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.

Rubbish. My DP adores his mum (so do I, she's fab! 😂) and she says she's gained a daughter.

I have one child, now a man. We've always been good mates as well as mum/son so I'd like to think that bond will continue. I've got on brilliantly with all his girlfriends. But I'm a very welcoming person

You can guilt trip a daughter all her life,
your son won't take it, it's on his wife...

Fixed it for you!

I think ,it was a more truthful observation many years ago ( probably before WW2) , when women were less likely than men to move away from their home town, or to be working full time outside the home. There was more reliance on the mother and grandmother supporting network in circumstances such as childbirth, child rearing of ‘delicate’ children and a death in the family. Before NHS care, there was more need of older women to help their daughters.

Daughter in law said this to me once!

Sadly I think there is truth in it not for every single man of course when I think of the adult men in my family and friends none of them are as close to their parents as the females that I know.

My dh for example is a great Dad to our dd's, loves his parents dearly and does keep in contact but it's a call every 7-10 days and he'll go over when I tell him that it's about time he made the effort whereas both his sisters go at least twice a week.
My Dad was the same, he was a real family man at home and was the best Dad I could wish for but fell into the routine of only visiting his parents once every 2 weeks and his sister went daily.
My brother over the years always drifted away when he had a girlfriend then had more contact when he was single whereas his girlfriends saw their parents all the time.

In my friendship circle the women generally seem closer to their parents than their husbands.

I do wonder whether we fall into these roles because it's how it's always been or is it a biological difference between the sexes? In nature it's usually the females who do the nurturing.

Very true for me and lots of people I know. I still see and hear from my son but it's far less than the contact between my daughter and I. And I'm fine with that. I have a lovely daughter in law who I'm close with and she tells me all the things he forgets about.

I’m afraid it may too often be true, but I may be biased, since I know someone who’s been estranged from a formerly close son. It happened only after he married a woman who was clearly determined to hate her ILs from the word go - and he’s evidently been weak enough to go along with it for the sake of a quiet life.
It’s been the cause of a massive amount of heartbreak.

Of course it’s not ‘biology’, it’s gendered socialisation. Girls are still far too often brought up being told other people’s feelings are more important than theirs, trained to ‘be kind’, to people-please, to see marriage and children as some kind of achievement, and that their careers are less important than family. And they are brought up by parents who expect to maintain an ongoing relationship with them in a way they don’t from their sons, who are encouraged to strike out for themselves and focus on work.

It’s hardly surprising that those sons then don’t see it as their job to maintain close relationships with their parents, because they haven’t been socialised to.

I only have a ds. We're close but if he meets someone who loves him, I shall be delighted.

I was never needy with my ex, I'm independent by nature and that won't change. DS knows I love him, and I'm here if he needs me. 🙂

I've only seen it to be true in families where they A) believe it to be true and B) have sons and daughters who they treat differently in expectation of it being true. So then it's no surprise that as an adult the son/s aren't close to their parents anymore, whether or not they marry.

I honk it all goes down to personality and how much effort people are willing to put into relationships with their parents.

My Nan would certainly agree going by her experience. She had two boys and my mum. She us virtually everday. However I'm sure she could count f she thought about the number of times she saw my uncle his wife and her paternal grandkids. That said I also saw my paternal Nan pretty much every day. I was extremely close to my dads mum. However she only had my dad.

The thing I find most interesting is that it seems entirely normal and acceptable for women to maintain a close and happy relationship with their mothers into adult life but men who do are "mummy's boys" or need to "cut the apron strings"

@CurlewKate very good point!

Surely comments like this are the exact issue! Why is it an eye roll that he loved his mum?
i see so many posts on here disparaging men who call their mums too frequently or value their opinion too much, we can’t have it both ways surely?
I have 2 sons and a daughter and this worries me so much. I definitely have the most in common with my eldest son and we are def the closest but it does worry me that this will be seen as “not the done thing” once he has a wife to do things like come on a weekend away with me etc. Where as I would happily do that with my mum now.

Not the sort of thing dads say, is it?

My MIL comes out with stuff about her sons "breaking her heart" by leaving her. To live, respectively, 15m and 45m away.

I'd frankly be disappointed if my son didn't broaden his horizons a bit more than that.

BIL recently split with his girlfriend for a while, and to hear MIL describe the situation, you'd think BIL was a blameless saint. Actually, his girlfriend wanted to live with his out of his parents house to see how they managed a household together, and it turned out that when mummy wasn't doing his laundry and daddy wasn't sorting everything else out, BIL was a pain in the arse.

I agree there I’ve never heard of dads saying their new sons in laws have stolen their daughters

but daughter in laws often have stolen sons 😅

@Adviceplease123456 if you met my ex-MIL you'd understand the eye roll!

Haha ok fair enough, there are always exceptions I suppose!!!

I'm NC with my mother so definitely not true for me!. Although my sisters do make more effort with my parents- my brother lives abroad and barely acknowledges them.

DH is emotionally close to his mum, but still chose to move abroad so not that close really. But they do video chats a few times a week.