First Article Reflection of Second Term

      In the article titled “At Home with Mamma”, the writer states that many young Italian men has the pleasure of living with their mothers, even at the age of thirties, and shows economic and personal reasons for the situation. While I was reading the article, I likened the Italian men’s lives to Turkish men’s. Firstly, both of them have similar attitudes about the issue living with mommy. Almost all Turkish men live at home until they have to go to another city because of university education or military service. After a short break, most of them come home and continue to live with their mothers. The ones who do not have career goals independently from their families choose this home-loving life style because of the financial comfort. They do not cover the cost on their own and, whenever they need, can take the financial support from their families as far as possible. Moreover, they do not have to be destitute of homemade food off mommy’s hands. Since living at family home is a part of the customs of Anatolia’s many regions, it does not seem awkward and is totally reacted normally. Even if men get married, they and their wives might continue to live with their families, which is a rooted custom in most parts of Turkey, again.

         

      Secondly, the situation of “gelin-kaynana” conflict is the same in the Turkish families. Men become the meat in the sandwich because of the deep affection of mothers which makes wives feel in second place, as in Italy. The husband does not want to hurt the feelings of his mother and expects sympathy from his wife whereas the wife is fed up with interfering behaviors and suffocating attention of her mother-in-law and begins to lose patience. Inevitably, all these conflicts cause the end of the happy marriage of couples. In other words, even if living with mammas means comfort and safety to men initially, it might be the main reason of unexpected problems in their lives afterwards. To sum up, this story, which Italian men cannot fly the nest, includes both reasonable causes and undesired results, and everybody may be familiar with this double-edged sword, especially in Turkey.