This book provides a unique in-depth interpretive analysis of relational intimacy between mothers and adult sons, and its effect on their identities. Combining autoethnography, mothers’ and men-children’s first-hand accounts, and cultural narratives, the book explores psycho-social normative processes involved in shaping (hetero)gender identities in the contemporary context of the UK. The author engages with a broad range of scholarly literature and her direct knowledge and experience as a (hetero)gendered mother of sons, grandmother of grandsons, and practising psychodynamic psychotherapist. Voices of grand/mothers and men-children are foregrounded, offering fresh perspectives on the centrality of emotions, familial power hierarchies, and the inter- and transgenerational effects of mothers’ and men-children’s relational intimacy that perpetuate hegemonic masculinities and femininities. Their stories reveal an ambiguous, ambivalent mutual ‘love’ affected by the wider network of family relational practices, in which mundane coercive control, complicity, and compromises appear to be taken for granted in the enactment of both mothers’ and men-children’s (hetero)gender identities. Although the stories show the possibility of countering normative (hetero)gendered discourses, the book argues that resistance produces intra- and interpersonal conflicts, which affect and constrain agency. (Hetero)gender identities are shown to form within and against power hierarchies in everyday social and emotional practices. This book will interest researchers and students in Gender and Sexuality Studies, Family Studies, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Sociology.

Bernadine King is an independent researcher with over twenty years of experience as a psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, and consultant for national and local government departments and third sector agencies in the UK, advising on substance misuse, mental health, and offender services for individuals and families. She received her PhD in Women’s Studies from the University of York, UK. Working as a psychotherapist enabled her to garner insights and diverse perspectives into various meanings of being a (grand)mother and being an adult son.