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I have some issues with my beloved smother — mother!!
"Ooh Babe, you'll always be a baby to me..."
"A boy's best friend is his mother."
Anyone here have one of those mothers who worry about every little thing and then make up statistics to justify it?
"Now, you be careful in Toronto. You know, 2 people from the Maritimes are killed in Toronto every year.......and nobody's been killed yet this year."
—Stand-up comedian
Mothers who are a bit too... controlling. Usually (but not always), they are the mothers of sons, and for whatever reasons can have a bit of trouble cutting the apron strings; as a result, no matter how old the boy (or, for added humour value, man) is, he'll be mothered relentlessly, his mother absolutely smothering him with parental affection... and authority. Using either carrot or stick, his mother will go to any lengths to make sure that, whether he wants to or not, he's not going to be leaving his mother's embrace any time soon. Any attempts on his part will usually result in a passive-aggressive guilt trip for trying to break away and do his own thing. Her poor son, as a result of such domination and badgering, usually ends up a Mommas Boy. For some reason, a lot of these mothers are Jewish. (Although they are also oftentimes Catholic, serving double-duty as a conduit for Catholic Guilt.)
Any Love Interest that her son may attract will be immediately regarded as a threat and a rival for the son's love by the Beloved Smother, and the woman will be belittled, harassed and spied-on to varying degrees of obsession. If her son happens to break free and marry the woman he loves, then that unfortunate woman will find herself coping with the Mother-In-Law From Hell, who will be hyper-critical, dismissive and condemning of everything she does to the point where it may even break the marriage apart if her son doesn't do something to curtail his mother's interference.
In the most favourable depiction, the Beloved Smother genuinely does love her son and wants him to be happy; she just has a little bit of trouble letting him go, and her plot arc usually revolves around the gradual realization that he's his own man and that she needs to cut the apron strings for his own good (and, usually, hers as well), and that his moving away from her doesn't equal that he doesn't love her in return. At worst, she's a Control Freak Evil Matriarch who will stop at nothing — not even murder — to make sure that Mummy's Little Angel remains with her at all costs. For added Squick value, Mummy and Son may be a bit too close in the wrong kinds of ways...
It is rarer for daughters in fiction to have trouble with the Smother, but not unheard of; if the girl is unlucky enough to have a Smother, then things will be much the same (although rather than actively preventing their children from having a life outside of her, a Smother who has a daughter will start badgering her about why they aren't married and providing her with grandchildren on a constant basis). With daughters, however, the dominance may sometimes have an edge of competition as well, as they tend to view their own daughters as rivals. Smothers of daughters are often ex- Libbies or cheerleaders who tend to bully and harass their daughters into following their footsteps as a way of living their past glories through their children.
Like most tropes, it's a Truth In Television; Psychiatrist Carl Jung identified this archetype as the Terrible Mother, an over-nurturer who, in smothering her child, ends up stifling them to the point of hampering individuation and personal growth.
When a queen is acting as regent, she often will smother the young king as well, and expect to control the king after he comes of age.
If she actually succeeds in taking control of her children, those characters will end up with Mommy Issues.
May double up with Safety Worst. May overlap with Meddling Parents.
Compare/contrast Overprotective Dad. If it's a more action based series where the offspring being "smothered" is in trouble and the Smother is an Action Mom, see Mama Bear. If the mom was a child star and pushes her kid into stardom, she's a Stage Mom.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- One Slayers OVA is based around Lina and Naga being hired by a rich, horrifically controlling noblewoman to help her son Jeffrey become a knight. Jeffrey has delusions of being a Knight In Shining Armor, but is immensely sickly and kind of a dip. Insult him, however, and his (masked) mother will crush you with a giant hammer. While yelling about how you dared insult her boy. Ultimately, Jeffrey confronts a local Evil Overlord... his long-lost father, who just couldn't put up with that woman anymore.
- Meshou, Ritsu's mother in Fruits Basket. She's one of the few Sohma parents who truly cares for their cursed kids, but she's a Shrinking Violet who apologizes for everything...
- In Spirited Away, Yubaba keeps her baby sheltered in a room, telling him he must never leave because of germs, and relentlessly indulges him, producing a Spoiled Brat. When he is transformed into a mouse and his mother does not recognize him, he goes with Chihiro, becoming her friend, and on their return, shows his mother that he can stand on his own and demands that she be nice to Chihiro.
