By: Dr. Mimi Fatou Ceesay, Journalist | Psychologist
In many African societies, the mother is regarded as the child’s first home and first mirror of the world. She introduces the child to love, safety, discipline, boundaries, and emotional meaning. African scholars have long emphasized that family is the primary site where identity and values are formed (Achebe, 1983). When a mother is emotionally wounded, unhealed, or psychologically broken, that wound rarely ends with her. Instead, it often travels silently into the inner life of her son, later shaping his marriage, leadership style, and perception of women.
The Power of a Mother in a Son’s Life:
A mother plays a foundational role in shaping how a boy understands intimacy, respect, and emotional safety. Through her presence or her absence, a son learns what love looks like and what it demands. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (2009) argues that the home is the first space where power, care, and human relationships are learned. When a mother is emotionally healthy, she nurtures her son’s confidence, empathy, and balance. When she is wounded and unhealed, the boy often grows up carrying emotional confusion he lacks the language to express.
When a Weak or Broken Woman Raises a Son:
Weakness here does not refer to physical strength, but to emotional fragility shaped by trauma, oppression, or unhealed pain. A broken mother may unconsciously burden her son with emotional responsibilities he was never meant to carry, turning him into a surrogate partner rather than allowing him to remain a child. African feminist scholar Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí (2015) explains that distorted family roles often emerge in contexts where women’s agency has been historically suppressed. This emotional entanglement damages a boy’s capacity to form healthy adult relationships.
Broken mothers often struggle to raise emotionally stable children, particularly sons, because male children are deeply affected by how their mothers relate to men. Fear, resentment, manipulation, or emotional dependency may be absorbed by the boy and normalized as love.
The Wound of an Absent Mother:
An absent mother, whether physically or emotionally, leaves a deep psychological void in a boy’s life. This absence may create abandonment wounds, insecurity, and a lifelong search for validation from women. Frantz Fanon (1967) noted that early relational ruptures often reappear in adult intimacy as anxiety, mistrust, or emotional withdrawal. As husbands, such men may love deeply but never feel safe enough to give themselves fully.
Manipulation Rooted in Brokenness:
Some mothers, wounded by abusive marriages or unfulfilled lives, resort to manipulation as a survival strategy. This manipulation is often rooted in unmet emotional needs, suppressed anger, and unresolved trauma. When a son grows up in such an environment, manipulation becomes normalized. As a husband, he may unconsciously repeat these behaviors, controlling, gaslighting, or withdrawing emotionally, because manipulation was the emotional language he learned at home (Fanon, 1967).
When Every Woman Becomes a Competition:
A wounded mother may perceive every woman in her son’s life as a rival. She competes with her son’s wife for loyalty, attention, and emotional dominance. This rivalry fractures the marital bond and traps the son between honoring his mother and committing fully to his wife. Such divided loyalties undermine the independence and stability necessary for a healthy marriage (Oyěwùmí, 2015).
A Son Treated as a Man Too Early:
When a mother treats her son as a grown man prematurely, she disrupts his emotional development. He grows up confused about his identity, neither fully a child nor fully a man. Achebe (1983) reminds us that when cultural roles are distorted, individuals suffer internal dislocation. As husbands, such men often struggle with boundaries, responsibility, and emotional maturity.
A Mother Who Never Stood Up for Herself:
A mother who never stood up to an abusive husband teaches her son painful lessons about power and gender. The boy watches his father mistreat his mother and witnesses her silence. Unable to defend her, he internalizes helplessness, rage, and resentment. Later, as a husband, he may disrespect women, not out of hatred, but because disrespect was normalized in his childhood home (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, 2009).
The Cycle of Abuse:
What a boy sees, he learns. What he learns, he lives. A child raised in an environment of abuse, silence, and emotional suffering may unconsciously reproduce these patterns in adulthood. Without healing, he carries his parents’ unresolved pain into his marriage and parenting (Fanon, 1967).
The Call to Healing for Mothers:
Healing is essential for mothers, particularly in their relationship with their sons. Healing allows a mother to release emotional dependency, manipulation, and fear. A healed mother creates space for her son to grow into a balanced man who can love freely and lead with integrity.
The Call to Healing for Sons:
Healing is incomplete without forgiveness. Sons must learn to forgive both parents, not to excuse harm, but to free themselves from inherited pain. Forgiveness opens the door to self-awareness, emotional maturity, and healthy masculinity.
“The wounded warrior is not defined by the scars he carries, but by the courage it takes to heal them. When a man chooses healing over hatred, he transforms pain into purpose and becomes the protector he once needed.”
Divine Masculinity and Healthy Love:
A man who is healed and genuinely in love with his wife embodies divine masculinity, strong yet gentle, firm yet compassionate. Such a man becomes a leader, protector, and anchor within his family and community. African societies thrive when men lead from wholeness rather than woundedness.
When mothers heal, sons are liberated. When sons heal, families are restored. And when families are whole, societies flourish. Breaking the cycle of abuse begins with courage, healing, and love.
References:
Achebe, C. (1983). The trouble with Nigeria. Heinemann.
Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks (C. L. Markmann, Trans.). Grove Press.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. (2009). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Heinemann.
