“He’s Your Son, Not Your Boyfriend”: 38 “Boy Moms” That Needed A Reality Check

My favorite “boy mom” was my MIL. She raised my husband and his brother with boundaries, they know how to sew, cook and all about the menstrual cycle. She knew they might have women in their lives one day and needed to be prepared to support. They’re sensitive and not afraid to show emotion. She only let them sit to pee in her house so no cleaning up dribbles or falling in the toliet.

After I had my first child she pulled me aside and made sure he was doing his part. Told me to let her know if he wasn’t and she’d talk to him. I miss that wonderful woman so much.

This is a similar conversation that’s going on in a parenting subreddit right now, so I’ll share my same comment here.

I am a mom of three girls and at a friends baby shower about 4 years ago (right before the world shut down) this conversation was happening, as the mom to be was keeping it a surprise at birth. When I shared that my own experience with girls wasn’t much different than those shared by boy parents (my girls love sports, video games, rough housing, legos, super hero’s, speed demons; rocks in pockets and book bags, the outdoors, etc) , there were 2 boy moms who I swear you’d think I had called their mother a hamster. They went OFF. How dare I compare such different and unique experiences? Apparently I said my experiences from a place of superiority? Oh.. and when my girls became teens and were “cackling harpies” I’d see how wrong I was and “good luck” to me then, because “everyone knows teenager girls are terrible and end up hating their moms”.

Sooo ya? Idk… my kids are 10, 14 and 16 and there’s been no switch flipped where they suddenly hate me. Rocks are still very much a thing though, but it’s my own fault now that the eldest has her own rock tumblers, she will borrow other family members pockets to bring them home when hers exceeds capacity.

I have a cousin who's a "boy Mom" and I'm a mom to a boy and girl. She has said some things that are a little messed up about little girls. She has also said she would never want to be a mom to a girl.
Uh, sorry, but you have no Idea what you are missing. My girl is the most loving, warm and wonderful little creature and it's so weird that people hate her because of her gender.
Girls are just as awesome as boys and I do not understand the girl hate from these moms.
Also, I am told that "boys are just different, I wouldn't understand." I have a boy too! And gender is a weird thing to get hung up on. My boy loves playing with an Elsa Barbie doll and lightsabers. My girl loves her baby dolls and roaring at everything like a dinosaur. So I find the gender flex to be very strange since it feels like a societal attribute as opposed to a biological divide.

One of my coworkers is a “boy mom” she has one son and 2 daughters and the only time she talks about her daughters is when she’s insulting them and calling them lazy. Her son is the center of her and and husband’s world. He is a junior, named after her husband and she openly talks about how he is her husband’s favorite and how spoiled he is. She will talk about buying her son a couple hundred dollar pair of shoes and stuff for school shopping and making her daughters buy their own.

She talks about how “high maintenance” girls are and how her son is so easy.

She makes her daughters do chores and not her son because he “doesn’t do it right”.

I could go on and on.

She is literally the worst!

Oh man. I dated the son of one of those boy moms. He was her precious baby boy even after giving me a black eye. "You must have done something horrible for him to do that to you." Yeah, you can have him back.

My MIL is textbook "boy mom". I got permission to shut that down real quick when we met because even he thinks it's weird.

What makes it worse is he's the ONLY CHILD. Took a couple of years, but through r/JNMIL, I'd found words to put her in her place.

Went along the lines of, "if you want to marry your son, just say that."

And "he's your son, not your boyfriend."

"Nobody can love him like I do!" She says in a drunken state one time while she was in town.

I replied, "clearly you haven't loved him enough, because I'm still raising him."

I wouldn't doubt if she was the catalyst behind several relationships ending with how she behaves. She's backed off a bit, but I know that lunatic resents me just for being his wife, or in her eyes, "the other woman".

My mum was one, had 5 boys before me. She worshipped them but saw me as competition, she'd deliberately cause arguments to get them to defend her and go after me.

My ex’s mom had his back even after he would violently beat me. I told his dad what was going on and got that lady in trouble.

Terrible. I dated one of the boys of a “boy mom.” Basically her 2 sons could do no wrong. For example, my ex would constantly borrow money. Conservatively $5k in the 2 years we dated. Which was a lot for me at the time. When we ended things, I asked for him to pay me back. He didn’t so I took him to small claims court. He brought his mom to yell at me. She said her precious baby would never borrow from me… I had everything recorded on Venmo LOL. She was legit speechless for a few minutes until she said why was paying for dates a big deal? I said not only did I pay for our outings, he borrowed money from me outside of that. His brother too. Anyway she said I shouldn’t be doing this. It’s not womanly.. whatever that means 🙄.

My experance with boy mums is they don't teach their sons to adult.

My ex at 26!!! Was woken up by mum, had his bed changed by mum, was cooked and served for by ..... can you guess......yep mum!!

She created a man child. She was pleasant to my face but I strongly suspected she didn't like me at first. I think I grew on her as I encouraged him to do more for himself. He moved out. She had a melt down.

