the9months

If you have ever thought that too much love can actually harm you child – you were probably right. In Italy, a Mamma has been accused of doting too much. Interestingly, Italy is quite similar to India and Pakistan in the sense that it is a norm in these countries that boys tend to live with their parents, well after their 20s. It is absolutely a part of the social structure which is essentially due to economic reasons as compared to religion.

In the idealized picture of the American heartland, baseball, mom and apple pie feature prominently. The Italian version? Soccer, spaghetti and, yes, la mamma. But in recent years, the folkloric image of the doting Italian mother has been joined in the national consciousness by something a tad less idyllic: the mammone, or mama’s boy, the hyper-coddled son (daughters are statistically less susceptible) who grows up so attached to his home, and to his mamma in particular, that he never really becomes independent or a self-sufficient man. (more…)