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The word you are looking at is "amae" ... along with a large amount of material about it (and how it is interpreted and how it is misinterpreted).

The classic book on the subject is "The Anatomy of Dependence" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anatomy_of_Dependence

The gist of this is that the parent-child relationship is the ideal one and that extends into the relationships in a collectivist society including that of a manager to an employee.

And so the doting mother to her child... extends a bit longer. The doting mother part isn't new - but rather that that relationship is seen as the ideal one... gets into cultural comparisons.

... but that's the word that can set you on the search for understanding of that phenomena.



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