- Rahxephon: Maya Kamina is well-intentioned but extremely smothering of her son Ayato.
Comics
- Used many times by cartoonist Will Eisner, to the highest degree imaginable in the story "Mortal Combat" in his graphic novel "Invisible People".
- Chas's very domineering (and supernaturally charged) bed-ridden mother in Hell Blazer. It's implied that she killed her husband, and Chas is only free of her domination after John kills her familiar. Naturally, his own wife is just as controlling, albeit ambulatory, neater in dress and habit, and a Muggle.
- Flash Forward's mother in Doom Patrol. It's telling that he, an irreverent braggart and smart alec, is immediately cowed when he realizes his mom has his phone number. She also corrects his grammar over the phone.
- The Batman villain Hush's mother was like this, in addition to having a drunken and abusive father. When, as a child, he attempted to kill them by cutting their brakes, his mother not only survived, but the incident made her even more clinging and controlling, demanding her son's constant presence. When he heard Bruce Wayne's parents were killed and he wouldn't have to deal with that, his main thought was "That lucky bastard.".
- The title character in Mel Lazarus' Momma could be the poster
child mother for this trope.
- Jeremy's mom in Zits sometimes these exhibits these tendencies, although whether this is actually how she is or merely how he sees her is typically open to question.
- Almost every mother that appears at length in Bloom County fits this trope: Bobbi's mother, Steve's mother, Lola's mother, Opus' mother... (In fact, Opus' mother issues are so severe that one series of strips depicted his imaginary feminine ideal as the embodiment of this trope.)
Film
- Arguably, Violet's mother in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (2005 version). Mother and daughter dress alike (Violet, thankfully, does not wear Mom's slathered-on makeup), and Mom is constantly pushing Violet to compete.
- The mom from A Christmas Story. Especially with the younger kid. She wraps him in so many layers for the walk to school, he can't put his arms down. Even his freak out fear-crying doesn't faze her. Plus, the tolerance of his bizarre eating habits. Ralphie gets the smothering too, but to a lesser extent ("You'll shoot your eye out!").
- Though she only appears in one scene, Max's mother in Collateral had full control over her son despite being confined to a wheel chair. Memorably, she chastises him for bringing her flowers, only to do an about face when he tells her the flowers are from his "friend" Vincent.
- Polly Cronin, Lizzie's mother in Drop Dead Fred.
- Lionel's mother in Braindead. Even when she turns into a zombie, her son is unable to confront her until the very end.
- Ice Princess. Both the main character's mother and The Rival's mother are forcing their own ambitions upon their daughters. Even the parents of secondary and background characters seem to follow this trope.
- Jack Spade's mother in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, who insists that he put on a sweater before he goes out and fights against men twice her size to protect him. When he goes up against Mr. Big, she shows up with a shotgun to join in. Her son eventually breaks free by locking her in a closet until the fight's over — which pisses her off no end.
- The Black Queen in Mirror Mask. Her smothering behaviour is why the Rebellious Princess ran away, and used for one hell of a Brainwashed sequence.
- Monster In Law pits a Beloved Smother played by Jane Fonda against the woman her son is engaged to.
- In Oedipus Wrecks, Woody Allen's segment from the 1989 anthology film New York Stories, Allen's character has one of these. When the mother "permanently" disappears as part of a magic show, he thinks his troubles are over... until she reappears as a giant figure in the New York sky and starts bossing him around for the entire city to hear.
- Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest is a particularly dark example, as the Big Nurse's threat of telling his mom about his sexual escapades in the final part drives him to suicide
- There's a Smother in Nice Girls Don't Explode.
- In Now, Voyager, Charlotte Vale's mother is a particularly nasty version of this trope, controlling her daughter and keeping her from being independent through emotional abuse.
- The mother of John Candy's policeman character in Only The Lonely, right up to the guilt trips and the relentless tormenting of the son's shy, withdrawn Love Interest. Many of the guilt trips even occurred within her own son's imagination, as he'd guilt-trip himself with vivid fantasies of all the horrible things that might happen to her without him around (inevitably ending with a close-up of her ironically wishing him a good time with whatever he was doing at that moment).
- Mrs Bates from Psycho who manages to smother Norman throughout the story even though she's dead.
