By Francis Ewherido

Mama’s boys or mummy’s boys, if that suits you (I am old school, I was at a time when children called their mothers mama), are guys who are very close to their mothers. I am a mama’s boy and always will be. Even after two younger siblings were born, I still clung to mama as if I was her last card in those days.

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But I am devoting today’s article to mama’s boys who have taken the closeness to a new level. Last week I wrote about Tom, a mama’s boy, who left his wife and moved in with his mother. Tom is not alone; another mama’s boy recently left his wife and children and moved in with the mother. In another case, the guy’s mother was living with him and his family. One day, he and the mother moved out leaving the wife and the children behind.

I do understand that uwevwirohwofabeno (it is difficult to understand the inner workings of another person’s house). Issues come up and spouses who have vowed to cling to each other till death do them part go their separate ways. But why would the guy move in with his mother and why would the mother agree to take him in?

In one particular case, the mother never approved of the marriage and never hid her disdain for the daughter-in-law. When the marriage did not produce a child within the first few years, childlessness became a potent weapon in the hands of the mother. She gave the daughter-in-law a foretaste of hell with her torments. The son is weak and could not stand up to the mother.

Luckily the daughter-in-law got pregnant and gave birth to a beautiful girl. Five years past and no other child came along. That became another lethal weapon in the hands of the mother-in-law. “Who’s going to inherit your father’s vast empire after you” became a constant refrain.

The mother threatened the son with disinheritance, if he refused to take another wife “who is fertile” to give him a son. The wimp sheepishly obeyed, married wife number two and moved with her to the family compound. The compound and the mother offered him protection against the first wife whom, with the daughter, he was too weak to face up to.

In the second case, the mother was ill and the son, being the eldest child, brought her to live with him and his family. That was the situation until the bubble burst. The guy packed his personal belongings and moved out with the mother. Living with your mother and wife under one roof is tough business. Women are naturally possessive and territorial.

I personally feel that the mother should have gone back home once she was fit. If she needs assistance around the house back home, get her a nanny or house help. There is a vast difference between wife and mother under one roof and two or more wives in a polygamous set up.

In polygamy, all wives have a stake in the husband, even if in varying degrees, but many women unfortunately see their mothers-in-law as past tense. I was watching a Nollywood movie, when a mother, because of her experience with her wicked mother-in-law (played by, who else, Patience Ozokwor), made her daughters to swear that they would never marry a man whose mother was still alive.

In the last case, the mother of this mama’s boy is a lonely widow. When his marriage started having difficulties, the mother simple fast-forwarded the death of the marriage and mama’s boy moved in with her and they “lived happily thereafter.” The mother is the fabled goat owner who gave out a goat, but held on to the rope. Now the goat has come home to roost.

It is true that divorces and separation are now commonplace, but what I have been struggling to understand is why a grown up man will move back to live with the mother. It makes absolutely no sense to me. As far as I am concerned, such men’s development is arrested; in some cases, they are immature adults who should never have gone into matrimony in the first place.

I find the mama’s boy who moved in with his lonely mother particularly annoying. I encourage him to go a step further to marry his septuagenarian mother so that they can give birth to children and start a new family. I also do not understand these mothers who ruin their sons’ marriages for personal and selfish reasons. If they are lonely, why can’t they remarry?

When God instituted marriage, the primary reason was companionship, so remarrying after the death of a spouse is perfectly normal. But if your late spouse is “irreplaceable,” get busy with work, hobbies and volunteer work; the world needs many more volunteers for children’s, youths’, old people’s,  environmental and many other causes.

Breaking up your son’s marriage so that he would stay with you and give you company is morally reprehensible. To these mama’s boys, you need to grow up; you need to know where to draw the line. Loving your mother is non-negotiable, but if she is selfish and malignant, keep your marriage and nuclear family far away from her.

BIAFRA ON MY MIND

Till now, I have resisted the overwhelming urge to write on the ongoing agitation for a sovereign State of Biafra. I studied at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and lived there happily for four years. But if this agitation were to come to fruition, I will now need a visa to visit my in-laws in Igbo land, if any of my children were to get married to an Igbo man or woman.

A visa to a land where I roamed freely for four years without let or hindrance would be very hard to swallow. I am itching to say more, but this column is after all about marriage and family, not politics, as my former Oga, Chris Mammah, recently reminded me. But Biafra Republic is certainly on my mind.