Paying Mama’s Boys to Leave Mama
The Italian government is now giving young men cash to fly the nest. PJM's Aaron Hanscom writes that it's a dog's life for these "mammoni," who just don't want to leave home.
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The Club Beverly Hills offers the world’s most privileged dogs the opportunity to “socialize with like minded peers, enjoy a Jacuzzi soak, grab a gourmet meal, see their private doctor, or fit in a quick workout.” Apparently these indulgences are necessary to reduce the stress of lives made up primarily of sleeping on expensive couches and having your neck scratched.
If only these pooches had it half as good as my brother-in-law.
Up until last month, Fernando, who is 33, lived with his parents. When there were no temporary job openings (which is usually the case in his small town in southern Spain), his days were devoid of any activity more strenuous than playing video games. Around noon, he’d roll out of the same bunk bed he used to share with his younger brother and plop down in front of the computer monitor. There he’d remain until called to lunch by his mother. Most often Fernando would skip Spain’s greatest invention –the midday siesta– because, well, there are only so many hours in the day to play “Doom.”
I thought of my brother-in-law when I read recently that Italy’s government will offer young Italians money to leave home. Most of that cash will be going to men, as they make up 67 percent of those staying alla casa. Close-knit family takes on a whole new meaning when you consider that eight out of 10 Italians under 30 still live at home, and the average age for moving out is 36. The Daily Telegraph reports:
Next year’s budget will offer almost ¬£700 in tax relief to Italians under 30 earning less than ¬£10,500 a year, and half that to those earning more.
In addition, the government will pay 19 per cent towards the cost of renting accommodation for university students if they study at least 65 miles away from their home.
What’s the big deal about flying the nest at a late age? Politician Renato Brunetta says it hurts Italy’s growth and innovation since there is “little movement either geographically, socially, or professionally and little propensity to risk.” Who needs independence when it means dirty socks and frozen dinners? Put another way, why go out and risk failure when you can get unconditional love at home?
Indeed, love is the reason 42-year-old television quiz show host Flavio Insinna says he still lives with his mother and father. “I have never felt the need to move. The reason is not because of money, it is because I love them,” he told La Stampa newspaper. That’s all well and good, but whatever happened to: “The reason I’m moving out is not because I don’t love my parents, it is because I want to spend a little more time with my girlfriend”?
Of course, a little more intimacy shouldn’t be the only incentive to get out of the house. Creating a new home of your own is a surefire way to become a responsible adult. The Book of Genesis commands: “And therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife and be as one flesh.” If religion isn’t your thing, Hollywood has also weighed in on the matter. In Failure to Launch, Matthew McConaughey plays a mama’s boy in his 30’s who is in no hurry to leave home. His desperate parents end up hiring an attractive woman whose job it is to get men to move out of their parents’ home by forming relationships with them.
But increasing numbers of young men are doing all they can to remain perpetual adolescents. Consider Tony Byrum, a 28-year-old who has already had a vasectomy in order to end his reproductive years. He explained on the Today show why he had the procedure: “It’s kind of getting to be a departure from this society - a wife, a husband, have kids, live in the suburbs, –and instead is more, ‘Maybe we don’t want to have kids.”
At least he won’t have to worry about his children moving back home after college.
When all is said and done, are tax breaks, biblical injunctions and romantic comedies really the best ways to get kids out of the house? The New York Times recently reported on a study conducted last year which found that “men apparently enjoy being with their parents, while women find time with their mom and dad to be slightly less pleasant than doing laundry.”
Perhaps that’s because women are more likely to do the laundry at home, while men sit on the couch and watch football.
An idea for Italy: pass a law prohibiting mothers from doing their sons’ laundry. Although even that might not work. According to the Telegraph, “Many other Italians happily send their laundry home to their mothers, and 43 percent, when they do finally move out, rent or buy homes less than a mile from their parents.”
Aaron Hanscom is a Los Angeles-based editor for Pajamas Media; his own blog is Scribblings.
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15 Comments
Nancy Kobrin, Ph.D.:If I may be so bold, you might be interested in my theory of imagery for the suicide attack as an extreme extension of the psychology of the ‘mammoni’ as well:
http://www.geradts.com/anil/ij/vol_008_no_002/main.html
What you are describing is a maternal fusion which in the extreme leads to exceedingly aggressive behavior. The mammoni exhibit passive aggressive behavior which is the most difficult to change. Hence the government is offering a financial incentive. These “kids” are neotenized, not allowed to grow up.
Oct 6, 2007 - 5:58 am Manuel:Who’d leave mama for Sarah Jessica Parker?
Oct 6, 2007 - 10:57 am Full Metal Cynic:I see no justification for tax money going to get these guys out of the house and on their own. Why don’t they do what my mother did–she paid me to leave out of her own pocket.
Oct 6, 2007 - 11:17 am Jon:Of course Italians would probably say Americans are horrible because they force their kids to move out of the house after college. You know, their family life is so much better than American families. Too bad European family’s are an endangered species.
