Gypsy, Mama Rose, and the role of mothers in their kids' lives

The 1959 Broadway musical Gypsy made me think about how moms try to push and control their kids, and how Stoic ideas can help us avoid that temptation.

When does a mother go too far in guiding her kids to “success”?

I found myself meditating on this question in recent days after my jaunt to New York City. While I was there, I celebrated the launch of Beyond Stoicism with my co-authors Massimo and Greg—we gathered to mark the occasion with a reading and a Q&A session with folks from the practical philosophy community and NYC friends I was glad to reunite with! A highlight was the artistic cake, an exquisite replica of our book cover (thanks to Taya for that surprise)!

I had the chance to get to know my co-authors Massimo and Greg better, too.

While I was hanging out in New York City, I got a ticket for the Broadway musical Gypsy at the advice of a friend. I was initially hesitant. I had never watched the full musical, but I knew that the plot focused on a stage mother who pushed her kids into performing.

Now, let’s take a step back. I’ve seen a LOT of shows (both theater and movies/TV) featuring bad mom stereotypes, and to be honest, I’m over it! The moms are typically depicted as 1) controlling and manipulative, or 2) hysterical and emotionally smothering, or 3) distant and dismissive, or 4) some combination of all of the above! I often wonder if many of these pieces were written by adult children of mothers whom they resent. (I can picture the awkward conversation between the mother and her adult child: “Look mom, I wrote a play/film/show, aren’t you proud?” And then I imagine the mother watching the darn thing and realizing she’s been pilloried in front of the whole world!) Gypsy plays on that same themes, but let me explain why it’s interesting to me as a Stoic-inspired mom.

A real mom and her daughters’ road towards fame

The show is based on an autobiographical book by the daughter (Gypsy Rose Lee) of a real stage mother. The time/place are the US of the 1920s-30s. Mama Rose is constantly pushing her two young daughters to perform, dragging them from theater to theater to audition and sing and dance, and taking them out of school so they can work on the vaudeville circuit. But after the younger sister June, a star singer and dancer, runs away to escape her mother’s control, the older sister Lou is forced onto center stage by Rose. Lou, a shy and reluctant performer, is pushed by Rose into doing a striptease as part of a burlesque show they booked by mistake. After Lou’s initial embarrassment, she ends up becoming a burlesque star as Gypsy Rose Lee, her stage name, fulfilling her mother’s dream to make her child a famous performer.

Rose has given up everything else along the way—the chance to remarry, and ability to settle down and live a quiet life, and ultimately, her relationship with her daughters, who want to escape her grasp. Rose sings a final song, “Rose’s Turn,” which reveals how unhappy she is that SHE never had the chance to be a successful performer on the stage. Her daughters have really been an extension of her the entire time, a product of what she wanted for herself, and a way for her to live vicariously. So she is living her own dream through her children.

How many other mothers—and fathers—are living vicariously through their kids’ accomplishments?

There’s a distinction between wanting to point to our kids’ achievements and be proud, and wanting to channel their success into our own self-worth. Where can we draw that line?

Towards the end of the show, we see Gypsy as a very successful young woman, and Rose complains that she’s no longer important to her child’s life or success. Gypsy has become a star in her own right, well paid, popular, and able to buy expensive things. Rose can’t accept that Gypsy has grown up into just what Rose made her, and she’s not needed to engineer it all anymore. And meanwhile, Rose has focused her whole life on creating her children into these perfect products for the stage—without realizing any of her own ambitions.

Part of why this is so powerful to watch as a mother is the familiar feeling that many parents share: watching our kids grow up and become independent contains the germ of its own sad realization that we’re no longer needed.

Audra McDonald, photo by Julieta Cervantes

Actors in multilayered performances

But what made this Gypsy version stand out was the level of nuance and emotion in Rose, who seemed like a real, three-dimensional person—not just a caricature of a bad mom. Since the musical was first staged in 1959, Rose has been played by many great women, from Patti LuPone to Angela Lansbury, from Ethel Merman to Bernadette Peters. On Broadway now, Rose is played by Audra McDonald, an American singer and actress who has won six Tony Awards, two Grammys, and an Emmy. She offered a multilayered performance as a mother who wants to find public recognition and stardom so badly that she’s willing to ruthlessly push her daughters into a life on the stage because she believes she’s helping them succeed. You feel her excitement and enthusiasm for performing, her drive to make her kids into stars. Her diva-like demands of her girls appear as more like a whirlwind of energetic ambition rather than abuse, most of the time. But she can’t accept that they just don’t want it, especially after they grow out of the little-kid phase.