- It is actually suggested that the relationship between Norman and his real mother was something of an inversion of this trope, with him being obsessively dependent on and possessive of her despite her wish for him to be more independent, ultimately leading him to murder her and her lover as he did not want to share her.
- There's an actual movie called Smother. Care to guess what the mother's like?
- Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!
- Owen's mother from Throw Momma From The Train.
- The mother of Bobby Boucher (Adam Sandler's character) in The Waterboy. She eventually realizes that Bobby needs to have his own life, and even helps him get to the big game at the end.
- How did we get this far without mentioning The Manchurian Candidate? Raymond Shaw, a war hero, is dominated by his mother Eleanor to the point where she's able to force him to break up with the girl he's fallen in love with. This winds up central to the plot as being so conditioned to obey his mother leaves him ripe for Soviet brainwashing. His trigger is even a Queen Of Diamonds playing card because it reminds him of his mother. Oh, and his mother is the Communist agent who's feeding him his orders.
- Sam Witwicky's mom in the Transformers movies.
Literature
- The Other Mother in Neil Gaiman's Coraline.
- A variation on this character regularly crops up in Stephen King's work.
- Eddie Kaspbrak's mother from Stephen King's IT was like this. He eventually married a woman who was the exact same way.
- Frannie Goldsmith has one in The Stand, as does Susan Norton in Salem's Lot, there's another in Rage, yet another in his Rose Red TV miniseries, and the crazy-mother stand-in in Misery, not to mention Carrie's own crazy religious fanatic mother.
- Discworld example with Nanny Ogg. She is very much like this with most of the Ogg family, especially her own sons. Including Jason, the blacksmith who is built like a troll and is the greatest farrier in the world. She also seems incapable of seeing her cat, Greebo, as anything other than a tiny ball of fluff, despite Greebo being the meanest, nastiest creature within several hundred miles of Nanny's house. To her unlucky daughters-in-law, however, she verges on Evil Matriarch.
- Granted, most witches are like this with everyone, it's just that most witches don't have kids.
- In CS Lewis's Till We Have Faces, a retelling of Cupid and Psyche, Orual, Psyche's sister, raised her since their mother's death, and is a rather zealous mother figure.
- Many of Saki's stories, the best probably being Sredni Vashtar
 .
- A Song Of Ice And Fire features, among other iffy mother figures, Lysa Arryn, the widow of Jon II Arryn. She's afraid the same assassins who killed her husband will come after her son — so far, so justified. Then you find out she still breast feeds her son. Did we mention he's six? Oh, and she caters to his every whim as well... including his wish to see Tyrion Lannister go flying out a window... and plummet several thousand feet to his death.
- Not to mention that it eventually comes out that she was the one who killed her husband, so even that justifiable reason for her overprotectiveness isn't actually justified. Hell, she killed him because he wanted Robert to be fostered with another lord, and she couldn't stand the thought of her baby going anywhere else...
- Then there's Cersei Lannister, Queen Regent of Westeros, who's lived her entire life under the proverbial Sword of Damocles in the form of a prophecy that says she'll have three children, they'll each be crowned and die shortly thereafter and she herself will be strangled to death by her own younger brother. It's little wonder she goes into Mama Bear overdrive from that point on, but it looks like she can't fight fate, as everything in the prophecy is starting to come true, right down to her two younger brothers nursing the thought of killing her eventually.
- Caroline Compson in The Sound and the Fury is this to her son Jason.
- Kareen to Pat Rin in the Liaden Universe novels.
Live Action TV
Rock Opera
Tabletop Games
- Advanced Dungeons And Dragons has, as one of the many magic items, a parody of its Rug of Smothering called a Rug of Mothering, which behaves like this trope.
Theatre
Video Games
- She might be the eldest sister instead of the mother, but Lady Of War Fiora from Fire Emblem 7 shows some Smother traits in her supports with her little sister, Shrinking Violet Florina, whom she had to raise.
FLORINA: Thanks, Fiora. But...I... I have to do it my way. You can handle it out there alone, right? Well I need to make sure that I can, too.
FIORA: Oh... But I worry about you. When we were in training, you used to get so scared...
FLORINA: Yeah, but I'm fine now.
FIORA: Really? But the Caelin Knights are all men, aren't they? I just think of you, all timid and scared among them... So, Florina... You really don't mind it? Didn't they give you a hard time for being a woman? Now if they did, I want you to let me know. Because I will tell them a thing or two...
