Saturday, May 9, 1998

Mother-love an ideal that doesn't always match reality

By PYTHIA PEAY / Religion News Service

On Mother's Day, the nation pays tribute to one of humankind's most cherished relationships -- the tender caretaking a woman bestows upon her child.

Beautifully rendered in religious pictures of the Divine Mother and Holy Child -- such as the Christian images of Mary and Jesus or the Egyptian portrayals of Isis and Osiris -- it is the sort of selfless devotion that comes closest to divine love.

But though mother-love is a perennial ideal of mystics and poets, philosophers and theologians, the institution of motherhood has been rife with conflict and suffering and as some feminist thinkers in recent decades have argued, women have paid dearly for the sweet bliss of motherhood, enduring economic hardship and exclusion from power for their efforts.

And despite the enormous strides modern-day women -- and men -- have achieved to right this wrong, vestiges of "mother prejudice" still remain, especially, say some feminist psychologists, when it comes to the mother-son bond, a powerful combination that, if close, threatens societal expectations of what it means to be a "real man."

I experienced this phenomenon recently when my 21-year-old son, confused about his life direction, dropped out of college and returned home. Response from friends and family members was swift: Kick him out; make him pay rent; and don't make it "easy" by taking care of him. Rarely did I hear a supportive word of encouragement.

Several weeks ago my son departed home once again to live in another country. From my perspective he left strengthened in spirit, hopefully having weathered a difficult passage. But the experience shocked me into realizing how deeply engrained are those cultural stereotypes that judge a man as somehow less masculine if he has not "cut the apron springs" of his tie with his mother.

My experience came as no surprise to Phyllis Chesler, a psychologist and feminist pioneer who is the author of many books, including "Letters To A Young Feminist" (Four Walls Eight Windows), a series of essays that includes a missive to her 21-year-old son, Ariel.

"The culture-at-large expects sons to desert mothers as immature, overly controlling, and not powerful enough," she said. "Thus, it's seen as shameful to remain close to one's mother -- as in Ôsissy,' or Ômama's boy.' Manhood today is still seen as something that's cut loose from the socializing forces of womanhood. And that is tragic."

Why is it a tragedy for a man to grow up by growing away from his mother and all things "feminine?"

Because, said Harriet Lerner, a staff psychologist at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kan., and the author of "The Mother Dance: How Children Change Your Life" (HarperCollins), "boys don't suffer from becoming like their mothers. Instead, boys suffer from the false notion that they should grow up to be as unlike their mothers as possible.

"Indeed, it is an untenable situation for a son to be nurtured and loved by a woman whose very traits the boy is then taught to deny in himself," she said.

In his book, "I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression" (Fireside), psychologist Terrance Real described the source of this cultural myth as the "fear of the feminizing mother." The idea boys must rupture an effeminizing connection to mother, he said, "is one of the oldest, least questioned, and most deeply rooted myths of patriarchy."

Real, co-director of the Harvard University Gender Research Project, called for an end to this "repulsive myth," arguing while such a rite-of-passage is considered essential to boys' socialization it also creates a wound "that sets up their vulnerability to depression as men."

According to Real, traditional gender socialization requires boys and girls to "halve themselves." Girls are encouraged to be more emotionally expressive, while repressing their more assertive selves.

The reverse is true for boys, who must dampen their feelings in order to develop their public persona. And while there has been much research around the professional setbacks women have incurred as a result of this split socialization, there has been little publicity around the damage done to young boys' emotional development.

But as a growing body of research shows, young boys who heed society's message to distance themselves from their mothers simultaneously cut off their "relational" nature -- the loving, nurturing, empathetic qualities the culture generally associates with women.

"Thus boys," Lerner said, "grow up to become the very boyfriends, husbands and fathers whose girlfriends, wives and children complain can't relate." Likewise, such men are more likely to become alienated from their own inner psyche.

This "relational loss," as it is described, may even be a source of male violence and aggression.

"Disconnection from the self is what enables violence," said Judy Chu, a doctoral candidate in human development in psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who is researching the behavior of young boys and adolescent males. "You can't hurt somebody else if you're in touch with what you're feeling. Thus if you can experience your own pain it would be a very difficult thing to inflict pain on another," she said.

But Chu's research has turned up some surprising findings. For one thing, she said, it is wrong to assume boys and their mothers actually "separate" from each another, as is supposed to happen.

Instead, she said, "it's as though mothers' and sons' desire to be close becomes illicit and goes underground. But it's still there."

Adolescent boys, for instance, still report that they feel most comfortable talking with their mother, who they also say know them best. And yet it is taboo to exhibit that intimacy in public.

Indeed, Chu says boys learn from an early age to accommodate society's expectations around their mothers, noting boys in nursery schools are more likely to display physical affection with their fathers.

Can the mother-son relationship ever be healed of the deep-rooted distortions that obscure its value to society?

Things might change, said these psychologists, if the culture did more to restore honor to the role mothers play in raising men with heart, rather than caricaturing them as smothering and possessive.

"I see mothers as great philosophers and teachers," Chesler said. "They have to teach a child everything without breaking their spirit, and socialize them without humiliating them -- some corporate CEO's don't even know how to do this. Thus, in an age of coarsening, narcissism and profit run amok, the public culture desperately needs the wisdom of mothers."