Mama’s boy

Three years ago, I joined a group of men for a 12-week journey. We met every Thursday for about four hours to talk about being parents. This was the first group of only male identified people. Most of us, cisgender and heterosexual. I was the only one who were expecting a child, not quite a parent yet.  Most of them were completing this course as part of the commitments they had to fulfil to see their kids again. Men who were in prison for multiple reasons, including violence against women. They showed up every session with a genuine desire to untangle their lives, their actions and how to become a different person motivated and moved by their children.

Children give us all a chance for redemption.

In one of the sessions, a man was talking about his five-year old being a “mama’s boy” and how in his absence, the mom was spoiling him.

Since that day, I have been thinking a lot about that.

My kid is over two years and I have no doubts about how much love resides in his heart for me. We laughed together, we make games and draw together, we cook and clean and fold clothes together. But once mom is around, I slowly fade away like a ghost in a low-budget movie. He has a strong predilection for mom. As he dominates and plays with words, now he can vocalize that preference, yell that preference unapologetically. Toddlers are brutally honest. Not always fair but honest. I see that one of my challenges in life is to help him be honest with kindness, I see that this is one of the things I have to work on as well.

This is a powerful patriarchal idea: your kids are yours and they should fear you, respect you and love you. Patriarchy is like weed growing in the spaces between the pavement, if you let it grow, it takes over.

Two years ago, I drank wine in a beautiful wedding reception surrounded by the red woods. I listened with empathy and solidarity the story of a mom whose toddler was rejecting her. We met that night, but she opened her heart freely as her partner by her side rubbed her back. Her eyes were watery. It was painful to watch, and I was certain it was painful to feel.

I feel the pain of rejection often. Sometimes, it is hard to take, and I catch myself pouting like if I were the toddler. My partner knows how hard it is for me and helps me to find ways to deal with that. It has taken me a while to recognize this, to understand it. Your children are supposed to love you and hug you. Mine does, on his own way, saying “no papa, no, no” every five minutes, asking where is mum when I show up as he wakes up from nap. I know he won’t remember all the things I do for him, but I know he will feel them. That is my hope.

At the same time, I know that in providing care for him, I am also caring for the child that resides on me. In caring for him, I learn how to heal my own wounds. It is a beautiful and painful process, just like parenting.

I realized that the guy in my father’s class was talking about was all about pain. The pain of rejection. The rejection from the person he loved the most. His inability to articulate those feelings and sit with them. It is hard. I understand him now. This breaks me every other day. In bad days, I feel like a teenager, hurt and saying to myself “why don’t you love me?”. In good days, I think about how he is learning to define his boundaries and how love is expressed in multiple ways, like the way he likes to play music with me or make random jokes to make each other laugh.

I hope that next time you hear a parent referring to a kind as “Mama’s boy” you might see how they might be speaking from pain. In these times, we all can use a gentle hand.