There was a time when Americans "believed in 'the empire of the mother' and grown sons..."

"... were not embarrassed about rhapsodizing over their 'darling mama,' carrying her picture with them to work or war."

That changed in the 20th century...

... under the influence of Freudianism, Americans began to view public avowals of “Mother Love” as unmanly and redefine what used to be called “uplifting encouragement” as nagging. By the 1940s, educators, psychiatrists and popular opinion-makers were assailing the idealization of mothers; in their view, women should stop seeing themselves as guardians of societal and familial morality and content themselves with being, in the self-deprecating words of so many 1960s homemakers, “just a housewife.”