apron strings

Men who couldn’t, or worse, didn’t want to, were portrayed as marionettes tied to and practically strangled by their mothers’ apron strings.

A large woman, barely done tying her apron strings, goes running to the cabin John and Ann Laydon share with two other families.

I do not come from women whose apron strings were tied to the kitchen.

This cutting of the apron strings sometimes comes early: Certain seal moms spend as little as three days nursing their pups before ducking beneath the chilly ocean waves, never to return.

Those proverbial apron strings prove hard to untangle in the new reality series “I Love a Mama’s Boy.”