Taken from Meg Meeker’s Boys Should Be Boys…

“She knows from the moment her son belts out his first wail that she exists to love him.  She is needed because he needs her.  He needs the nourishment, the security, and the love that she provides, which will not only keep him alive but also keep her knowing that she is needed.  So she will protect, adore, and nurture this tiny boy until he becomes a man, and then the ache will feel overwhelming.  As a man he will leave, and life as a mother will never be the same for her.  She will continue to love her son, but the connection will be reworked.  Not because she has changed but because one day, he will belong to another.

This knowledge did not exist before his birth.  But it presents itself the moment his mother sees him and as her maternal instinct draws her very close to her son.  That is the way mother-son relationships are meant to be.  From the moment she clings, she prepares herself ever so slowly for the eventual release.

This tension doesn’t exist with the birth of a daughter.  A daughter can stay connected with her mother forever; mothers and daughters have genetic, hormonal, and psychological bonds that cannot be broken.  She can become another’s, but her mother can still keep her.  They are female together in that bond, and they can stay connected even when life changes the circumstances around them.  But the tie a mother feels with her son is more fragile, more tenuous; he is different because he’s a man.  But for as long as he is a child, he is ours and we feel we must protect him.”