Mum's the word

PERHAPS the hardest part of being an expat is having to cope with being away from loved ones ... and the burning question is: just how often should you phone your mamma?

The land of golden smiles may offer career development and ample opportunities of living a full life in the sun but the bosses at Batelco, Zain and Startalk must be smiling with the numbers of people calling back to Britain, the US, mainland Europe, India or the Philippines each week.

England's football coach Fabio Capello, for example, phones his mum every day. "He is tender like a mimosa flower," says his mother Evelina Capello, an 85-year-old widow who lives in Pieris, in north-eastern Italy. What do they find to talk about? Whether David Beckham should continue to figure as England's right-sided midfielder in the bizarre 4-2-3-1 formation Capello favoured at Real Madrid? Probably not.

Evelina says he tells her he misses her, and home cooking. "He was always a mummy's boy," she says of her 61-year-old son. The granite-faced softie! (Him, not her.)

In Italy, mummy's boys such as Capello are called mammoni. "It is a very Latin thing, deeply embedded in our social structure," says Milanese psychologist Dr Annamaria Cassanese. "For example, you will see mothers crying at the weddings of their sons, but they are not crying for joy, they are crying because they feel devastated!"

Italy's finance minister, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, last year offered Italian men financial incentives to leave home (the average age - amazingly - is 36). To be fair, Fabio left home at 15 and has been married for 40 years, confounding the stereotype which was once highlighted in this newspaper and lambasted by the Italian ambassador in Bahrain.

Forget the mammoni. How often should you call your mum? Has Fabio got it right? In an unscientific poll of friends and colleagues, we received the following responses. "I always call my mother on Sunday evenings, just because I like to hear the sound of her voice. If I don't, I feel guilty all week," said one.

"I call her once a month to be supportive, but I really don't like her," said another. No one reported that texting, emailing or intra-family blogging are satisfactory substitutes for a phone call.

None felt obliged to call their dads which to a wannabe telephonic paterfamilias is worrying news. I have a friend who makes Skype-to-Skype calls to her mum weekly, both computers rigged up with webcams (which she bought) so they can see each other.

Perhaps the unusual frequency of Fabio's conversations with his mum should worry England fans. His mother recalls: "When he was coaching Real Madrid he called me often, saying he wanted to leave." Maybe her son is planning to escape the nightmare of managing England for some home cooking.

Even if the English football supporters might not understand, his mother would.