If they need you you are not a useless againg baby boomer? (Not intended for the baby boomers who gave so much to America starting to the average 19 year old killed in Viet-nam)This is not about her son growing as an healthy independant individual but about Mum being still busy worrying about baby's visa bills instead of his nappies and having the joy to talk about it instead of facing something else: her job, her husband, her againg... At 19 in America one can die for his country. In most part of the world one wasted semester of not ready for university will provide for the entire livelyhood of a entire family for more than a year... If he was going away from California/America to find himself and instead finding that others exist beside him and Mum it would be money well invested. But this not about him it is about Mum bragging about she is needed herself. Instead of becomming proud how her boy can be needed serving his country, hamburgers or humanity... But if he grows up you might grow old right?

I suspect that she will grow old in any case. Neither of us have any reason to doubt that she knows that. Yours is one of the more randomly confused and fascinatingly tangential and projective letters here and I am a little embarrassed to answer it. ( Are you a rather incredibly super specimen of humanity? Did you rather enjoy inventing and then assaulting this "useless, aging baby-boomer", this foully narcissistic self-serving, Mom? ) I am overdoing it (in volume, not content) in the defense of this woman in here, or at least I am feeling relentless in it, but it's for a reason. As a therapist I think that we're seeing a resurgence of mother-blaming that was, I had hoped, on the wane for a bit. It seems to be gearing up in the culture at large, actually. (Woman against woman again, too - oh, those mommy wars-- and that's a bad sign.) And here, weirdly, the supposed castration of her son that many of the other letters revel in, has become a threat to national security -- the mother willl devour the boy in order to preserve her own youth , and he will be prevented from the male initiation that will make him a good soldier. Well, it's sort of confused when you put all of these letters together, isn't it? Gets way out there. These letters are a whole research project in themselves: the vitriol, contempt, projection, vicious assumption and self-righteous blame in here so exceed congruence with this story that there is no other explanation. Be careful; the world has a long and brutal history of dealing with the fear of mothers that underlies the vitriol and blame. The assumption that this woman will feel worthless as she grows older is one of a thousand fascinating items one can gather in this single thread.

My husband's uncle is ~55 and started a second family with his new wife, who is in her 40s herself. At the age of 4, he is still not potty trained, occasionally is fed infant formula, and generally is not expected to control himself at all. I truely think that they purposefully infantisize him to feel younger about themselves. Meanwhile, Uncle's twenty something son from his first marriage still lives at home and Uncle drives him 1/2 hour to the train station every day because this "man" has never learned to drive.

Do parents hobble their children's growth to feel better about themselves? They certainly hobble growth for some reason.

She already has a much older daughter: assuming her being a baby boomer is legit.

People with hammer see nails everywhere. As a therapist you feel that the reactions you see are symptoms. I did not speak of Freudian castration and this is tangential... It is not about blaming mothers and mother hatred. It is about a Mum reporting quite cutely/proudly that at 19 her son is not grow up... Exposing all his flaws to the world and showing off how much she is helping him doing for him what an adult should be doing... Calling him baby even in public make him look more like a doll than a human. There is a definitive joy to be needed is this article. As a therapist explain us why if the role of parents is to build self-sufficient individuals

I am not self-rightuous: I and my familly live in very different conditions (cultural, geographical and financial). I am not living in the West, I am not in America and English is not my first language (you could have gathered this). I am offering to you that in many part of the world the chance given to this child are beyond beliefs, and that the behaviour of his mum to shield him to many reality is also unbelievable. Actually making loose face to your own child by reporting such things in public would be considered a betrayal.

So I venture that the such betrayal was a bit on the self-preserving side instead of helping the self-respect of her child.