I once read somewhere that a woman was considered subservient to even her adult sons in ancient China, but I've recently been watching some youtube videos on Chinese history by an actual Chinese man, an several of them involve the Dowager Empress vetoing the decrees of the Emperor, her adult son. So what gives? Was I misinformed? Or do these represent aspects of Chinese culture at different periods in time?
I think the common perception of women within society is that they were simply strictly 'beneath' men, but such a dramatic simplification is just not very good. In actuality, the role of women and mothers within Chinese society could be very varied and the breadth of experiences quite expansive. Within elite families, women actually played quite an important role within families and mothers especially so.
For one, it was definitely expected for children to remain very respectful towards their parents and I think to characterize the relationship between a son and his mother as one of dominance of the son over the parent is simply wrong. The Confucian canon writes clearly on this topic: "子游问孝。子曰：「今之者，是谓能养。至于犬马，皆能有养；不敬，何以别乎？」- 'Ziyou asked the Master about the meaning of filial piety. The Master replied: 'Filial Piety is to support one's parents... ".^(1) This topic of filial piety is not something that was taken lightly even if throughout history, peoples' actions varied in the extent to which they participated in the spirit of familial obedience and respect (looking at you, Tang Taizong, and your penchant for fratricide). Familial relationships are also enshrined within the writing of many esteemed literary figures, serve as topics of famous novels and stories throughout Chinese history (I am reminded of Feng Menglong's short story Oil Peddler Wins the Queen of Flowers), and famously, the Kangxi Emperor references them directly or indirectly in 4 of his 16 Sacred Edicts.
Mothers specifically had a considerable amount of power when it came to the raising of children, especially in early childhood. An upstanding model of motherhood who is praised throughout Chinese history is Mother Meng, the mother of Mencius, who famously endures great personal hardship to ensure that her son is well-educated and adheres to the principles of sagely conduct, a sort of exemplar of motherhood to be emulated by future generations of Chinese mothers. Though female literacy lagged behind male literacy rates throughout the imperial/late imperial era but within elite households, it would have been far more common to have literate - and sometimes highly literate - wives and mothers overseeing the education of the children, both male and female. Elite women did have a sort of educational curriculum in the same way that elite men would have had although women would have typically gone through a much shorter period of instruction (the Qing writer Lan Dingyuan seems to suggest that women only receive about a decade of education as opposed to potentially decades of close study of the Confucian canon by some men).^(2) These women would then use their skills to guide the development of children in early childhood. In the world of the ruling class in China, the question of childhood education was not something that was taken lightly, especially for boys. The power and intrigue surrounding the imperial examinations and Examination Culture as a whole is something else altogether but just know that having mothers provide the foundational baseline of education for children was not a task to be taken lightly and therefore reflected that mothers certainly did have a certain amount of pull within the household.
Beyond the realm of early childhood education, there definitely is also the need to acknowledge that, yes, sometimes women did become leading figures within the lives of family units. Matriarchs like Empress Dowager Cixi, though an extreme example, are not unheard of within society. They are also written into the corpus of Chinese literary works, most famously in the classic novel Honglou Meng or Dream of a Red Chamber. Honglou Meng is a fascinating study into Chinese interpretations of the role of women as well and here's a paper you can read into if you're interested. Of course it should be noted that some powerful women existing does not mean that all women were powerful. While the topic of education is only one example demonstrating a brief example of female authority in China, it should go without saying that there were many other issues which were generally outside of a mother/wife's control in many families, such as concubinage in elite circles. This answer also completely overlooks lower-class families, who made up the VAST majority of households in imperial Chinese history. Women in commoner households would have had different roles and expectations, especially when it came to issues of labor and labor division. Some might even consider that women who were lower-born might have experienced a greater degree of liberation as their hands and bodies were needed to work alongside men and not simply sit cloistered inside the inner chambers of a family compound. Finally, family dynamics also changed in the event of widowhood and divorce.
In short, it would be foolish to argue against the notion that early modern China was a patriarchal society because it most definitely was. But it would also be inaccurate to say that women were simply voiceless, suppressed creatures who had no say in the trajectories of their lives or the fates of their families.