The Devouring Mother

Toxic motherhood and emotional incest

The enmeshing or devouring mother may cause even more catastrophic trauma to her children than an overtly abusive father. When the father is abusive, at least children understand they are being abused, and thus stand a chance at somewhat resisting the ill effects of the trauma. With the devouring mother’s subtle enmeshing, the child cannot recognise her subtle abuse as actual abuse, and thus cannot seek support for it.

Enmeshed family relationships impair a child’s independence and individuality. Motherly enmeshment blurs the emotional boundaries between the mother and her child. She treats her children as an extension of herself, overly involved in their decisions, emotions, and identity. The children inevitably grow up feeling responsible for the mother’s emotional well-being, which leads to difficulty developing autonomy, independence, assertiveness, initiative, self-esteem, a solid individual identity, and the ability to stand up for themselves when facing other abusers.

The devouring mother consumes her children, emotionally, psychologically, and sometimes even physically (physical abuse, or starvation as punishment). Her love is conditional upon the children’s submission to her emotional neediness. Her love is manipulative and often shame and guilt-inducing. She infantilises her children to keep them dependent, using control masked as care. When she isn’t neglecting their emotional needs for attention and nurturing, she is selfishly smothering them to suffocate their attempts at building identity, assertiveness, and independence.

She doesn’t know how to connect, communicate, and engage with her children in an empowering, nurturing way. She does not respect her children’s individuality. To her, they have no right to be sovereign individuals: they are her property, her pets, her accessories.

The devouring mother’s children, therefore, fall victim to disselfment and dissociation from themselves and their environment. They become automata without a will of their own; simply NPCs performing a function, neglecting their own desires to satisfy the emotional needs of the devouring mother.

She devours her children, eating away at their individual integrity and self-esteem.

With sons

The devouring mother is, by default, miserable and deeply unhappy, especially with her choice of men, and most importantly, the father of her children. If she has a son, she uses him as a husband substitute. Her son will be used as a human pet without individuality, whose sole function in existence is to mitigate his mother’s loneliness. The son is forced into a position of emotionally supporting her as if he were her husband instead of a son in need of parental nurturing.

In this role reversal, the boy who has not had the chance to receive nurturing, and thus grow emotionally, is trapped in a prison where he has no choice but to provide what was never given to him… to an adult, no less.

The son is captive to her emotional neediness and emotional dumping. The son becomes disselfed, bereft of individual identity, merging his personality with the mother’s, not knowing where to draw boundaries between the two individuals.

Not only are enmeshed sons deprived of their much-needed developmental and emotional needs, but they are also burdened with the trauma of enmeshment, with blurred boundaries between their mother’s individuality and their own, lost in the hellish limbo of non-identity, non-assertion, passivity, and crippled self-esteem.

She denies her boys’ identity by sabotaging their every attempt at initiative and individuality. Whenever they show initiative to try something new for themselves, she is always there, not to support them, but to shame them, to micromanage them, and to indirectly discourage them with her over-criticism, instead of her encouragement. This cripples their confidence while strengthening their agreeableness, especially to perceived female “authority” figures (matriarchy).

She forces them to take the role of her absent, abusive, or simply weak husband. She reminds them that they are her little men who are much better than her loser husband — the husband she chose to marry and chose to stay with and have kids with. By destroying their male role model (the father), she again cripples their masculine assertiveness, deliberately conditioning them to be her overly agreeable “white knight” fantasy, the male who selflessly lives and dies to satisfy her needs.

She pits her boys against each other, whispering in their ears individually that one is jealous of the other, that each of them is her favourite and better than the others, that each one is her best and only support. She makes them believe that they are in an unhealthy competition as to who will satisfy the mother’s emotional needs more, just like a flirty woman deliberately making her suitors jealous with whispers and theatrics. So, the brothers become distrustful of each other, and they develop unhealthy antagonisms.

She pits the boys against their father, always ridiculing him, accusing him, and encouraging them to hate him. She keeps confiding in them that their father is abusive, non-supportive, cheating, stingy, lazy, weak, and that she regrets marrying him. All those things may be true, but no mother should say these things to her small children. And if those things are true, the insult is double for her for choosing him — at least he can’t help being who he is. She, on the other hand, chose him.

She details to her sons the times she was abused by her husband, ignoring the fact that, when a child witnesses a parent being abused, the child internalises that abuse as if it were done to the child. She tells her sons, for example, that the father beat her up so much one day that she had a miscarriage, thus placing the burden on the kids of wondering about that lost sibling they could have had.

