So have you met these creepy families with a son and a daughter where the mother is obsessed with the son, and the daughter is this mousy little creature with no personal life, and both mother and sister are total handmaidens to the boy? Obviously, the boy grows up messed up like all hell by all this, as well.
I have seen this family structure a few times, and it’s always very creepy.
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I haven’t, so I have to wonder what the father is doing in all this.
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The family I met today has the kind of father who’s at work a lot and then is very quiet and seemingly exhausted when he’s at home. And I also know another family like that where the woman is a widow. Plus, there are the Russian – speaking families where men don’t get very engaged in the whole family structure.
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That’s a very common occurrence in traditional Indian families. And yes, it’s mega creepy.
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Oh yes, this occurs in traditional Indian families. The son is cossetted and indulged within an inch of his life and is the golden goose. Women are nothing in this family, they are adjuncts to the real family of the men. Even if the women are educated and have careers, they must be prepared to hold them in abeyance and drop them if it should inconvenience the men in the slightest. Same deal with a personal life. It is said that once you go to your husband’s house, you are part of your husband’s family and leave your birth family. If it was an option to have their own separate lives in that system, people would not be so immeshed.
If you go to indianhomemaker.wordpress.com, you will find reams of stories of parents, and parents-in-laws getting overly involved in their children’s personal lives. There are so many stories of overbearing mother in laws and sister in laws who want to dictate everything that happens in the son’s marriage.
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“The son is cossetted and indulged within an inch of his life and is the golden goose. Women are nothing in this family, they are adjuncts to the real family of the men. Even if the women are educated and have careers, they must be prepared to hold them in abeyance and drop them if it should inconvenience the men in the slightest.”
“If you go to indianhomemaker.wordpress.com, you will find reams of stories of parents, and parents-in-laws getting overly involved in their children’s personal lives.”
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It’s probably strongest in cultures that minimize the emotional bond between husband and wife (and/or emphasize a strict hierarchical relation between spouses rather than partnership).
In such cultures, many or most women form their strongest and most intimate emotional bonds with their male children (since the husband is remote and unwilling or unable to engage in emotional intimacy with anyone but mommy and girlchildren are destined to leave the household anyway and may be frequently reminded of how just how unwanted they are).
It just seems too creepy to be real for me and I can’t imagine anyone who experienced it wanting that psychological horror for their own children, yet…. it’s a model that just keeps replicating itself like a virulent virus.
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“In such cultures, many or most women form their strongest and most intimate emotional bonds with their male children”
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IIRC, in traditional Indian marriages, the husband and wife aren’t allowed to show any affection towards each other in front of anyone, their own children included. This makes for a f*cked-up familial relationship and setup the dynamic you’re asking about.
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