Saturday 6 August 2011

italian mothers

Italian mothers are famous world wide for raising mammone, mummy's boys (and mummy's girls too.) I come from a country where moving out of home is practically compulsory when you hit your late teens or twenties, people want to be free from their parents, but over here, predominantly in Italian small towns the opposite is true. Children stay at home as long as they possibly can and even when they marry many don't go far, often they move to the apartment above or next door. That's if they get around to marriage. Most Italians have extremely long relationships, 10 years is nothing, 15 yeah getting close to marriage and 20, well normally the bride has been harassing the groom for the past 19 years so about this time he normally gives in and they get married.
Once they get married babies don't come right away. Oh no, we must remember that although the couple has spent decades as girlfriend-boyfriend they have never actually lived together, so although they are not spring chickens anymore they want to enjoy what most of us enjoyed in our younger years....living with your partner, walking around the house in your undies, having a shower with the door open, leaving dirty dishes on the sink. I know one such couple who married after almost 2 decades together and the bride, wanting to give me marriage advice even though I had been living with bel marito for quite some time, told me the best thing about married life was that she could stay in bed as long as she wanted to!

Mammone start in the womb. Once your pregnancy is confirmed many women go into maternity leave and the majority of the time they never re-enter the work force. They hide away inside their houses whilst pregnant, best be safe from that damned wind that could cause who knows what damage. If they do venture out then they must always be escorted, normally by their mothers. When I was 8 months pregnant I drove, alone, about 1 hour north of Malito. Bel marito was working, I had an errand to run so why not go. We didn't tell anyone until I came home as we knew the hospital would be overrun with heart attack cases had the word spread that I had driven so far alone.

As the children grow the get fussed over more and more. Their mothers just don't let go, they can't, chasing after their children is an obsession. Whilst walking the other day we saw a lady driving her car very slowly and in front was her son, about 10 years old or so, riding his bike. I joking told bel marito that she was following him so he didn't fall, so bel marito yelled out something funny and it turns out that she was following him so he didn't fall. She said that if she left him alone he would ride the bike without hands and fall onto the road, so to stop this hypothesis becoming a reality she only let him ride his bike if she followed behind, not on foot or with a bike of her own, but with her car. Crazy! The boy had no helmet on so of course if he fell he would hurt himself. By a helmet, let him fall, and then he'll learn his lesson!

2 comments:

Sarah Elizabeth said...

I think I found one of the few Italian men that wanted to get married and have kids at a reasonable age - my husband is only 27 (3 yrs younger than me) and most people think its crazy that he's already married with a baby on the way. None of his friends are even remotely close to getting married and all still live at home with mum.

My mother in law forced my sister in law to take me to my ante-natal class the other say even though its just a half hour drive away. I let her take me once and then put my foot down and said I was more than capable of driving myself. I think we're going to have a few conflicting ideas on raising children in the months to come!

LindyLouMac said...

I some how do not think you will be raising your son as a Mammone Leanne.