Let me clarify my definition of this term, because it is thrown around quite a bit.  I don’t consider a man who is loved or cared for by his mother to be an impediment.  Dating a brother who never had a mother figure can be a nightmarish experience – usually for both people involved.  A Momma’s Boy is not simply spoiled or indulged.  When I use the expression, I’m speaking of the kind of man who is still being raised by his mother.  My big problem with the Momma’s Boys I’ve dated has had less to do with how they related to their mother than how she actually related to them.  She wants to be called a certain number of times (sometimes daily).  Mommy Dearest still picks up after her son – sometimes his laundry and sometimes covering his car insurance.  But it seems that Mom’s primary role is blockin’.  No woman is good enough for her son, but certainly not a “headstrong heffa” who is “too educated to know her place.”  I’ve come across numerous black women who are the PRIMARY, and occasionally the ONLY, major hurdle to me building a mature intimate relationship with their son.  Here’s my sad point:  single black mothers often raise the kind of sons that are impossible to mate with progressive single black women.  We often are our own worst enemy. 

So as I talked to my latest friend about why she had to break off a relationship with a really cool brother who was all but legally married to his mother, I wondered why this was.  Why are we our own worst enemy?  While it’s growing among whites, single motherhood has been the general state of black parenting for several generations.  It can be linked back to slavery and the dichotomy of black men being treated as virile breeders who were impotent in matters of determining their offspring’s future.  The fate of the mother was the fate of the child.  We have not socially transitioned from this.  But my larger point is that for better or worse, this ain’t new.  Black women know the obstacles they face in finding a suitable black male mate who is, for lack of a better term, equally yoked.  They understand from personal experience the challenges in securing a relationship with someone who is in demand simply because they have a job, an education, or have somehow remained childfree throughout their 20s. 

So they manage to find a man or at least hook up with one.  Some get married.  Some get pregnant.  Some do both.  For whatever reasons, the father is no longer in the picture and she finds herself alone and responsible for a black male child.  I imagine that it’s quite an overwhelming feeling for any black woman who is aware of what her son will face when he enters the world as a boy and, God willing, a man.  Suddenly, she forgets everything that she went through in securing a mate.  She begins to raise someone who will always need her and she views up-and-coming sisters with contempt.  Rather than seeing them as a potential ally, she views strong minded black women who will stand up to her (and thus her son) with resentment and derision.  Many (not all or even most) women who faced the same precarious dating scene that we did just 20 – 30 years before don’t raise men who will make it any easier for the black women of today and tomorrow.

That has been my experience anyway.  A brother with an unsatisfactory job can hustle and learn a new skill.  A black man who didn’t finish his degree can take classes toward doing so.  An ebony prince who has a son can actually prioritize your relationship.  But a man whose life partner birthed him is not someone you can readily change.  If the relationship between mother and son has remained fixed in time – you ain’t gone be the one to cut that cord.  I’ve tried and it never works.  Black mothers are a force – for good reason.  The world is a cold one and they want their son to be well taken care of.  But they are women of an earlier generation and their concept of what it means to be a good life partner for their son is often different from my own or my peers.’  Like most of my friends, I think of helping a man advance in the way that I’d like help.  I’ll back him in getting more education or in advancing on the job.  I’ll share my experiences in running my own business or prioritizing my personal obligations if it’ll give him some insight for similar issues.  In short, I want to share the responsibility of eventually building a life together and if that means we split the cleaning bill – so be it. But Moms’ concern is more about the fluff of my biscuits than the substance of my career.  Okay, I can acquiesce on cooking, as I want him to experience domestic happiness as well.  But she steadily keeps going.  What temperature do I cook my meat at?  Do I know how he likes his clothes folded?  Why don’t I do some cleaning rather than splitting a bill with her son?  It takes all my energy not to shoot back that I’m not the only modern person in the relationship.  Asking me to be a cooking/cleaning/head-giving/ old school domestic goddess is the equivalent of me telling him to build us a house instead of wasting money on buying one.  We shouldn’t have AAA cards if her macho/old school son can fix anything that ever goes wrong with the family car.  Of course she would consider this absurd. 

