The One Thing Most Toxic Boy Moms Have In Common — And It Has Nothing To Do With Their Sons
She explained why most moms feel the need to form codependent relationships with their sons.
@briknighttt / TikTok A mom brilliantly explained the reasons behind why some women often cultivate unhealthy attachments to their sons.
In a TikTok video, Brianna Alexis responded to a comment from a viewer who pointed out that it seems to always be a husband's parents who are more often than not the problem, and questioned if it's having a son that makes people toxic or do only toxic people have sons.
Alexis explained how absent husbands are something all toxic boy moms have in common.
"Having a son makes a lot of women toxic, you have to actively work not to be a boy mom in the stereotypical sense," Alexis began in her video. She pointed out that while this phenomenon of having a toxic and codependent relationship can also happen with mothers and daughters, it's almost always seen with mothers and sons.
Alexis mocked how most of the time, mothers of sons will gush about how they often love their boys differently than their girls, which can be proven in the way sons are treated by their mothers. However, the issue with many toxic boy moms isn't because of their children, but because of their husbands.
"Do your own research on family enmeshment. A lot of women don't get the emotional fulfillment and satisfaction from their husbands. Through their son's life, they rely on their son to give them that," Alexis pointed out.
Due to the emotional reliability that some mothers have with their sons, it turns into an issue when they become older and are independent, find their own partners, and eventually have their own families. "It can be really hard for that mom to let go, it's the making of a toxic mother-in-law."
Alexis acknowledged that not every mother with a son is going to be toxic, but admitted that many of the toxic boy moms she knows in real life have equally toxic and emotionally distant husbands, while supportive and loving boy moms share those same traits with their husbands.
As Alexis mentioned, when a mother becomes overly involved in her son's life, it ends up becoming worse in adulthood.
The attachments that boy moms can sometimes have with their sons were also talked about by another mother on TikTok, Margaret Greco, who explained that "a lot of women are overly catering, they are treating their sons like boyfriends, they are treating their sons like secondary husbands."
"Men need to fly the coop, not that you don't love them but I do think there is a larger disconnect because men need to fly the [expletive] away," Greco insisted. "If men don't fly away there is a really close connection and it causes a lot of problems, and that is where you have the, 'I don't like my mother-in-law' narrative."
While briefly touched on by Alexis, the term enmeshment often refers to the toxic attachment that some mothers will have with their sons and occurs when a mother becomes overly involved in her son's life, blurring boundaries and creating a codependent relationship.
When a woman doesn't receive the emotional support she needs from her spouse, she'll often turn to her son to fill that void.
Having this type of connection with a son will only lead to detrimental effects as he grows and becomes an adult, including a struggle with forming healthy attachments outside of his mother, setting boundaries, and making decisions on his own.
It's also unfair to a man's future spouse, who will most likely have to deal with the stereotypical "toxic mother-in-law who can't let her son go," despite that son being a grown adult with a right to have his own family without the interference of his mother.
As Alexis mentioned, not every mother of a son will be toxic and there's nothing wrong with having a close relationship with your son. The issue comes when mothers try to replace the lack of love from their husbands by turning to their sons when that burden should never be placed on a child to begin with.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.