What is your take on the old adage, "A son is a son until he takes a wife. A daughter is daughter all of her life"?

[Bayleaftree63]

Just that really... interested in your thoughts.

Load of rubbish.

It's sexist nonsense.

I also think it’s self fulfilling.

we see it right from gender preference before birth. Women don’t want boys because they’ll have nothing in common, they don’t like football, mess, mud, they want little girls they can go shopping with and for spa days together.

i’ve seen it irl. Boys go off to football with dad, girls go shopping with mum. No attempt to find a common ground or even think there could be a common ground.

then inevitably the adult relationship is closer with girls as they spend time doing girlie things together.

the son’s wife’s family then actually get to know the son and he spends time with them.

Yes. And there's a suggestion to that on here just two replies in.

The horror of a man loving his mother!!

This. Both DH and I keep in touch with our parents on our own terms - he interacts with mine more as they provide childcare for us too - we both do the emotional labour BUT his is more out of duty, whereas I genuinely like my parents and want to spend time with them. I don’t know why DH can’t really be arsed with his, but it’s not my circus and I refuse to make it wifework.

It's rubbish.

I hate it. It doesn't apply to me in my relationship with my mother and when my MIL said it to me I was upset for my DH who is close to her.

My MIL would say that when I married her son, that she finally had a daughter! DH is close to his mum and we see her at least weekly as a family and support her as much as we can.

My DiL is lovely and my son’s priority is his wife and family, as it should be.

Unrealistic expectations. How many adult, married, DSs want to drop their spouse and join their mother on a shopping/spa weekend as suggested up thread? You need to find common interests.

I think it's the opposite I ran as far as I could my brother stayed close to my mum.

Makes my stomach turn. My husband did not marry me to replace hiw mother for fucks sake. Women aren't support characters that can be swapped out.

IME the daughters are favoured from a young age and closer to their parents as adults, in all senses.
I'm sure this always isn't the case.
I have boys.

Utter bollocks. Dh is just as close to his parents as I am to mine.

Unrealistic expectations. How many adult, married, DSs want to drop their spouse and join their mother on a shopping/spa weekend as suggested up thread? You need to find common interests

well exactly. I’m close to all my children but I definitely do more with my dd’s as we have more in common.
Nothing to do with being married.

The older my sons have got the closer I am to them. Very close to daughter as well.Obviously the dynamics change when partners are thrown into the mix but luckily the one son who has a partner still loves and cares for his Mum . Luckily his partner is lovely and we met up in London recently for lunch .

I think it's nonsense. The strength of the relationship and the behaviour of each party are what matters, not what gender they are. I have a questionable relationship with my mum and moved away as soon as I turned 18. Whereas my brother stayed at home much longer and now they live ten minutes apart and she provides childcare and sees his family several times a week.

I do think in some specific life events, the mother of a daughter is more involved than the mother of a son (assuming a good relationship). The mother of the bride or maternal grandmother tend to be involved more if weddings and babies happen. But I don't think that means the saying mentioned is true.

I think when you have a culture of competing for male attention, being worthy and doing the pick me dance, some women will fall into the trap of doing that with their own son when they get a partner. It's a sad side effect of women being taught to find their value through their men.

But if the mum values herself, respects her son and occupies her role as mum and mil and doesn't see the dil as competition then you're halfway there.

All you need then is a dil who can happily take her role as wife without feeling threatened by a healthy relationship her DH has with his mum then you've got heaven. 👌

Well my brothers are much closer to my parents than I am. They barely see me!

Close to all my sons. We don't speak daily as we're all busy and they all have their own lives and partners. But we meet up regularly and all there in a heartbeat if there's support needed.
Close to their partners too.

Not true here. I see a lot more of my MIL than my mother.

Isn't this partly based on the idea that once a man gets married he will no longer have to concern himself with sending birthday cards etc, as his wife will take over that sort of thing? So hopefully nowadays that should be reducing as cultural expectations (glacially) shift.

DH's maternal grandmother had this on a fridge magnet. It certainly explained a lot of the dysfunction in their family - but it was something they very much did to themselves by buying into this claptrap rather than an inevitable consequence of the mother-daughter relationship.

Given the fact that on mn people have great relationships with their mums but assume a man to be a ‘mummy’s boy’ if he so much as visits his mum, or slag off men who live at home with their parents and call them man children etc I do wonder in the future- I have 4 boys. I hope I’ll just leave them off and they’ll migrate back as much as possible but you never know really!!

Don’t know yet!