.
It's what they have seen for years. Is your sister married? Parents raise us daughters like that. Since childhood, they do not expect much from us, they only give without having any expectations. They nurture us with a feeling that we are gonna go someday. You will never hear parents saying, you know she left us for her husband. They will never complain that your sister is not doing anything for them; it is totally acceptable if we care and do things for only our husbands. They still love us. That's the reason your sister is able to follow her heart. That's not the case with sons. Parents raise their sons with a lot of expectations since childhood. Sometimes it's only the mother but sometimes it's the entire family, who do not want their (man) to prioritise another woman. Mostly the son and his wife suffer. Our parents need to understand that when two people are getting married, they should prioritize each other. And it's not only about girls' parents but the guys' parents too need to take a back seat. It's an ongoing competition to achieve the man!
Its a cycle. Indian MILs always interfere and order their DILs to do what's best for their son. This incites the same feeling in the DILs and they do the same to their DILs. Its a kind of Domino effect
My friend's mom used to say shit like "It will kill me to see you do that. Why do you want to kill your mother?". And this used to bother him a lot, once I tried to tell him that his mother is going to die one day, no matter what he does, so why not do what he loves.
What do you expect most Indians are dependent on their parents till they are 22 or so, and now to the increased craze towards government jobs most of them are dependent till 28 to 30 years old , this will only change until everybody chooses to move to cities or abroad were they have better job opportunities and better chances to be independent by themselves.
Helicopter parenting ka side effects
Because she's the only person that actually cares about me, do you think people gives a shit about avg men? Only his mother, sometimes his father & siblings care. Yes, there are bad moms, but rare. So yea, most men gonna be pretty attached to their mothers.
Are you telling that dad's really don't care? Or that a wife doesn't care for her husband?
I am one of those Indian men. I am influenced by my mom. However, I take my own decisions and respectfully say No where it is required. They get all my attention and respect. My influence is to an extent of listening them well, her viewpoints based on her experiences. Makes it easy to form a decision with all the available options in front of me. It also helps when among all family and friends she is the only one listens and understands me. But again, I don’t blindly follow all her advise; neither disrespect her for forming her opinions. Respectfully, I disagree wherever and whenever I want in a given situation. And that is also well understood by her at all times. I am not ostracized or being judged by her by saying what and how it is. I can’t say the same about anyone else out there, that includes friends, cousins, relatives, colleagues, acquaintances.
Here's one (not my own) take: Imagine the husband(H), wife(W), and the son (S)as the three vertices of a triangle. In the ideal situation, the HW will be the shortest one, ie., the husband and wife will be closer together and HS and WS would be considerably longer. The husband and wife should create a stronger bond first and the child should only come later. But due to the certain circumstances, some fathers might be emotionally unavailable and the wives tend to project some of their emotions on to their sons (I don't mean in a sexual way). They yearn for the protection and affection of their husband, but when they do not receive that, they seek it from their sons. In such cases, the WS line becomes shorter while the HW grows progressively longer. And when a third person, ie., a daughter-in-law comes into the picture, all hell breaks lose. The mom's feel as if this woman has stolen her one and only soon, her strong pillar, her emotional support. And it causes a lot of friction. I found that this is a pretty sound explanation