Mike Patterson's Leading Export Is Agoraphobia: OFFICIAL.

Aside from snippy commentary about how mean-spirited people are being to her when they tell her things that she'd rather not hear such as how mean-spirited the Pattersons became in the Declining Years of the strip, Lynn has said a lot of things that indicate that while she needs a job to feel complete and her children take too much of her time, she also feels compelled to be at home so she can feel like she isn't a failure as a wife and mother. The problem is that she cannot have Elly run a business out of the home without calling attention to the fact that despite saying that she's in the cheering section of the feminist revolution, she's got her fingers crossed behind her back because she thinks that working mothers are bad mothers.

She solves this problem by having Mike show up every so often and whine about how he needs his mommy to be around so that he isn't ascared no more. Sure, the kid might parrot John's horseshit about crazy wimmin hormones makin'em want crazy things they really don't need but somewhere under the asshole whining about how Elly is never around is the same frightened three year old wanting to know if Mommy loves him. Simply put, Aaron has to live with the reputation of being a clingy momma's boy because Momma needs a mouthpiece for her retrograde Weltanschauung.