A Peter Pan Society

Peter Pan is in the air and on-air these days, from NBC’s “Peter Pan Live” last December, and an upcoming movie, “Pan,” set to release July 2015. What does the resurgence of this 110-year old tale say about society today? To find out, shall we join Peter Pan and Wendy in ever-enchanting Neverland? Take flight and go, “Second to the right…and then straight on ‘til morning.” (Peter Pan and Wendy: Centenary Edition, 39)

Neverland is filled with flying adventures, Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, fairies, including the sassy Tinker Bell, pirates, an Indian Princess, mermaids, and more. It is a place of youthfulness, where growing up is an impossibility. With such distractions, visitors easily become forgetful and forego their origins.

Like Wendy and the other Darling children, men and women have forgotten who they are as well. In today’s society, our Genesis (Genesis 1:27-28) is easily dismissed. Many dwell in an ever-distracting “secular Neverland” that thwarts responsibility, wills a spirit of perpetual adolescence, is hypnotized by everlasting entertainment, seeks agelessness, and looks to cheat nature.

Peter thrives on Neverland, and even when given the chance, refuses to grow up. He declares, “Keep back… no one is going to catch me, and make me a man.” (Peter Pan and Wendy, 204). Peter Pan yearns to live life forever as a boy. He shares, “I don’t want to be a man. O Wendy’s mother, if I was to wake up and feel there was a beard! (Peter Pan and Wendy, 204). Those in society today are also not looking to leave a life in Neverland. Our boys might be growing beards, but most aren’t anxious to grow up, become a man, get married, or have children. Instead, cohabitation and a dog will do.

Another issue in Neverland is that mothers are extinct. This is the very reason Peter Pan recruits Wendy, and takes her to his faraway land. She becomes a mother figure to Peter and the Lost Boys. Yet, despite his love for Wendy, and a longing for a mother, he claims to abhor mothers. In the tale, Peter declares, “with a frightful sneer at the laws of nature, ‘we don’t want any silly mothers;’ and he flew away” (Peter Pan and Wendy, 198). While in Neverland, Wendy doesn’t embrace the role so positively either. “Oh dear, oh dear, “ cried Wendy, “I’m sure I sometimes think that children are more trouble than they are worth” (Peter Pan and Wendy,136).

Like Pan’s Neverland, modern society’s Neverland also rejects and despises mothers. Women are discouraged from becoming moms. For this reason, we have created our own set of “Lost Boys” without a mother through abortion and frozen embryos known as “Snow Flakes,” resulting from IVF. Moreover, freezing eggs and contraception remain a means of cheating nature and delaying motherhood, or perhaps thwarting it all together. The window of fertility is barred.

“Long ago, “ (Peter) said, “I thought, like you, that my mother would always keep the window open for me, so I stayed away for moons and moons and moons, and then flew back; but the window was barred, for mother had forgotten all about me, and there was another little boy sleeping in my bed” (Peter Pan and Wendy, 144).

Too much time in Neverland, engaging with fairies and in falsehoods, has made society forget who women were made to be, mothers. Peter Pan’s voice has become our own. We despise mothers, and believe a barren womb to be better. Jesus warns us of such a time. “For behold, the days are coming when they will say, blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed!” (Luke 23:29).

In 1930, Pope Pius XI wisely was aware that society was already dismissing the gift of motherhood, while elevating business and public affairs (Casti Connubi 74). He said, rejecting a motherly vocation “is not the true emancipation of woman, nor that rational and exalted liberty which belongs to the noble office of a Christian woman and wife; it is rather the debasing of the womanly character and the dignity of motherhood, and indeed of the whole family, as a result of which the husband suffers the loss of his wife, the children of their mother, and the home and the whole family of an ever watchful guardian” (Casti Connubi 75).

Like Wendy, it is time to say goodbye to Neverland and return home. It’s time to embrace motherhood. It is time to grow up. In the words of Pope Francis, “To be a mother is a great treasure. Mothers, in their unconditional and sacrificial love for their children, are the antidote to individualism; they are the greatest enemies against war” (General Audience Address January 7, 2015)

When Peter Pan next visits your conscience, in this war on mothers, be prepared to stand true.

“I am old, Peter. I am ever so much more than twenty. I grew up long ago.”

“You promised not to!”

“I couldn’t help it. I am a married woman. Peter.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, and the little girl in the bed is my baby.”

“No, she’s not.” (Peter Pan and Wendy, 215)

For more faith lessons in fairytales, check out Jennessa Terraccino’s new release for young women: “The Princess Guide: Faith Lessons From Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty.”