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Men and their mothers

By Peter West - posted Friday, 9 May 2008


So much has been written today about gender. We seem to have heard it all. Women, women and feminism, how men are changing, working mothers, single parents, gay men, gay and lesbian parents. But nobody could accuse the Australian media of originality; and so much of the conventional wisdom on gender is rehashed from US and British sources.

One recent example in The Sydney Morning Herald (April 26, 2008) was a British article about male sexual dysfunction, written of course by a woman (with some additions by a male). Yet in all this abundance, one topic has rarely been discussed: men and their mothers.

Men have very passionate feelings about their mothers. My Mum died last year at the age of 95. It’s made me think very hard about the mother-son relationship. Forgive me if I start with the personal.

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A lot depends on what the mother has done in her lifetime. A mum like mine went to school until she was 15. She worked in the Post Office for a few years. Then she met my Dad and was married to him for the rest of her life. She had five kids. We were Catholics, after all, and the priests told all the Catholic mothers to go forth and multiply. Mum saw herself as a wife and mother. I was always her little boy who’d grown up. At six feet four (193.5cm I think) as an adult I was rather a large little boy.

When the babies leave the nest, Mums often feel anxious about them. They feel a kind of separation anxiety and dream up reasons to call their children and get them to do things.

Mum used to call me and ask me to bring her yogurt, or milk, or bread, or anything, really. Then when I got there she would start into a rant about something. She would tell endless anecdotes about the woman over the road or something that was bothering her. Sometimes there seemed little point to the stories, except for me to listen to her. I think what she needed was comfort, validation and reassurance. She felt she had given her life to the family and quite reasonably expected something back.

Like most men, I would try and be a good son, but my Mum drove me a bit crazy. She could never be satisfied - it was like appeasing some god who made more and more demands. And she seemed determined to find something to complain about. Then we would get angry with her and then feel guilty we hadn’t been better sons and daughters. Italian, or Jewish, men and their mothers, might be different.

Perhaps today’s working mothers are not much like this. But they are still mothers; and research suggests that mothers do experience powerful changes in their bodies, their hormones and their thinking. I suppose we are still allowed to talk about a mother’s instinct without being afraid of attack.

Of course, Mum used to come and rescue us when we were small. Some kids shouted at us or maybe bullied us. And she would kiss away our tears.
But we must grow up in the end. We walk out into the world and go on our own feet, we enter relationships, we muck things up, we raise kids, lose jobs, are betrayed by false friends.

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James Hollis says the question for the first half of our lives is: what do my parents want from me? In the second half of our lives, we ask: what else should I do? What does the soul, or the universe demand (I have added to his own thoughts here)? We can’t go successfully through life revelling in youth and exuberance and pleasing other people. We men smile at our own failings: we dream of driving a fast red sports car; some lust after beauty queens and models; or turn to drink or gambling to recapture that youthful exuberance.

I can’t pretend to be better than everyone else. I recently went to watch a pile of young people hammer each other with paintballs and was sorely tempted to join in. I smile at my own desire to run faster, lift more weights and stay forever young.

There must be wonderful feelings engendered in a mum carrying a baby. It must be satisfying to have a baby at the breast, totally dependent. Or on the bottle, for that matter. But as a boy grows up, he needs less and less mothering. Adolescence is a time in which a boy reaches out. He rejects, ridicules and questions his parents’ statements. My Mum and Dad were fond of absolutes:

Don’t eat too much salt when you’re young; I don’t like those people, they’re anti-Catholic; don’t speak to strange men.

Any man worth his salt wants to be independent of his parents. No man wants to be called a “mummy’s boy”. I remember watching open-mouthed at the new TV in the 1950s as the exuberant Polish-American pianist Liberace sat at his chandelier-covered piano and dedicated pieces he played “to my mother”, sentimentality dripping from every word. Of course the word gay didn’t mean much in those days, but there were always those unfinished sentences: “He’s a bit - you know ...”

The adult man exists in a relationship with his mother that can’t be resolved. Mum wants someone who still comes back to her and needs her. But a man, to be a man, needs to be independent of his parents, unless he is going to be one of those tragic 40 and 50-year-olds who still lives with mum. There is much uncertainty and dissatisfaction in the son with such a difficult relationship. It seems common for mothers to find fault with the daughter-in-law’s cooking or cleaning or child-raising. Mum did all of that. Many were the arguments we had about eating beans or drinking too much water or some such.

But almost every man does love his mum. When men are in trouble, mum can come and help. In my case I’d bought a new house and everything broke when I touched it. Mum came good with a loan for a new hot water heater. I blessed her every morning when I got a hot shower.

The world of masculinity is a hard one in many ways: acting tough; doing what the boss says; and these days we would have to add - staying sexy. And looking acceptably handsome, or even waxing one’s chest (ouch!). I have heard men quietly ask their partner “does my bum look too big in these pants?”

A man’s life is packed with difficulties and stress and keeping it all going. And then he calls in to see mum and there is the familiar voice, the smile and a kiss. Mum usually loves her handsome son. Handsome to her, anyway. I have seen criminals on TV with a Mum watching them in court, loyal to the end.

As we mature, we must face up to taking full charge of our lives. And this means making ourselves the judge of our own lives, not anybody else. James Hollis writes:

… one must, amid the disappointment and desolation, begin to take on the responsibility for one’s own satisfaction. There is no one out there to save us, to take care of us, to heal the hurt. But there is a very fine person within, one we barely know, ready and willing to be our constant companion. Only when one has acknowledged the deflation of the hopes and expectations of childhood and accepted direct responsibility for finding meaning for oneself, can the second adulthood begin.

Sometimes I feel caught between my parents’ voices - do this, do that, work hard, make something of yourself - and that of my kids. So often when I say something I get “Oh God Dad it’s not the Dark Ages any more. Things are different these days.”

Men learn to be intimate from the people who share intimacy with them for the first time. In almost all cases, this is their mothers. For these reasons, says Stephanie Dowrick, a man’s connexion to his mother is very important for his later experience of intimacy.

Men and intimacy would be a whole new subject - but I am not the first person to suggest that many of us males are wary of intimacy. We share our secrets and then someone laughs at us. It makes us much more careful next time. We make a false move or reach a hand out, and we are accused of being insensitive or demanding sex. This is not to say I approve of wife-bashing or inappropriate touching …

Yet for many men, sharing intimacy can be a wonderful thing. We value so much the people who share intimate moments with us: an afternoon around a special DVD; time at the beach; a loving hug. We Wests are becoming a family of huggers and we seem to enjoy that.

Some special moments for me recently were sharing with my grandson a blue-tongue lizard we found in his dad’s backyard! Plus watching my son play in a band and watching my daughters get married.

We hear so much about the early years. Only this month the Rudd Government has announced it will increase funding and improve services for the early years of life. Mothers - and fathers too! - must be given help and encouragement. And yet there is much in our lives to reflect on and improve. Men and their mothers are one part that needs more careful thought and understanding if we are ever to make better men and a better Australia.

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About the Author

Dr Peter West is a well-known social commentator and an expert on men's and boys' issues. He is the author of Fathers, Sons and Lovers: Men Talk about Their Lives from the 1930s to Today (Finch,1996). He works part-time in the Faculty of Education, Australian Catholic University, Sydney.

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