A close relationship mother and daughter is always heralded. And the same relationship between mother and son is met with cries of 'mummy's boy' and calls for apron strings to be cut or that the male needs to choose between mother and wife
Perhaps there are an awful lot of very insecure wives/partners/girlfriends.
That is absolutely BANG ON.
It has always been thus, yet it's almost unheard of for husbands to resent their FILs in the same way or for women to resent a close bond between her DH and his father.
And if men don't exactly see eye to eye with their MILs they tend to just avoid spending too much time with them, which is fine. What they don't often do, in my significant experience and observation, is systematically go about trying to control, manipulate and dismantle their wife's relationship with her own mother because they see it as a threat to their own authority. Nor do they insist on tightly controlling access to her grandchildren in order that they can used as bargaining chips, punishments or rewards, or a test where the MIL is automatically set up to fail. Whereas for some bizarre reason that is EXACTLY what so many women seem to do.
Let's face it, we see it ALL THE TIME on here. PG women stressing about his family wanting to see the baby as soon as it's born and they want them all to stay away for at least a week, preferably a fortnight to 'give them space' and 'respect their privacy' and then in the next breath 'of course my mum and dad and sister and best friend will be there before I've even finished having my stitches because they will be supportive, so that's different....' 
Honestly, people have been so fixated for generations women being the possessions of their fathers, to be 'given away' with his blessing to her husband, where he relinquishes control and ownership of her to another man, but from where I am standing it looks as though we women expect the exactly the same thing, just in a more subtle passive aggressive way. That a mother should be prepared to 'release' her grip on her son so that we can control him instead. 
It's hardly any surprise, is it really, if the mother of an adult son gets a bit jittery and shows behaviour that is deemed to be clingy or attention seeking. if she sees her son being slowly encouraged or even downright manipulated into becoming more and more distant from his own family and gradually completely absorbed into his partner's family. It's a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. And him not standing up to it for fear of being called an unsupportive partner or a mummy's boy. So many women seem to have this 'you are either with me or against me' attitude. And then his mum has to watch while his in laws get to build fantastic relationships with her grandchildren that for some hurtful and inexplicable reason she is denied, because she just doesn't get to put the hours in.
I realise how this all sounds (and in case you are wondering I don't have any DILs or DGCs yet so I have no personal axe to grind) but it's actually an extremely common phenomenon and is the inevitable dynamic in so many families.
So many women seem to justify it by saying 'yes but the thing is, my mum is great, normal, easy-going, doesn't interfere, respects my rules about my rules about my children, respects my boundaries, doesn't do things weirdly, whereas DH's mum.......'
Well here's the thing; when it's your own mother you don't really have so many boundaries because you aren't obsessed with keeping her at arms length in the first place. You don't overanalyse every little thing she says and does to find some hidden passive aggressive meaning in it because you already know she's on your side. And women often tend to run their homes and their families in much the same way their mothers did when they were growing up, so it's easy to see your own mum's way as the 'right' way simply because it's what you are used to.
Many men don't really give a stuff how something is done, so long as someone else is doing it and just want an easy life. They tend not to see so many of these little issues as a direct challenge to their authority or their competence, or their place in their wife's hierarchy of importance. Whereas for some reason, lots of women do see them as exactly that and get very, very shirty about all sorts of imagined nonsense.
And if you are the mother of only boys or an only (male) child it must be incredibly upsetting to see it happening and feel powerless to do anything about it.
The more you pull your DH away from this annoying controlling woman that irritates you so, the more panicky and upset she's going to become and the more irritating her behaviour is going to get. Because believe it or not she really loves and misses HER CHILD and wants to be a bigger part of his life than you are currently allowing her (or indeed him) to be, by sulking and stropping every time she tries to just be a normal, involved part of your family, the same as your own mother is.