apron strings,

tied to (someone’s) Under someone’s influence. Like being UNDER SOMEONE’S THUMB, the term denotes being completely ruled by another, in this case usually a male being ruled by a woman (the tradi- tional wearer of aprons). It probably was already a cliché by the time Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote (1849) of William of Orange, “He could not submit to be tied to the apron strings of even the best of wives.” Indeed, two hundred years earlier England had a law called apron-string tenure, whereby a husband could hold title to property passed on by his wife’s fam- ily only while his wife was alive.