She deliberately mentions to her little sons that she had other better men asking for her hand in marriage, and that she regrets not choosing any one of them. If her sons naively ask, “But then we wouldn’t have been born,” she laughs it off, saying, “But I would have had other children”. This is to passive-aggressively hit them with existential doubt from an early age for their sin of being born against their will. Even if she does this subconsciously, it has a purpose: to erase any sense of self-worth or independent individuality in her sons so that they remain helplessly reliant on her. Indeed, sometimes, the enmeshed mother hates her children because they are also an extension of the husband (and herself) whom she hates so much.

She will always be successful in making her sons resent their father, even if he doesn’t deserve it (usually, he does, otherwise she wouldn’t be so miserable). She then tries to make the father hate the sons so that he abandons them, and leaves them all for herself to devour. She does this by deliberately displaying to her husband her emotionally incestuous advances towards her boys, giving them almost romantic-level intimacy and affection whenever the father is watching. This provokes the father’s subconscious envy, inviting him to hate his own sons as though they were male rivals going after his wife.

She picks one of the boys to be her favourite emotional support, perhaps the most sensitive and agreeable one, or the one who reminds her more of her father (looks like him or even has his name). She reminds this specific son that he is her favourite, not only because he reminds her of her father, but because he is her father, thus interfering with the boy’s healthy mental growth and his development of an identity.

Picking a son to be her husband’s replacement in an emotionally incestuous relationship. When he is little, she sometimes dresses him like an older man with child-size suits, and she tells him “he’s her little man”. She does so to intentionally provoke the father, as if telling him “Your son is more of a man than you are. Your sone is here to replace you. You son gives me all the support you can’t provide. Your son better than you.” This angers the father, subconsciously or consciously, as he feels jealous of the boy who challenges him, literally claiming his woman and his household… but the boy isn’t even aware. The mother is just making his father hate the son by making the father feel insecure in his presence. But the boy never wanted to make his father feel insecure. And so, he inadvertently becomes the target of the father’s hatred, a projection of the father’s self-loathing.

The enmeshing mother has Munchausen syndrome, overacting whenever she’s sick so that she gets the affection she’s starved for. She demands to be taken care of by her sons, the care she never receives from her absent, neglectful husband (whom she chose). She loves making her sons feel worried and stressed over her well-being, emotionally blackmailing them by insinuating or hinting that “she might die”. So the sons have to show her sympathy from pity and from stress as she takes the narcissistic role of the victim to solidify her hold over them. Again, this enmeshes the boys in an emotionally incestuous relationship, and so they have trouble developing their identity, their assertiveness, and their initiative. Instead, they become obediently agreeable yes-men, dissociated from themselves and their reality, easy targets for manipulation, standing no chance at taking control of their lives.

She passive-aggressively performs her motherly duties (cooking, cleaning, laundry), complaining while she does them, to make her children feel guilty and indebted to her, ignoring the fact that she chose to have kids, and so they don’t owe her a damn thing. On the contrary, she owes them care, nurturing, engagement, time, and attention simply because they never chose to be born, and to be born to her, no less. Parents owe their children for forcing a life on them.

She passive-aggressively does her chores, complaining while she does them, taking the narcissistic role of the victim to make her boys feel like a burden to her (contrary to how healthy parents treat their children as blessings). Making her children feel guilty for existing cripples their self-esteem, guilt-tripping them into apologetic subservience to their mother, and by extention, to all women. This is how the subservient simp is born: enmeshing mothering.

Her constant complaining over how supposedly difficult it is to take care of them, even though they receive the bare minimum to survive, and even though she might have a half-job, her sons conclude that they are a burden. They become guilt-ridden, and thus unable to assert themselves or even to feel they deserve whatever they want. How can they? They feel they don’t even deserve the one thing that is our only entitlement in life: unconditional parental love.

This guilt-based mentality makes the boys obedient as she makes decisions for them, like choosing classes for them at school without even asking, and without the boys ever having the assertiveness to protest. How can you resist someone when you feel guilty towards them?

She makes fun of and mocks their manhood in the shower, to make them ashamed of being male, to deprive them of that masculine self-esteem and dignity. This renders them susceptible to female manipulation (mostly shame), as they subconsciously feel they are deficient due to that lump of meat between their legs. This further sabotages their mindset with females, which is no wonder why so many males “put women on a pedestal”; it’s enmeshing male-shaming mothering. The devouring mother deliberately sabotages her boys’ masculine self-esteem so that it’s harder for them to find a female, a “replacement” of the mother. She wants them to fail in the real world, so that they remain reliant on her.

Furthermore, she deliberately gets them girly things, like nerdy, ridiculous clothes (nothing cool and boyish). She micromanages what they wear, and even when they make attempts at defining their own wardrobe (a crucial part of identity building), she ridicules and discourages it. She gets them pink sheets and pink bath sponges, as she keeps reminding them that she wanted a daughter instead of boys.