Oct 6, 2007 - 4:12 pm s. sommer:My 33 year old son now THANKS me for kicking him out at 18. It was a tough day for both of us.. but, he had seemd to have no desire to leave home EVER. No plans to move!
Only by kicking him out did he have an incentive to get a job, be responsible, plan his future, care about money & learn to manage.
Now, he says if HE ever has a kid who acts the way he did, he will definitely kick him out for his own good. Even though it made him really furious when we did it to him.
His sister could not get out on her own fast enough. Totally the opposite outlook on life!
Didn’t think I spoiled him, but maybe I did.
Mom
Oct 6, 2007 - 7:54 pm Jacknut:OTOH, in India, it’s common for married men, especially eldest sons, to live in the same house as their parents, and take over running the household as the parents age. Doesn’t hurt their innovation.
Oct 6, 2007 - 8:25 pm Alan Kellogg:Human behavior in action. In our species it is the females who leave home, while the males stay. Acknowledging this and adapting to this means changes in settlement patterns. For example, the establishment of multi-generational housing. In older neighborhoods we could encourage the purchase of adjacent lots, with those lots being incorporated into the original lot allowing for expansion of the original house into the new land.
Oct 6, 2007 - 9:52 pm debbie:Im a 48 year old american female and all I know is that, even tho I have wonderful parents, I was SO ready to be on my own at 18. I set off for college, and with the exception of holidays, I have never been back home. I retain a great relationship with the folks, but I dont think they would be too anxious to have ME back home either.
Oct 6, 2007 - 9:54 pm Jim Rockford:What’s going on here?
Simple. World wide, many men have figured out that marriage and family is not going to happen.
When women have their own income, security, and better economic positions, they are no longer constrained in choices with regard to men. No longer required to choose reliability, dependability, loyalty as critical attributes of men.
Instead, women who have economic security can choose what they really desire: the most high-status, socially dominant, Alpha male. Usually though not always also the richest.
These mama’s boys understand: in the new competition for women, they won’t ever succeed. They won’t have a family of their own, as women are choosing “good genes” i.e. socially dominant Alpha Males as fathers for their children and don’t need or expect the fathers to marry them.
Among inner-city Black women, the illegitimacy rate is 90%. It is 70% among Black Women nationwide. You see the same dynamic among Black men. They understand a few men will be fathering the children of most of the women. Who often might have three children each with different fathers. To a lesser extent (Blacks are America’s “canary in the coal mine” socially) the same effect is seen in the White community, with greater frequency among poor whites and less among wealthy/educated whites.
Yeah I’m not surprised by this mama’s boy epidemic. It doesn’t help that the average man in his thirties has less income (where it matters) than his father in 1970. Who could buy a house where he cannot. But even if home ownership were in reach of most men in their late twenties and early thirties (it’s not, merely apartment living) it would not change the fundamental driver of mama’s boys.
Women’s choices. Women unconstrained by economic insecurity will choose socially dominant Alpha males and are willing to share them. Women are uninterested in the main in marriage, certainly to non-dominant men. Look at what many of these men are saying. They are staying with their parents because it’s the only AFFECTION they get.
What happens when their parents die as they will?
You’ll have a bunch of men in their forties or fifties, unconstrained by any human affection, with IMHO highly negative views of women, and no prospect of ever changing.
I would bet highly on the prospect of restrictions on women’s lives in all sorts of ways in the next ten years in Italy and elsewhere (including the US). What’s the comeback for men living alone (when their parents inevitably die)? What women will continue to not sleep with them?
[That so many men are forgoing even the hope of a live-in girlfriend with sex/intimacy on a daily basis says volumes on the absolute certainty with which these men have assessed their chances with women. Which must be considered zero. Such is the wages of de-facto polygamy.]
Oct 6, 2007 - 11:48 pm Nick:One thing the post completely misses to address is the shortage of affordable housing and lack of work opportunities in Central and Southern Italy.
I lived in Italy for a couple of years and spend time there every year. Property prices and rents are very hig in relation to one of the lowest average incomes in Europe.
Many guys I know don’t have an option but stay at home.
A tax break of less than a month’s rent for people who don’t eran much anyway is just a misguided idiocy.
Oct 7, 2007 - 12:09 am Peg C.:This whole topic seques nicely with Dr. Helen’s numerous discussions on men vs. women, men not marrying, the feminization of our culture, etc.
Jim Rockford’s Alpha Male theory is right but there’s other variables at work here. The feminization of society is giving women power and choices and taking them away from men, in fact breeding them out of men. Tradionally, a man looks for a woman like his mother — maternal, good cook, good homemaker. Women are by and large no longer interested in these and certainly not in relation to “taking care of” a man. Mama looks awfully good by comparison with the totally self-absorbed, ambitious, male-disparaging women of today.
And due to the feminization of our culture, many men have lost any incentive to contribute to society through hard work, competition, entrepreneurship, and childbearing. Ultimately, they are weeding their own less-than-Alpha Male genes out of the gene pool.
