Did Beverly Crusher Seem Very Nurturing to You?

[Trekker4747]

As a mother she was an overly controlling harpy that's lucky she didn't give Wesley some sort of Oedipal Complex or a Norma Bates Complex.

Consider that it's the 24th century, a time where being a teenager is likely to be very different than what it's like to be a teenager today a time when in your late teens you're capable of joining an academy to fly around the galaxy and get into dangerous and deadly situations as part of you career.

Beverly flips the fuck out when her son is given the death penalty for trampling some flowers on an alien planet. Rightfully so but for all intents and purposes her son is an "adult" in this world. Yeah the way he was portrayed wasn't consistent with that but everything we know about the 24c suggests that Wesley was on the cusp of that status in their universe. But, yeah, her son was up for the DP due to being a dink so maybe you can excuse her for being a tad worried.

Start of Season 2: Wesley is older, considerably more mature and now at an age where he apparently is legally allowed to "live on his own" and even to enter the academy. Wesley worries about putting his career and future on hold because his mother is away from the ship. If you're a teenager not wanting to leave home and go to college because of your mom there's an issue.

But let us flash forward to the start of Season 3 (Evolution) when Beverly has returned to the ship and her overly protective harpy ways return. Wesley is now more fully an acting member of the crew with duties on the ship on top of his studies and experiments to get into the academy. A mistake during an experiment results in the ship being under threat from nanites that Wesley suspects is his fault so he takes it upon himself to try and re-capture them. Beverly pages him in the middle of his work to tell him "orders are orders" and return to his room. A sideplot of this episode deals with Wesley wringing her fingers of her son worrying about his academic career at this point rather than his social life. Yeah, it's so terrible when your teenage son is ambitious when it comes to his studies. At the end of the episode her eighteen year old son brings a date into Ten-Forward and after a moment or two of happiness for him she freaks out over the young girl taking an active interest in her son.

Again.

Beverly Crusher, mother to a full-fledged adult in both OUR world and in theirs (as he's eighteen fucking years old), is worried because his date has her arm around him and shows an interest in him.

The woman has issues.

Later that season in, I think, "Offspring" Wesley is talking to Data -again, Wesley is now 18 years old, maybe 19) and he gets paged from his mother over the com-system to be told to get a fucking hair cut!

My mom stopped bugging me to go get a hair cut the moment I could drive.

Here we have Beverly Crusher using the ship's communication system (which is supposed to only be used for ship business) to remind her adult son to go get a fucking hair cut.

She had issues. I wouldn't be surprised if she picked out and laid out Wesley clothes every night for him and reminded him to put on a clean pair of underwear.

 

[bbailey861]

I think that she was over-nurturing as a mother. I'd chalk that up to her losing her husband and over compensating when raising Wesley.
As a Dr. I think she was extremely professional.

 

[Trekker4747]

I never bought into the loss of her husband causing her to become so guarded when it came to losing someone considering how supposed to see death is handled in the 24c and, again, she should still know when to cut the damn cord.

 

[FreddyE]

Well...she was very professional. But I always saw her as more nurturing than Pulaski who was pretty much downright cold.

My mom stopped bugging me to go get a hair cut the moment I could drive.

Lol...mine still does...and I´m 28. I just ignore her. ;-)

 

[Dr. Crusher]

Maybe the perception comes down to what we would all prefer to have in a doctor, which I am sure would be very different depending on the person who was asked. I appreciate the fact that she did, in cases where it applied, a huge amount of research to solve seemingly unsolvable health problems and issues.

To comment on how precise doctors are, I recall a scene in "Violations" where Geordi and Data were researching incidents of the particular phenomenon that had affected Troi and Riker. There was one peculiarity that separated Riker's and Troi's case from another, more common affliction that Dr. Crusher had identified. Geordi commented that he and Data should search for incidents of the more common affliction because he suspected that not all doctors were as thorough as Dr. Crusher.

Is it, perhaps, that people are asking the question because she is a woman doctor? Would the level of professionalism, which was never doubted in characters like McCoy, be taken into greater account if Dr. Crusher's character had been male?

 

[Kestra]

She always struck me as a generally calm & professional person, with occasional feistiness when on a crusade. Sensible woman; competent doctor. The kind of person who would be a solid and boundaried friend. Much like a lot of the TNG crew in that sense. Low personal drama (low expressed emotion, if you're familiar with that term).

Nurturing? Not in a demonstrative manner, but quietly caring in a professional, intelligent way.

This sums it up pretty well. Very competent doctor. Reminds me of the attitude I've seen family members take on. I also like that she wasn't typical domestic nurturing with Wesley. I just read Trekker's post and I couldn't disagree more.

 

[Neutral Zone]

Beverly appeared to be distant at first with Wes especially in the pilot 'Encounter at Farpoint', she spoke to him as if he were a three year old. But in Justice she acted like a caring mother. Perhaps her career made her distant with him?

 

[Tina Lawton]

To answer the OP question: Yes, maybe, I don't know.