She calls them by the diminutives of their names, jus to keep them infantilised, and thus eternally reliant on the mother. She gives them feminine nicknames like “Snow White” or “brunette”, again because “she wanted a daughter” instead of a boy — another attack on their independent masculine identity. She even puts on the female clothing to “see how a daughter of hers would look like”, and when the boys protest, she gets angry and plays the victim.

She mocks her young boys whenever they talk to a girl, humiliating them and ridiculing them for “having a girlfriend” or for “liking a girl” as if that’s a crime. This is to deliberately condition them to be bashful, shy, and timid when facing females their age, so that they remain single and attached to their eternal mother forever. She doesn’t ever want to hear that her sons have found a girlfriend; she is jealous and feels threatened.

Especially without a solid male role model to guide the boys and give them an emotional foundation, this toxic shame of “liking a girl” takes away any chance they have of ever going after the right romantic partner… this is what the mother wants, because she is already jealous of the girl who might replace her in the future. Even if the boy later finds a compatible woman to be happy with, the mother will nitpick to find any excuse to feel righteously indignant towards her daughter-in-law. Secretly, the mother wants her son to break up, and she will subtly push him towards that direction with her nosy behaviour and petty antagonising of the daughter-in-law (through pettiness like “offering better cooking” or “taking care of the grand kids better”).

She neglects her boys except when she micromanages them. She never plays or discusses with them. To her, they are not distinct individuals, just an extension of herself. The only attention she gives them is when she commands them tyrannically, punishes them, slaps them, pulls their hair, twists their ears, bites their arms, or compares them with other “better” kids.

She is an overprotective helicopter mother, disallowing the kids’ freedom to play with others, to form and develop social skills, to learn conflict resolution, and to build and explore leadership. She does so while appealing to her supposedly heightened sense of protectiveness, but in reality, she just wants to sabotage her boys’ social skills development, so that they always stay reliant on her. If the boys try to make friends, she will make an effort to sabotage those friendships, unless those kids demonstrate “mama’s boy characteristics”. She will find an excuse to change her boy’s class or school. She will pull him from extracurricular activities that seem to go well for him and give him a sense of identity, like guitar lessons or anything that has to do with sports. She accuses other children who are more developed and individualists as “bad children”, thus emotionally blackmailing her own: “Be clingy and obedient to me, otherwise you won’t get my manipulative and deliberately withheld approval”.

She deliberately embarrasses her son in public in front of other kids to make him a target of ridicule. For example, she suddenly decided to be extra cuddly and affectionate when in front of his peers, when she never ever displayed such displays of affection at home. This gives him the appearance of a smothered “mother’s boy”, weak and scorned by his peers at an age when he needs to be rebelling against his smothering mother as he claims his identity and self-ownership.

She will deliberately mis-correct his homework, scream at him for supposedly doing something wrong, when it was, in reality, correct. She hopes that, when he goes to school, he is embarrassed and ridiculed, his crushed confidence sending him back into the arms of the eternal mother.

She will scream and blame her boys for anything that isn’t their fault, like when they are sick or when they wet the bed. For example, bed wetting is a sign of severe trauma from stress and abuse in the family, which is 100% the fault of the parents. The enmeshing mother then has the audacity to blame their kids for that on top of the abuse that caused their affliction. This way, she teaches them to be apologetic and unassertive so that they can never say ‘no’ to her abusive enmeshment. They learn not to stand up for themselves, not to claim what is theirs, not to take credit where it’s due.

She neglects giving her boys any emotional support when they are troubled by something, and every problem they have, she makes it about her. “Mum, I feel scared and alone at school,” to which she responds, “I had it much worse at your age. My parents abandoned me. And now I am married to your father, who isn’t kind to me. Stop complaining.” It’s always all about her, her, her. The boys are not allowed to have a personality of their own, not allowed to develop as sovereign individuals.

She holds them verbally hostage with her endless detailing language and side-tracking (signs of a toxic shame-based personality), and she austerely micromanages every task she orders them to do, thus denying their exploration of initiative and trial and error, and thus confidence in self.

She neglects them unless it’s time for them to emotionally support her, listen to her endless complaints. This is an abusive role reversal: the child is forced to become the nurturer of the parent, thus the child becomes enmeshed with her, without him having a chance to define himself as a sovereign individual with his own values, needs, and claims.

In a more physical type of abuse, she makes them give her back massages, conditioning them in inappropriate self-denying intimacy where they begin to believe that their role is to be her caretaker, her emotional and physical relief, her slave forced to do inappropriate and undesirable things.

