@Sqirrelly
Saying that you're 'dumping' him on her says a lot about what she really thinks about spending time with young children... !
She loves kids. Just she thinks my child is my responsibility and I shouldn’t give him to anyone else. Because she always looked after her own child and she’s proud of that. She says she could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she used a babysitter.
Sorry, this has turned out to be much longer than I intended.
This sparked a memory of a passage in one of my favourite books, where the main character is discussing with her teacher a scholarship, and the conversation turns to how her parents feel about it. Her father's proud of her, because he'd have loved to have had that opportunity at her age. Her mother is not! and the teacher tries to explain it - here's the passage that stuck with me.
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Has it ever occurred to you that when the daughter of a domestic-minded woman chooses to have a career she is criticising her mother by implication? She is saying, in effect: "The kind of life that was good enough for you, Mother, isn't good enough for me." Well, mothers - like other people - don't care for that very much.
'I hadn't looked at it that way before,' Diana admitted thoughtfully. 'You mean that, underneath, they are always hoping that their daughters will fail in their careers, and so prove that they, the mothers, I mean, were right all the time?'
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That was written in 1960!
You said your mother is PROUD of always looking after you. So when you try to study, it proves to her that you don't see it the same way, and yes, I think she's taking that as implicit criticism - that you don't see it as a source of pride and so - think she has nothing to be proud of
. I doubt she thinks that consciously, it's just eating away at her underneath. She's trying to help you by providing childcare (because she still sees her role as looking after you?), but by doing so she's undermining her sense of self, if you see what I mean?
Conversely, is she so adamantly pro motherhood-as-reason-for-being because she never had an actual choice to be anything else? Do your choices maybe introduce doubt in her that she didn't fight hard enough for herself way way back? Is it possible that when she was young she might have had ambitions that were drummed out of her by her upbringing/lack of choices available to her and she dealt with that by telling herself that what she had to be was really really what she wanted to be?
Add to either of these possibilities that (probably) in her day a family could live comfortably on one salary and that sort of reinforced the idea that it was 'right' to do so and I can kind of see what's underpinning her bunker mentality, and therefore her nastiness to you.
I think what I'm saying is, that her nastiness is not an attack on you - rather, that it's her being over-defensive about herself. It doesn't mean she thinks you're wrong to want what you want (although she clearly says so!), but I do think she may be frightened to accept that you don't want what she wants you to want.
It may be possible to defuse her a bit by praising her motherliness, acknowledging her pride in it, and your pride in her for being so? It may be that she's too defensive for that to be possible, too.
Overall, I think the most practical course to take would be to delay your studying until your son is at nursery, and use that time to study before hitting the jobs market. Yes that will delay you, but September is just two months away. It could take you at least that long to work on your mother, her attitudes will be well-entrenched. I'd grit my teeth until then, but once September comes be ruthless in applying yourself to your ambitions - be uninfluencable be either your mother or your husband to just 'settle' for being what they are comfortable with.