What Mrs. Darling can Teach us about How to Grow Up
On JM Barrie's Peter Pan
In a society where people are increasingly trapped in childhood, even though their bodies seem to have grown up, it is more important than ever to understand what makes children grow up.
Growing up physically is not the same as growing up psychologically. Every stage of life seems to be postponed to a later and later date. Men reach age 30 without feeling competent enough to get married and support a family. Women joke that being pregnant in your late twenties is “too early”. Our governing officials are geriatric. Adolescence is stretched like bubble gum through life, and the consequence is dire: it means that people don’t live their lives. To live your life, and participate properly in the world beyond just consumption, one must grow up.
What is growing up? Is it owning a house? Is it getting married and having a baby? Is it paying your own bills? Yes, it includes all of these things, but these things in particular do not make anyone “grown up,” rather it is what these things represent that matters.
All children simultaneously want to run away to a land of adventure and want the safety of home. This simultaneous “leaving and staying” happens in one special place, called the land of play. Playing is how all animals with a childhood grow to become adults. A lion plays at hunting, a monkey plays at fighting, a little girl plays out the things her mother does in the kitchen, a little boy plays at catching thieves and criminals. The story of Peter Pan is about one little boy who got trapped in the Land of Play forever, because he overestimated how long his mother would wait for him to come home.
This Land of Play is called Neverland, and it is where the Immortal Child, Peter Pan, lives out his days. His perpetual childhood can teach us about what it means to be a child, and also what it takes to grow up. But there is another character in this story who is often neglected, Mrs. Darling, the only real mother, and she teaches us how to grow up without losing something very special about childhood: wonder and fantasy. In fact it is Mrs. Darling who inspires Peter to do the only grown up thing he does in the whole story, because a good mother, the one Peter desperately needs, is the one who can easy the growing pains without ripping Neverland away. A good mother, is always, at heart, a bit of a child herself.
Neverland: The Map of a Child’s Mind