The little man of the house

Does anybody know the origin of the phrase "Now you are the little man of the house" (said by a mother after her divorce to her child)?

I don't know when mothers began saying that; this kind of thing would be hard to track down. I suspect that it comes more from fiction than from real life. The corresponding cliché in Western (cowboy) movies is a new widow's speech: "Son, you're the man of the family now."