I kicked him out a year later and she had another melt down. I think she had gotten used to the idea that her son had grown up and then I dumped him back on her.

My now husbands mother is amazing!

Dated several guys from boy mom families - I was never good enough for their babies….

I was modeling professionally, working full time paying my own bills and I owned my own home, and I was earning two degrees with a triple major and headed to law school.

But I wasn’t good enough for their boy.

I’m convinced I was dating the son of the queen of boy moms. He was her step-son but that whole relationship in hindsight raised some red flags.

She had 3 kids of her own, 2 boys and 1 girl who was the oldest. She treated her daughter like dirt and was always picking fights with her. The boys could do no wrong, they had no curfews or anything.


Her relationship with my ex was INSANE. Like, I found out later they slept in the same bed and everything. When she found out he was mistreating me, she ranted about how “lucky” I was that he never put hands on me. She also slapped me when I had enough and screamed back at him in front of her. That woman was insane.

I dated the son of a “boy mom”. It was wild. There were 2 sons, 1 daughter. Tbh both sons were bums. No drive, virtually no ambition, and both completely living off of their parents. The sister worked hard playing soccer in college and became a veterinarian. When I was dating the youngest son, he was 25/26, the oldest brother was 30. They lived in a disgusting house their parents bought for them. They had basically no expenses. They could do no wrong. They had money and resources thrown at them and their terrible behavior was always enabled by her.

When my ex cheated on me with his intern, his mom was all for it. He “deserved to be taken care of”. He, and his mother, both expected that he be in a relationship where he was waited on hand and foot. The new girl was ready to be barefoot in the kitchen. I was tired of buying him groceries that he would let rot. I was out, she was in. Thank god.

My only experience is that some of them were really nasty about my daughter, mostly in the infant stage. "Good luck with having a nasty teenager." Sneers and "SO glad I don't have deal with periods." I think it was less misogyny, although obviously that plays a factor, but more jealously. Every one of these women kept trying to have a girl and it didn't work out and so they were bitter about it and this was their way of coping. Still not convinced if they actually wanted a daughter or a doll to dress up and call their mini me.

I have a student named "King". His mom freely admits that she named him that because "after 3 girls, I finally had my king".

It's extremely difficult to stay on her good side because the least bit of criticism or expectations (yes, it's an expectation your kid be awake during school and do his work) puts her on the defensive.

"I'm not going to make him do anything he doesnt want to" is something she has said to me more than once.

Good news for her, she's gonna have her "king" live when her his entire life.

My sister is the worst kind. My nephew is not even 2 and she’s already talking about all the girls that are going to try to trap him with a pregnancy? Projection is not just a therapy buzz word….

She’s also OBSESSED with the fact that he is biracial (we are white, his father is Dominican and Cape Verdean). I do think his cultural identity is super important, but it feels like tokenism to me. Literally someone commenting on his curly hair and she’s like “well he is ****BIRACIAL****!” So cringey. But I’m white, so what do I know?

Terrible. I come from a family of four sisters and one brother, we always got treated the same – mayyybe a little favourable toward my brother, but he was also the youngest so it was kind of expected. When I started dating my now husband – WHOA. I had never experienced a mum looking at me as a villain for "taking her baby boy away."

I suffered years of insults, personal attacks and snide remarks before she (AND THE REST OF THE WOMEN IN THE FAMILY, especially his nana) realised they were simply driving their "baby boy" further away. Thanks to them I have significant anxiety surrounding family events, as well as a complex about the way I look, how much money I make, my mental health... the list goes on.

Currently in therapy trying to untangle the mess they made of my self worth. On a positive – I've been with my husband for ten years, married for two. Suck it, boy mum and co.

My experience is that they think it's something that makes them quirky & unique, and are all 'I just wouldn't know how to raise a girl!!!'. I legitimately had that conversation with someone, and I felt like saying 'well, did you know how to raise boys? Or did you just work it out? No boy is the same after all'. I wonder if the whole 'making boymom my personality' enthusiasm is a bit of overcompensation because they'd also like a daughter.

So bad. my first boyfriend was the oldest of three boys. his mom did not like me. she gave him a photobook for his high school graduation with photos of him growing up and on the last page there was a picture of him and me at prom and underneath it read "Remember we loved you first" which was just weird. little stuff like that and then never asking me any questions about myself or anything. she also was such pick me vibes. luckily his dad was much much better.

I used to work in childcare and education, and my experience has been there are Moms and then there are the Crazy Moms, regardless of their "brand" (tiger/boy/almond/free range/etc).

I worked for a woman who was the mother of 3 boys, 2 were twins, and the eldest was only 18 mos older than the twins. She was normal and chill. She did lots of "boy stuff" so was fine with the title "boy mom".

Before that I worked for a lady who was just absolutely bananas. Her sons opening line was, "this might be weird, but I was breastfed until I was six. I just like to let people know." That poor kid. Like, he knew there was something off, but didn't have enough experience outside of his home to fully understand the levels of crazy he was subjected to on a daily basis. The woman also had a daughter, so she wasn't just a "boy mom" but dear God do I feel for her son's future partners.