We’ve been going through a social revolution for well over a generation now and it’s becoming a genetic revolution now as well. A few generations down the road it’s possible there will be a new dynamic of strong, ambitious women and men, both, who stand on a far more equal footing with each other. The fallout on the way to that may be exactly what we are experiencing now with the boomer generation and its progeny.
OTOH I see “Brave New World” down the road, too, with genetic engineering, and pregnancy and childbirth no longer associated with the female body. I can see virtually all women of means refusing to have children the traditional way (I decided at 14 never to have children, when I was part of the early feminist movement). Men refusing to grow up and have families will hasten this change. What this bodes for the human race, one can only imagine.
Oct 7, 2007 - 4:53 am Little Much:Mothers differ in the ethnic spectrum. Chinese mothers, Italian mothers, Irish mothers, Jewish mothers, etc. All differ in the way the raise their sons as well as what they EXPECT out of their sons. Meaning, getting off their butts and making something of themselves. Most men, I find, sorry guys, would (if given the choice), be lazy. They’d rather watch football, drink beer and have their dinner handed to them as they sit in their lazyboy.
It’s the responsibility of the parents, both, to mold this human being into something productive. Apparently Italian mothers seek the path of least resistance, probably thinking “who wants to argue/have him make a mess of his clothes/face rejection and disappointment, so they coddle their sons. Throwing money at these big babies won’t help either. what will help is parenting classes for Italian parents.
As to Jim Rockford’s idea that one day the tides will have to be turned back on womens advancements toward autonomy, and thrust us back into the stone age? That, sir, ain’t gonna happen. That time has long gone. I really don’t think it has anything to do with the feminization of men as much as it has to do with men not wanting to play anymore.
Oct 7, 2007 - 4:55 pm Tyrian Purple:I doubt Women’s Lib is preventing Italian men from leaving their homes-the article (and many others as well) observes that even when they leave, they still mail their clothes home for mama to wash them. That’s not a childishly spiteful reaction to women’s independence, that’s a refusal to be a man. In a couple of news articles from Italy they mentioned the divorce rates are rising because more and more women are tired of the constant interference from their mothers-in-law.
I believe the commenter said that mamas’ expectations differ around the world is dead on. My mother, thoroughly American, wouldn’t dream of doing her child’s mailed-over laundry. She would leave it sitting there, until her grown son comes and gets it done his damn self like she taught him to. American mothers, well mine anyway, teach their children how to look after themselves, so that when they’re older they are prepared to be adults.
Women having more options means they don’t have to put up with a man who refuses to act like a man. Sorry if being a man is such a chore, but women who tolerate childish men are the problem because they encourage more of them. The insight about the path of least resistance is exactly correct. On my job I have seen it happen where a woman marries a man like this: lives in his mother’s basement, plays games all day, and has no job nor is interested in having one. The women assume the men will magically stop being children, but they don’t. They don’t need to. Every need is met by her or their mothers, and they can continue to behave like overgrown boys.
If good women refused to look twice at them they might actually have to get a job and learn to look after themselves so they can interact with their wives on equal footing and not as a child. But instead they get what they need being lazy and childish and expecting to leech off of their wives. If we’re changing the definition of manhood to encompass such mentality and behavior then why even keep the word “man”? Just call ‘em all “boys” from now on. Of course, I don’t see the women hurting-they can always find men from elsewhere. But the men in this scenario will never have families. Unless family has been devalued more than I thought it has been, I fail to see how they’ve “won” here.
I don’t know exactly what Italians have to do to encourage men to embrace manhood over boyhood, but insisting the women lower their standards is probably another example of magical thinking. Not saying there aren’t any who don’t have low/no standards, but apparently there aren’t enough of them in Italy; and their existence is on the line here.
Oct 8, 2007 - 8:46 am John J. Coupal:If the slacker male still lived (and died) with mama, wouldn’t that reduce his contribution to the gene pool?
The present political climate would not consider the slacker to be an endangered species, so there would be no effort to save him.
Seems like the alpha males would benefit considerably from the slacker’s lifestyle, since they would have a bigger pool of females to choose and sample.
Oct 8, 2007 - 9:57 am George:Ah folks, how little you know of cultures around the world…
In the Far Eastern/Oriental mindset, families stick together. Certainly at least until marriage. My brother was 32 before he even looked at moving out - and even then my parents offered to let them (he was married by then) stay. You understand, when the woman marries, she marries into her husband’s family. Which is to say, she becomes the dutiful daughter-in-law whose job it is to take care of the aged folk.
This is why the Biblical injunction to shift your ass out of the parental home once you hitch up is so difficult for us. The only time you see folk leave home are (a) job offer/tertiary education overseas/outstation (b) marriage. And sometimes not even then.
Of course, this is less true now than it was in the past. The eldest son is still expected to inherit the family home, and so he at least might stay with the old folks.
This has little to do with slacker males. Yes, if I stayed on my own I do my laundry, clean house, cook etc. I barely see my folks as it is (breakfast and dinner is about it and maybe weekends). I pull down a regulay income and all too.
All that said, to see this happen in the Western context, where you boot your sprogs out at 18, is mildly disturbing…
Oct 8, 2007 - 10:35 pm