On several occasions, I looked across the dinner table at these women and wondered if they had really forgotten.  Why were they raising a man to need an “old fashioned” woman when they had not been old fashioned themselves?  They’d ordered more than their share of fast food as they kept down two jobs to make ends meet in the absence of child support.  They’d trained their son to be a good cleaner, because Molly Maids wasn’t in the budget and for those who did choose to climb the corporate ladder, they used all their mental muscle to crack that glass ceiling.  It’s like they raise their son as the kind of man they wished they had married – an alternative version of the “boy’s” father.  Why didn’t they raise him to be a partner to someone else, to be there for a strong willed black woman who would need him to be a supporter rather than supported?  In short, having personally experienced my situation, why did they prepare their sons to spend a lifetime with them rather than a lifetime with me?

I’ve never had this question satisfactorily answered.  But I did wonder how single black women ever managed to raise sons who were NOT Momma’s Boys.  They walk a fine line.  There is no father in the house or not one involved enough to make the boy into a man – so that job falls to her.  How does she successfully set about this monumental endeavor?  A conscious and aware black woman, especially one who struggles financially will worry. When a mother looks at her son she is thinking of all he will face.  She is thinking of how society will view him and how he will be treated.  She contemplates how early racism will rear its ugly head and how much damage control she will need to do in dealing with it.   Even those of secure financial means are concerned with development of his self-image.  She knows what is coming and she has to prepare him.  Is it so wrong that she praises him for mediocre grades as she attempts to instill confidence while teachers berate him, ignore him or assign him special education status because he has a temper?  Of course she commends him for staying out of jail when he’s harassed by the police for driving her car in his own neighborhood.  She makes his employment, regardless of its potential for advancement, a source of pride because she understands that he will be viewed as a threat if he’s too smart and a menace if he won’t make others feel more “comfortable” in his presence. 

Every decision she makes straddles the fence of too much or not enough.  If she gives him too much love and unwarranted praise – we get the proverbial Momma’s Boy who accepts low expectations for himself while demanding high or unrealistic expectations of whoever he dates.  These are the brothers who insist on being chased or pursued while they claim to be the man in the relationship.  They want continual pampering and will not last with a woman who gives them any attitude or challenges them.  They simply cannot tolerate someone who isn’t willing to tow the line behind old Mom. She will take care of him and may need a little assistance from wifey at most.  The problem is that she’s already made him into her man – so he can’t be anyone else’s.

There’s the alternative.  And this is almost as bad – if not worse. A single black woman is as hard on her son as possible.  She does not raise a companion, but attempts to toughen him up through instilling humility and a perception that he is not “better than anyone else.”  She figures if she challenges his self esteem now, he has a leg up on what the world will give him.  The logic is that if she is the first one to break him – the first one to teach him that he will not receive special treatment, when the world does it, he’ll survive.  While you don’t get a Momma’s Boy from this type of upbringing, you don’t always get the kind of brother who is confident enough to deal with a self-loving sister.  He constantly doubts himself and he is genuinely uncomfortable in new surroundings.  Or, he is angry at being cheated out of the legendary motherly love that comes from black women and he’ll make any woman pay that debt in whatever way he sees fit.

The bottom line is that it’s tough.  I don’t know what it would be like to look at my own male child and think: Now how am I really going to do this?  Would I put some effort into raising a future husband or, as I fought my way through the multiple issues of raising a man on my own, would I raise the kind of child who would help me get from one day to the next?  For if I don’t survive – mentally, physically, emotionally - his world will crumble.  I’d like to think that I’m enlightened enough to understand that the future is coming.  He’ll have to leave and I do want him to be able to thrive in a relationship with an opinionated, strong-willed black woman who will truly have his back and love him in a way that I cannot.  I’m thinking this now of course. 

But maybe that particular part of the future won’t be on my mind.  I’ll be thinking of his first fight (will I be addressing the pitfalls of black on black violence or will I have to talk to him about mixing it up with someone of another race?)   My concern will rest on the first girl that could turn him into a father. I’ll be preoccupied with whether or not he really is being a problem in class or the teacher has a problem of his or her own.  I’d probably think less about him being a husband and more about him living through his 16^th birthday.  I don’t know if my conviction that he should make a great partner for some dynamic sister could ever truly be outweighed by my need to feel that he is being taken care of rather than taken advantage of.  The truth is that Momma’s Boys have their place and while they don’t always contribute to the immediate happiness of a new generation of black women, they have helped past generations survive the madness of raising a man while being a woman who is alone, unassisted and often terrified that the world will crush his manhood before she has figured out how to develop it.

Of course there is a middle ground and sisters raise well-rounded and balanced brothers everyday.  My hat is off to them.  But it’s also tipped to those who raise Momma’s Boys because the fact of the matter is that many of their sons are still here – alive and breathing.  And both statistics and common sense tell me that this is its own understated miracle.