To ask if you are a mum to an only male dc… (particularly interested in when the male dc is an adult)

Wow 🙈

Are you me? Apart from the holiday in York and the phone calls, he’s 26, 3 years post university and living in a shared house in London, single but had a long relationship in the past! We’ve just been on a family holiday abroad and we message several times a week. We’ve go to London a few times a year and he comes home a few times. We treat him to holidays with us once or twice a year. I would say we’re very close now, whereas he was closer to DH as a child.Things are hard for Gen Z now and they don’t have the same experiences in terms of relationships and home ownership. I’m 64 and DH is 73, so we may never see him married and / or with children. I’m slowly coming to terms with that.

We have one son, 28 years old. He still lives at home as his work is spasmodic as he's an actor. We longed for a child and as we were older we had to have several attempts at IVF before finally having him. He hasn't had many relationships but more recently he met someone and it seems to be quite serious and he stays a lot at her place about an hour away as she has her own place. I must say I have felt a lot of anxiety - mainly the worries of will I get on with her and the difficulties that could arise if we didn't like each other!
I have met her and it went quite well but the anxieties that I'll "lose" him still persist. Obviously I accept that it's healthy for him to break away and lead his own life but I suppose it's the worry that comes with change.

I'd say I'm close to my son, ( he's 28), in the sense that we show a lot of affection for each other and I think we both would worry if one of us had any problems. That said though, we don't talk or message sometimes for almost a week. He has a GF and they are super intimate or whatever the correct adjective is. And she's lovely as well. So I'm happy that there is someone else looking out for him. He had depression for a little while when at Uni but this seems to have been settled these days. I love him dearly.

They want to move to France later this year- her idea probably. But they are such a beautiful couple I hope they will make it work . Forgotten what I should be answering here.

I know we should love our kids equally ( got 2 daughters as well), but I've never been sure about it. Try not to dwell on that idea too much..

Yes, it's this. Obviously there are going to be specific circumstances which mean a son might be closer to his mum than his sister, personality types, interests etc. But for the purpose of the thread, we have to think in terms of 'all other things being equal'.
There are factors that mean your relationship with an opposite sex child is very likely to be different from that with a same sex child. What the world sees as appropriate being just one of them. If Brooklyn was a woman who had a special dance with her mum at her wedding it would barely have raised a glance, Madonna and her DD Lourdes are regularly all over each other for example. Yet because Brooklyn is male, VB is accused of sexual impropriety, spousification and so on.
That situation is extreme, but the same thinking trickles down to the mundane. Imagine an OP saying "I really want to take my daughter away for a weekend away for her birthday, but her husband has made it clear he wants to come, which wont be the same". Then substitute son for daughter and see how that sounds.

My DS is 25, lives with his partner about a mile away. He calls round a couple of times a week plus he and his GF will come out socially with DH and I every couple of months or occasionally join us in a holiday. His partner’s family live about 30 mins away. They alternate Christmas lunch/evening between us.

I think things are different for us though as DS didn’t go away to uni, lives in a family property and works locally. I think it’s the moving away that changes relationships. I was closer to my own parents than a lot of MNers seem to be, again, I’ve always lived within 5-10 miles of where I grew up.

That's very empathic and magnanimous of you. Your PiL are fortunate.

If son is a son till he gets a wife, why does so many women have problems with their in laws? All the time people here complain that in laws visit too much, husband sees his parents too often, in laws are too involved etc.

I have 21 and 19 year old sons. We're very close - always have been and always will be. I adore their girlfriends, too.

Yes, he's 27 now and we still have a good close relationship. Love him to bits, although he lives in London now, but we are in touch most days.

All my friends who only have sons are the same.

Your kids are your kids, I don't think their sex has anything to do with how close you are. I wasn't that close to my mum, who always obviously preferred my brother.

Well, speaking of a waste of time …

It does sound like your brother is single though (apologies if not.)

It’s when they have a serious partner that the seismic shift happens. Not saying mothers and sons can’t be close but there does come a sort of level of appropriateness I suppose … think VB dancing with Brooklyn!

I’m waiting until you are interested enough to return after your opening and only post @Mummhere - before I waste my time supporting you.