In real life Gypsy Rose Lee was an incredible success in her day, which also complicates things. We see the story of the musical through Gypsy’s eyes: The eyes of a daughter who was shy, dreaded performing, and just wanted to have a normal life. Yet her career turned out to be extraordinary, creative (she was known for her clever on-stage banter), and made her financially secure, certainly thanks to Rose. (Gypsy Rose’s younger sister became a successful actress in real life, too—June Havoc.)

The real Gypsy Rose Lee

Gypsy, played by Joy Woods in the version I saw on Broadway, gave a heartfelt performance—all her mixed emotions really came through as a daughter who wants to be close to her mother and yet is constantly coping with her wishes and demands.

Joy Woods as Gypsy Rose Lee on Broadway

The inherent contradiction of being a parent

The mother-daughter interaction in this musical hit hard for me. I could relate to the desire to choose my kids’ paths, and to help them reach “success,” something I seek to avoid as a Stoic. In a pivotal scene, when Rose sings ‘Everything's Coming Up Roses,’ she's fully attaching her happiness to her child’s outcomes that are not up to her, and doubling down on her delusional quest for externals. Quite the opposite of a Stoic mom moment! But Rose isn’t a truly horrible person who is torturing her kids for the sake of it. Like most parents, she seems to believe that she’s acting in her children’s best interests. She experiences the kinds of thoughts we’ve all had: “My child could be awesome at this if she just…” or “If only my child would try harder at…” or “I wish my child would take advantage of the opportunity to …”

But even though we are raising our children, we are not in control of our kids, really. They are their own humans. This is the contradiction inherent in parenting. So it is important to become aware of these “if only” thoughts as they pop into our heads—questioning our impressions, Stoic-style. We CAN go against the prevailing culture and conventional thinking, especially if we stay focused on character and the virtues instead of externals like fame.

What’s more, letting children have their own opportunity to choose creates kids who have intrinsic motivation to do what THEY actually want to do (not just what we want them to do), and who will bring that passion to their education and lives. Of course, at some point they all need to learn “adulting” skills, too, whether they like it or not!

A few Stoic lessons inspired by Gypsy (aka how NOT to be Rose)

Here are some Stoic concepts that could help us as parents and caregivers when we feel drawn to behaving like Rose. We could use them as reminders to ourselves:

1. Focus on what’s up to you: Your responses, and not your kids’ choices. Avoid micromanaging. Guidance is good; some words of wisdom offered but not forced on kids can come in “clutch,” as the teens say. But telling your child “You’re going to do a striptease because you’ll be in the spotlight” (like Rose said to Gypsy), or, on the other side of things, “You’re going to be a doctor because it’s a well-paid job,” etc.—well, it goes without saying it isn’t good.

2. Emphasize the primary virtues, wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation, rather than external success. Ask yourself if your choices align with these guideposts. “Is this wise for me, and for my child? Is this fair? Is it brave? Does it show self-control, especially over negative emotions (‘bad passions,’ in Stoic lingo) such as anger and fear?” These questions would have been great for Rose to ask when weighing choices as a mother.

3. Envision your kids as “on loan to you” rather than your possessions or your products. Epictetus emphasized this; all our loved ones are “on loan” and we don’t know how much time we have with them. Rose could have reflected on this when she found her daughters moving on towards lives of their own.

4. Cope with disappointment with healthy equanimity, or as much as you can muster. Stoics practice negative visualization, sometimes called “pre-meditation of adversity.” It helps us accept that things will not always go our way, and we will have to deal with change and stress and rejection. Rose could have benefitted from that perspective throughout.

This isn’t really about Gypsy: It’s about all parents and their kids

In a culture obsessed with achievement and awards, Gypsy helps us see why we need to think differently. It’s not that we should stop caring about our kids’ future direction. It’s that we can separate ourselves from their performance and accomplishments when we’re investing too much of our own ego, or our own identity is becoming intertwined with our child’s accolades. Our ambitions don’t need to be realized by our kids.

Rather than focusing on some amorphous idea of pushing towards our children’s “success,” what if we could support our kids as they aim for virtues, and character development? Our job as parents and caregivers is, ultimately, to give them the tools, and then empower them to use those tools as independent humans.

One more photo!

And to wrap this up…. It’s been a winter of reaching a few major milestones. In addition to publishing Beyond Stoicism, I’ve completed my professional coaching certification (I’ll save more on that for a different post). So here’s one more photo of that cake (and me celebrating with it!). As part of my Stoic community, you’ve been along with me on this journey. Here’s to you!