And when she has a tragedy, like her father dying, she will pick he favorite emotional tampon, the favorite son who looks like and reminds her of her distant father, and she will completely strangle him emotionally: “Stay here to listen to me. Your father never supports me. Your older brother is always preoccupied. You are the only one who listens. You are my favorite. My father died, and my husband is very bad to me. I regret marrying him. You are all I have. Life is fake and meaningless. I don’t want to live. I should die. I should not be alive. But I have to stay for my children.”

This emotional burden seriously messes up the boy, cursing his existence while being scared by his mother’s overt suicidal tendencies. On top of that, he has to feel guilty for existing, for being such a burden and an obligation for her, denying her freedom to either leave the marriage or leave this life. What chance would that child have to develop a healthy mind early on?

(…That was my mother, by the way).

With daughters

A devouring mother is similarly smothering and dictatorial with her daughters, too. There are certain additional gender-specific considerations.

She treats her daughter like her pet, her mini-me, an accessory of herself, her dolly. She ridicules her femininity because she is jealous of her youth and thus doesn’t want her to know how precious youthful femininity is — the ‘jealous queen complex’. This is a way to keep the daughter dependent upon the mother.

She reminds her daughter that she wanted a boy instead. This is to condition the girl to be hopelessly insecure, and even sometimes resentful of her femininity. She grows up trying to hide her femininity, or not knowing how to express it properly. She doesn’t see herself as physically attractive, even though she might objectively be.

She takes her everywhere with her as a passive accessory without individual thought or choice of being there or not. This is not healthy communication and time for nurturing engagement between mother and daughter — this is using the daughter as a pet, taking it with her everywhere against its will, while ignoring it.

She always finds the slightest pretext to argue with her, to berate her, to talk down to her. She micromanages her daughter’s every action or decision, even the slightest thing, for example, “how to properly spread butter on bread”. What hope can the daughter have in developing her own identity?

Other times, a devouring mother can be overly affectionate and intimate with her daughter, taking the role of “the best friend”, thus disallowing her the space and freedom to develop her individuality alongside her peers. She doesn’t allow her space to be her own person, independent of her parents.

She relentlessly noses her way into her daughter’s every affair, providing commands in the form of unsolicited motherly advice. But this advice is for whatever serves the mother, not the daughter. For example, she’ll instruct her daughter to go for rich guys at the expense of other qualities like integrity. This comforts the mother knowing that she — the mother — will be taken care of in her old age through her rich son-in-law.

In other cases, when she doesn’t want to marry her daughter away to a resource-rich husband, she shames her daughter’s womanhood to sabotage her chances at ever leaving the nest. And if the daughter does leave the nest, she’s over-reliant upon the mother for the simplest of things: food, money, baby care, support. Her mother is her only support system.

She smothers her daughter by having an inappropriately close relationship with her. In adulthood, they have to talk on the phone for hours every day, even when the daughter is married and has children of her own. This is a way of denying her daughter the chance to grow as a distinct individual. Then the daughter will wonder why she has identity issues and struggles with depression, failed relationships, and trouble connecting with others.

Lastly, she accuses men as a whole to her daughter, making her resent and distrust them by default, thus destroying every chance of a successful relationship. And every time a relationship ends, the mother is there waiting for her daughter to come back to her.

Key takeaway

When mothers metaphorically devour their children, the trauma is subtle, but may even be more irreversibly catastrophic than overt abuse, such as physical or psychological abuse. It’s easier to mitigate trauma from abuse that you recognise. The abuse of enmeshing — emotional incest and denial of individuality — is difficult to recognise, and you thus stand no chance of ever addressing the invisible psychological wounds from it, or at least, gaining some awareness of your issue so you can learn to live with it. Because such trauma is impossible to heal, the best you can hope for is acceptance and adaptation to it.

It is men’s responsibility to point out and stop devouring mothering. Such mothers are themselves deeply traumatised, and they mostly aren’t aware of how traumatic their parenting is. This, of course, does not absolve them of responsibility, since adults are in control of their actions, while children are not. Adults run out of excuses; we can explain their abusive behaviour, but we cannot excuse it.

So, weak men who can’t call out abusive mothers are the problem here. Any man in such a mother’s life, be it her father, brother, cousin, uncle — anyone — must have the balls to let her know that what she’s doing is extremely abusive to her child, and that, in the end, her children will end up with a destroyed life resenting their mother for it — and they’d be right to. Give her the incentive to be better.

References

‘Silently Seduced’ by Kenneth M. Adams

‘Homecoming’ by John Bradshaw

‘Bradshaw On: The Family’ by John Bradshaw

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