Oh I tend to just take it on the chin! I know they struggle because both their children met their partners (one of which is obviously me!), in their late 30s, so for a really long time they were just a solid unit of four, multiple weekly dinners at the parent’s house, holidays and Christmases just the four of them, and now both their children live in different cities (we’re 30 minutes away and the other much further), so I know they’ll miss their old dynamic and I don’t think it would ever occur to them to know how to include partners as family. I am most definitely just the mother of their grandchildren to them though, I know if my partner and I ever split up I’d never hear from them again. Having said that, they are very nice and friendly to me when I see them! 😂

My Mum and brother are a lot closer than me and my Mum. I am LC with my Mum, live a good 2 hours away, rarely visit. My brother rents a house that she owns, lives in the neighbouring town, cat sits whenever she goes away and sees her most weeks. He is just starting to realise what she is like to me, I met up with him at Christmas but refused to see her.

I do think this is where the preference comes from when it comes to pregnancy and birth. I know not all women have it, but it does feel a bit more like having a friend when you have a daughter.

That's absurd. It's a good job you don't have to see a lot of her, then. To be fair to your husband, maybe they are low contact for a reason.

Bless you, that really isn't fine. That's mean and excluding. If I were your husband I'd come out of the WhatsApp group because you should be included as family too. I think I'd cut back on the roast dinners as well as if they're treating you as no more than cook and their grandchild's mother, they don't deserve it.

Not quite what you're asking as I'm the son, rather than the Mum, but largely me and my Mum had a fantastic relationship, as did my brother.

Usually we'd see each other at least once a week, and be on the phone once or twice more. My brother lived further away, (3 hour drive and a ferry ride) but they'd speak probably twice a week, and there were probably an average of 6 trips to see each other per year.

It helped massively that Mum got on well with both DP and my brothers wife. It's a lot easier when your partner actively wants to spend time with your family (DP generally preferred my Mum to her own family!)

The only times me and Mum tended to argue were when she'd get over involved or forget that we were fully capable adults in our own right. A couple of examples:

Our washing machine broke. Mum popped into our house while we were at work, measured up, and promptly ordered a new washing machine, and paid for it. An absolutely lovely gesture, but it meant that we suddenly had this appliance in our house that wasn't what we'd have ordered. I thanked Mum, but asked her not to do anything like that again, and she got the hump a bit.

Another example, we all went on holiday to Disney for a fortnight. Mum had the habit of second guessing our parenting decisions. Usually a mild irritation, but two weeks of "Won't DD be warm wearing that", or "Does she need a cookie, she won't eat her lunch" properly tipped me over the edge. We had a proper blow out, but we'd made up by dinner.

Most of the time, when I see friends who don't have a close relationship with their parents, it's because the stuff like the above is constant. They seem like they don't see their kids as proper adults, or almost like they're in competition with their kids partner for attention. My Mum had her moments, but by and large knew where the boundaries were.

I always get the blame! It ends up coming back round to me. I think because the men are such pussies it's easier to scapegoat me.

I have an only Ds. DH models a great relationship with his mum to our Ds. So much that I’d say my Ds is closer to his paternal grandmother than the children of dhs sister. Dh has always done his own side of the family gifts admin and arrangements. Hopefully as he grows up Ds (teen) will not see that as “women’s work” and will stay in touch with me and his dad through whatever future romantic relationships or partnerships he might have.

Reading this with interest as a mom of a two year old boy and baby girl, my partner’s parents come round all morning every Sunday, sometimes it’s in the evening and I’ll make everyone a roast, it’s more than I do with my own family so I’d like to think I don’t cause any blockers. I struggle sometimes because whilst they’re lovely people, it’s very clear I’m not really part of their family, I’m not in their family WhatsApp group and they’ll rarely ask me about anything to do with me rather than the children. Which is all fine, I’m ok with it but it definitely gives me some tips on what to do with my son’s wife/girlfriend/boyfriend… whoever! When he’s older. I think I’d be a lot more conscious of trying to make them feel part of my family too and I’d hope that it would make a difference to the dynamic between me and my son

Why should you get the blame? I mean, too bad if she does blame you, but I'd hope she doesn't anyway. If he isn't close to her, he isn't. Nobody's fault, it just pans out that way sometimes.

I hope you don't keep giving money to him.