In a black cocktail dress, during her set, the hilarious heroine of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon Prime) pokes fun at her parents. "Jewish parents... They yell at your sons for not eating enough, and yell at your daughters for eating too much..." she said to a New York audience in the 1950s. In the show, Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) often uses the character of her mother, dotting her brother, but very tough on her, to criticize the differences in treatment between genders in siblings. Following the family tradition, she too could have become a "boy mom", i.e. a mother who tends to worship her son, to the detriment of her daughter.
The term first appeared in the early 2010s on mommy blogger forums such as Mom vs the Boys. On TikTok, where the #boymom has already racked up over 33.4 billion views (and over 17 million posts on Instagram), the term has become derogatory , rather ironic, and divides internet users. Women are having fun sarcastically parodying these moms, sometimes their own. In one episode of The Kardashians, Kim Kardashian even defined herself as such to her son, Saint (coincidence?).
During her little ones' childhood, the boy mom always favors her son over her daughters, serving them more food and better cuts of meat. She always saves the last piece of cake for him. Afterward, she lets her child prodigy reign over the table. It is up to her daughter to clear the plate for her beloved son, who has never loaded a dishwasher in his life. In any case, her son is smarter, funnier, and less of a headache than the girls, who are always a source of trouble – especially if they think of rebelling. "I've always preferred the company of boys," she likes to repeat.
As soon as she has an argument with the apple of her eye, now a young adult, she does not hesitate to point out that it is all the fault of his "witch of a girlfriend," who manipulates him and drives them apart. No woman will ever be good enough for her husband... sorry, her son. When he goes away for the weekend with his sweetheart, the boy mom feels an irrepressible void. So she writes to him, asking him to send her a voicemail, "just to hear [his] voice."
Eventually, her emotional problems place her child in a situation of parentification, where roles are reversed. The intrusive mother, who sometimes confuses her son with her husband, expects him to take care of administrative tasks and provide moral support in all circumstances. The day her offspring (even more so if he is the only one) leaves the nest to settle down with a loved one, or worse, puts a ring on her finger, she will experience it as a break-up or even a betrayal.
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