Mamitis: Diagnosing the Latin Momma's Boy Sindrome

Last Tuesday, May 10th was a traffic inspired nightmare in Mexico City. Most workplaces allowed their workers to leave at 2pm, so that they could spend a nice dinner afternoon and evening with their mothers. The 10th of May (el 10 de Mayo) is a very important holiday in Mexico. Despite being a country ruled by men and bathed in machismo, mothers here are worshipped and idolized. It is part of the Mexican people's identity, always clutching to the skirts of its patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe, who in essence serves as the country's holy mother.

It is from this conditioning, of always being respectful and nostalgic about one's mother, that brings us to the term "mamitis." Mamitis is best explained in the following article by Dane Schiller. Please read, enjoy, but most importantly, feel free to pass this article on to those brothers, cousins and friends that are chronic participants of this notoriously common mother/son dance. Maybe one day some pharmaceutical company will listen to the pleas of thousands of Latin daughters-in-law! Maybe America has a similar condition, as evidenced by the recent release of the Jane Fonda-Jennifer Lopez's movie titled "Monster-in-Law."

For some, it's always Mother's Day
Web Posted: 05/08/2005 12:00 AM CDT
Dane Schiller
Express-News Mexico City Bureau

MEXICO CITY — Arthritis, gastritis and hepatitis are known worldwide, but you have to spend time around Mexican mothers spoiling adult sons to witness another infamous ailment — mamitis.

While it's not an illness, it is regarded as a pain, at least if you read advice columns or overhear wives and girlfriends complain how it stops their men from becoming responsible adults. Mamitis (pronounced "mameetees") is slang for a man's overwhelming dependence on his mom, sure to be on full display for Mother's Day, which always is celebrated on May 10 in Mexico. It might be considered a variant of "mama's boy" but mamitis is different — it is widespread, steeped in Latino culture and leaves a man's sense of machismo intact.

It's not even a fight-provoking insult, necessarily. Some men see doting on their mothers, and being doted on in return, as their duty. "It is a lifestyle," observed Miguel Angel Hernández, 30, a department store salesman.

Mamitis sets in like this: An aging mother spoils her son by cooking, washing and ironing for him — forever. The son treats his mother as the reigning queen in his life. He sees her as an ideal woman to which no one can measure up — with the
comparisons often at his wife's expense. "They do what their mamas say and she treats them like babies," laughed Martha Cuellar, 33, a magazine vendor. "That is why I got a divorce; she even told him how to raise our kids."

Dolores Prida, who writes the "Dolores dice " column for Latina magazine, said mamitis destroys relationships. "Mamitis is a serious disease that can sour the milk of human kindness," she said. "Funny thing is, every woman has the cure at hand — she should raise her son keeping in mind that one day, he will be another woman's husband, not another woman's spoiled child."

Her blunt advice: "Let the dishes pile up in the sink and serve him menudo on a paper plate. And buy him disposable underwear." Men afflicted by mamitis compare women to their mothers on everything from their wardrobe to their enchiladas, said Roberto Bermudez Sánchez, a sociologist at Mexico City's national university. The married women take a back seat, "but there can be the hope that when (the mother) dies, she will be able to take her place," he said.

Mamitis is found among the rich and the poor alike. It can strike daughters but is overwhelmingly more common among sons. Mexico's first lady, Marta Sahagún de Fox, filed a libel lawsuit earlier this month against a journalist who penned an unauthorized biography which contends Sahagún spoiled her children to incompetence.
Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, said idealizing one's mother to the extreme can indeed prevent some men from becoming independent and emotionally mature and may affect romantic relationships.

"Here we could have a man who could never be able to find the right woman because there is no woman on earth who would measure up to (his) mother's personal attributes," she said. Guadalupe Sosa, 58, a social worker with two adult sons, said mamitis is a form of power. "It is a way of controlling them," she said. "You give them all they want, and they do what you say."

Raquel Dergal, 50, an elementary school teacher, admits she fought hard to stop a mamitis relationship with her son. "I now understand what is most important for my son is his wife and daughter," she said. Her son still visits daily. She was brought to tears as she said that she now accepts that another woman can love her son as much as she does.

The mamitis relationship is hinted at in the song, Despedida, written near the beginning of World War II. It relates the thoughts of a soldier headed to battle.
The lyrics tell of a man bidding farewell to his buddies and his girlfriend, but goes, "It breaks my heart to leave behind my mother."