Destructive Mothering
Son-Husbands and the Prevalence of Mommy Issues
In my early ministry, I focused heavily on the problem of absent or abdicating fathers. I was trying to emphasize the importance and power of fatherhood, both in the harm it can do and in the good it can do in the lives of children. That is true, and it still needs to be taught.
But not everything is a daddy issue, at least not directly. Over the last fifteen years, I have become much more aware of the destructive force of negligent or overbearing mothers in the lives of men. In fact, I think many of the problems we are seeing right now are tied to men who had strange and badly ordered relationships with their mothers. That is often what happens when fathers remove themselves from the picture or are forcefully removed through unjust courts.
Children need both a mother and a father, and a husband and wife need each other. They help steady one another. They check each other’s excesses.
Sometimes a father has to step in and tell a mother she is coddling her son too much. Sometimes a mother has to tell a father, “What he needs from you right now is some good old-fashioned masculine encouragement.” The reverse can happen as well. I have known many women who struggled to be the warm and encouraging mother their children needed. That seems to be part of what Theo Von is describing in the video below. But what appears to be even more common is what is sometimes called a son-husband.
What is that?
Some mothers lean on their sons in ways they should not. What begins as closeness can slowly become badly disordered. The boy is no longer simply a son. He becomes his mother’s listener, her comfort, her little protector, even a kind of substitute husband. The lines get crossed.
It usually happens in a home that is already out of joint. Maybe the father is absent, passive, weak, or simply failing to act as he should. Maybe the mother is lonely, overwhelmed, undisciplined, or simply self-absorbed. Whatever the cause, the son gets pulled into a place he was never meant to occupy. He begins to carry things that do not belong to him, including his mother’s complaints, her fears, her frustrations, and sometimes even her quarrel with his father.
That does real harm to a boy. It weighs him down and scrambles his sense of things. Whatever sense of importance he may feel in the moment, he is being robbed of the freedom to simply be a child. And when that boy becomes a man, the effects often remain. He may have trouble separating rightly from his mother, trouble establishing his own household, trouble loving a wife with clarity and firmness.
Part of what makes this so destructive is that it often hides under the language of closeness. People may call it a strong mother-son bond. But there is a kind of closeness that is not fitting. A mother is meant to raise her son toward maturity, not draw him into her private burdens. When she does, she binds him to herself in ways that can cripple him for years.
A son hears too much, carries too much, and before long finds that it is shaping how he sees his father and himself. At some point, a line has to be drawn. That is not easy, especially when a boy has been raised to think it is his job to keep his mother steady. But it still has to be done.
Mothers must not make stand-ins out of their sons. Fathers must be vigilant and maintain right order in the home. A boy needs love, discipline, protection, and room to grow into manhood. Calling him his mother’s rock is not sweet. It is a confusion of roles, and it can leave deep marks on a man for years.
The damage this creates down the line, especially in how those men relate to women, is significant.
We have talked a great deal about daddy issues and the destruction caused by deadbeat fathers. Fine. We should. But we also need to be able to talk plainly about mommy issues and the danger of mothers who do not know where their place ends and their son’s begins, especially in single-mother homes.
P.S. I saw this clip on X and pulled it. It's an uncomfortable watch. I wish this guy had a good friend to work this sort of stuff out in a more private setting.