En black cocktail dress for her only-on-stage, the hilarious heroine of The Fabulous Mme Maisel (Amazon Prime) makes fun of its parents. “Jewish parents? They yell at their son because he doesn’t eat enough, and at their daughter because she eats too much.”, she says in front of an American audience, bursting with laughter, from the 1950s.
In this series, Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) often uses the character of her mother, adorable with her brother, but very demanding with her, to denounce the differences in treatment between genders among siblings. Following family tradition, she too could have become a boy momor a mother who tends to worship her boy like a god, to the detriment of her daughters.
The term appeared in the early 2010s on forums. mommy bloggers, like the Mom vs the Boys site. On TikTok, where #boymom already has more than 33.4 billion views (and more than 17 million posts on Instagram), the archetype has taken on a pejorative, rather ironic connotation, and divides Internet users. Women have fun sarcastically parodying these mothers, sometimes their own. In an episode of KardashianKim Kardashian even defined herself this way in relation to her son, Saint (coincidentally).
“Your witch friend”
During the childhood of her kids, the boy mom always favors her boy over her girls, serving them more food and better cuts of meat. She always keeps the last piece of the cake for him. Then, she will let her child prodigy reign at the table. It’s up to her daughter to clear the plate for her beloved son, who has never loaded a dishwasher in his life. In any case, his boy is smarter, funnier and less headstrong, unlike girls, who are sources of problems – especially if they get the idea of rebelling. “I always preferred the company of boys”, she likes to repeat.
As soon as she argues with the apple of his eye, now a young adult, she does not hesitate to tell him that it is the fault of his “witch friend”, who manipulates him and keeps one of them away from the other. No woman will ever be good enough for her Jules… uh sorry, her son. When the latter leaves for the weekend to visit his sweetheart, the boy mom feels an irrepressible feeling of lack. So she writes to him so that he sends her a voice message, “just to hear [s]in voice ».
Ultimately, the child finds himself in a situation of parentification, where the 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 it is unique) leaves the nest to settle down with her loved one or, worse, puts the ring on her finger, she will experience it as a breakup, even a betrayal.
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