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The Daily Defeats of Motherhood –
Glooscap and the Baby
According to the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, an important part of our life-time task of growing into wholeness involves realizing that the conscious part of our personality (the ego) doesn’t always have all the answers. Jung taught that we each have deep within us a source of unconscious wisdom that he called the Self. “Every encounter with the Self,” Jung wrote, “is a defeat for the ego.” And each such defeat for the ego brings about an enlargement of our personality. So personal growth often comes about in a way that feels painfully like a defeat. Being a mother provides plenty of opportunities for just such growth!
The Algonquian fairy tale “Glooscap and the Baby” illustrates how motherhood can bring about a defeat of our heroic ego stance. Glooscap is a great Indian hero and god. He conquered a race of giants, defeated cunning sorcerers, overcame a wicked spirit of the night, and destroyed hosts of fiends, goblins, cannibals, and witches. He boasted to a woman that he could defeat anything and anyone. For some of us, this may be a familiar attitude. We may have done well in many of our previous endeavors prior to becoming a mom. Perhaps we excelled at school, or in our careers. We may think of ourselves as highly competent in at least some areas.
The woman to whom Glooscap boasted laughed, and said, “Are you so sure there is nothing you cannot defeat? I know of someone who can master you!” And Glooscap asked who that might be, and demanded that he be allowed to face him. The woman presented to Glooscap a little baby, who sat cooing a song to himself and sucking a piece of maple sugar. Glooscap had never married or had dealings with children before, and he confidently smiled at the baby and asked it to come to him, but the baby merely smiled and ignored him.
Glooscap tried other ways to coax the baby to come to him, but to no avail. Then, Glooscap became enraged and shouted and threatened the baby, but this only made the baby cry so loudly that the god’s shouts were drowned out. So Glooscap summoned all his magic and recited many powerful spells that had been used to subdue demons and devils, but the little baby remained unmoved. At last, Glooscap ran despairing from the hut, having admitted defeat.
Being a mother provides almost daily experiences of not being able to impose our will upon our children, whatever age they may be. At some level, we may expect ourselves to be able to control our children’s behavior, whether that means getting them to take a nap, eat healthy foods, or behave pleasantly at school or in a playgroup. Many of those around us share this expectation that we can control our children’s behavior, so we are mortified by the unpleasant scowls of fellow diners in a restaurant when our children misbehave. And yet, our children are not really under our control. A heroic attitude that aims to conquer a toddler’s refusal to nap is likely to backfire and lead to frustration. Like Glooscap, even those of us that may have won many prior battles may occasionally be humbled and have to admit defeat. Such experiences of humility, however, offer opportunities for personal growth.
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