FLORINA: I-I'm fine. Lady Lyndis took good care of me... And everyone was really nice...
FIORA: Oh? Well, I still worry.
- The leader of the fighter guild in Elder Scrolls Oblivion is seen as this by the guild, but not without good reason, one of her sons was killed in action and her last son (who isn't actually that good a fighter) is killed later.
Webcomics
- The Witch in No Rest For The Wicked wanted to keep her children so safe that she killed and ate them, to keep them safe inside. Then she started to kidnap children under the delusion that they were hers and had sneaked off somehow. When the heroes are defeating her, she begs for mercy because I have children!.
- In one Chopping Block strip, Butch offered his mother a pillow with "Happy Smother Day" written on it. What do you mean it's not this trope? His relationship with her is mostly a parody of Psycho, with Norman's timid obedience replaced with not-giving-a-crap.
- Hazel Green from College Roomies From Hell, Mike and Blue's mother, complements this trope with Xanatos Gambits, a goon hit squad, torture, hypnotic programming, and explosive implants. Unsurprisingly, she's a major Big Bad in the comic.
- This Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal strip.
Web Original
- Another mother-daughter variant — the main character's mother in Quarterlife.
- Zaboo's mom in The Guild. She breast fed him till he was eleven, made him go with her into the ladies' room until he was fifteen, and still gives him baths. You know I'm not kidding.
Western Animation
- The Other Mother in The Film Of The Book Coraline.
- Agnes Skinner in The Simpsons, the Trope Namer.
- Cosmo's mother in The Fairly Odd Parents. She eventually falls in love with Wanda's father because they both hate the people their children married. Their plans to 'get' each other's kids cause frustration (they love their respective kids) and admiration (they like each other's evil).
- Todd from Code Monkeys. Recently, it's become a full-blown Oedipus Complex (as he has implied and outright stated that he is literally having sex with his own mother).
- Gazpacho's mother from Chowder, even though we never see her onscreen. Gazpacho always complains about her though- albeit cautiously, since she might hear him.
- Morgan La Fey towards her son Mordred, especially after he breaks the eternal youth spell.
- Myra in regards to the titular Venture Bros. Nothing says motherly love like tying up a pair of pubescent boys and shoving your breasts in their face, screaming "LET MOMMY LOVE YOU".
- "Colonel Bud Manstrong, listen to your mother!". Bonus points for the episode she appears in being a parody of The Manchurian Candidate, with the movie being mentioned by name.
- Furoku Tsukumo, mother of Teen Genius Susumu on Wandaba Style falls into this. She's the Designated Villain of the series because she wants Susumu, who left home to conduct his eco-friendly space experiments, to acknowledge that the 1969 moon landing wasn't faked and to recognize her maternal authority. He is only thirteen, after all.
Real Life
- Ed Gein (in reference to his HEAVY influence on Psycho)
- Truth In Television - Elizabeth Duncan loved her lawyer son. She loved him so much that she hired two men to murder the woman who dared marry him and take him away from her. After she was quickly arrested and charged, her son spent many hours in the courtroom and filed many appeals on her behalf, trying to save her. He failed. Poor boy...
- Truth In Television Part 2 - Peter Sellers' mother Peg was so indulgent with her son (to be fair, she had lost her first child shortly after giving birth) that even as a young man, he was used to having her do things for him, much to the fascination of his friends/colleagues. His father Bill by contrast was quiet and meek. Her notable lack of discipline, even when he was bad, is largely seen as a (if not the) key reason Peter was often prone to childish, selfish behavior as an adult. She also was prone to interfering with Peter's love life, including his first two marriages. For all this, he never stopped loving her. He conducted seances to ask her advice after her death, while rejecting undergoing psychological analysis in part because it cast her in a bad light. In the biopic The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, she is portrayed in near-villainous terms.
- Kate Gosselin from Jon And Kate Plus Eight.
- China's Empress Dowager Cixi planned to be a Smother to young Puyi before she died, leaving all the power in his young hands. Needless to say, his life didn't turn out so great.
- Franklin D Roosevelt's mother was not only this, but also the mother-in-law from hell. When Franklin married Eleanor, she generously bought them a house in New York... and herself the one next door. These were row houses, connected by side doors. Basically, she could and did walk in at any time.
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