Did Ben Hanscom's mother want him to remain fat?

Question

I recently read this passage from Stephen King's It (emphasis mine):

She could be hard, his mamma. She could be a boss. She never called him "fat," she called him "big" (sometimes amplified to "big for his age"), and when there were leftovers from supper she would often bring them to him while he was watching TV or doing his homework, and he would eat them, although some dim part of him hated himself for doing so (but never his mamma for putting the food before him-Ben Hanscom would not have dared to hate his mamma; God would surely strike him dead for feeling such a brutish, ungrateful emotion even for a second). And perhaps some even dimmer part of him-the far-off Tibet of Ben's deeper thoughts-suspected her motives in this constant feeding. Was it just love? Could it be anything else? Surely not. But... he wondered.

So this leads to the question, did Mrs. Hanscom actually have an ulterior motive to keep Ben fat?

Answer 1

The quotes @alkaioi was looking for are:

I [Ben] went home that night and told her [Sonia Hanscom] I wanted to lose some weight. [...] She started out with that same old song and dance: I wasn’t really fat, I just had big bones, and a big boy who was going to be a big man had to eat big just to stay even. It was a . . . a kind of security thing with her, I think. It was scary for her, trying to raise a boy on her own. She had no education and no real skills, just a willingness to work hard. And when she could give me a second helping . . . or when she could look across the table at me and see that I was looking solid . . .”

“She felt like she was winning the battle,” Mike said It, The Reunion, 3

and

She [Sonia Hanscom] didn’t care so much what I [Ben] ate as long as I ate a lot of it. She buried me in salads. I ate them for the next three years. It, The Reunion, 3

Remember that the quote you mentioned was from the point of view of a 10-year old; kids are expected to exaggerate things often, simply because they just don't understand. However, the quotes mentioned above are from the perspective of an older Ben Hanscom many years later reflecting back. Now he is able to see the full picture.

Answer 2

I can't place the chapter or anything, but there was a place where Ben speculates that his mother felt like she was "holding her own" by being able to feed her son, and seeing him chubby felt like a victory to her. He then goes on to discuss the uneasy compromise he makes with her where she can feed him all she wants, so long as it's a salad.