Patsy Bruce wrote “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” with Ed Bruce. The song was written by the married songwriting team and became widely known through recordings by Ed Bruce and, later, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.
Its lyrics present cowboy life as demanding and lonely, warning parents that the romantic image of the open range can conceal hardship. The song’s memorable title helped it become a durable phrase in American popular culture, while its country recordings brought it to a much larger audience.
The best-known commercial version is often associated with Nelson and Jennings, which can lead listeners to assume they wrote it. They did not: Patsy and Ed Bruce were the songwriters. Nelson and Jennings’ 1978 recording helped make the composition a major country standard.