Myers-Briggs Types in Young Sheldon: Mary Cooper (ESFJ)

Mary Cooper from Young Sheldon gets a significant amount of focus in the show, to the extent that her entire ESFJ cognitive function stack gets put on display. Therefore, it seems worthwhile to write an individual article on this character. However, bear in mind, that Mary Cooper is a somewhat stereotypical, and imbalanced example of the ESFJ Myers-Briggs personality type (often referred to as MBTI). She shows a lot of unhealthy tendencies, which we’ll explain in detail below. If you’re interested in reading about any other characters from Young Sheldon, check out The Myers-Briggs Personality Types in Young Sheldon or our individual analysis of young Sheldon Cooper.

The Myers-Briggs Personality Type of Mary Cooper

Dominant Fe:

“Everyone’s going and everyone’s gonna have fun.”

“It’s not just Sundays. I had bible study, a prayer group. I had a whole community.”

“God, please give me the strength to not spread this juicy gossip about Pastor Jeff.”

“George, I just miss my little boy so much, and he’s never gonna come back ’cause he doesn’t need his mama.”

Mary Cooper is family-oriented and community-driven. She ensures that she’s an integral part of wherever she belongs. Within the family, she’s the glue that holds everything together, or at least she believes herself to be. She caters to everyone’s needs, and tries to keep everyone happy, which makes her prone to babying her children. She struggles greatly when she believes that she’s no longer needed.

Within the church, Mary reaches a position of prominence, working as the church secretary. She enjoys taking on responsibilities, having others rely on her, and getting the recognition that comes with her roles. For instance, she gets excited to start counseling in place of Pastor Jeff, when he’s sick. Mary also enjoys reaching out to others, and supporting them. However, she falls into a stereotypical FJ pitfall, which is her love for knowing about all the drama (or gossip) in other people’s lives. Of course, belonging to a community is very important to her, which is why she takes the rejection from her church group particularly hard.

Mary can be over-bearing when it comes to what she believes to be best for people, especially her family members. This spans from her religious beliefs to everyday matters. For instance, when Sheldon is invited to a birthday party, Mary makes him go even though he doesn’t want to, because she’s worried that he won’t integrate well into normal society. She pushes him to do things like this so that he won’t grow up to be alone and isolated. In general, Mary rarely shies away from sharing her strongly felt opinions, although she usually tries to temper them so as not to cause unnecessary conflict.

Auxiliary Si:

“I don’t know, that he’d learn stuff, and then, come back home and be my baby forever.”

“I know you like to just keep driving, and get where you’re going, but you can’t ignore his bathroom schedule… He goes number one first thing in the morning, then again in the afternoon, once more in the late afternoon, say 4:00/4:30, depending on his juice intake, and then, a quick piddle before bedtime.”

Mary excels at tracking all of Sheldon’s eccentricities in detail, from his bathroom schedules to exactly how he likes the hot dogs cut up in the spaghetti. She’s consistent in everything she does, recreating the daily comforts that everyone expects. Similarly, Mary has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to others breaking from their normal pattern of behavior. This is exemplified well whenever Sheldon breaks a rule. History dictates that Sheldon doesn’t break rules, so Mary can never recognize the break from pattern until the evidence is undeniable.

In addition, Mary is resistant to change. She struggles with the concept of any long-term change. For instance, she struggles to think about Sheldon moving forward and going to college. Granted, he’s young, but George sees some of these forward steps as the natural progression, and questions Mary when she’s resistant, asking her what she thought was going to happen. She responds with, “I don’t know, that he’d learn stuff, and then, come back home and be my baby forever.”

Similarly, she struggles greatly when it comes to the possibility of relocating their family. On several occasions, Mary and her husband clash over the possibility of relocating for a better job. She brings up how they wouldn’t be near her mother anymore, how the kids would have to make new friends, how they would have to acclimate to a new school, etc. Even when her husband tries to probe the children over whether they were attached to where they currently lived, Mary views this as an act of subversion on his part, rather than being open to her children’s input.

Tertiary Ne:

“She could be lost. She could be in an accident. She could be in a ditch by the side of the road somewhere.”

Mary often uses her Ne is to come up with worst case scenarios and for finding reasons to keep her kids close. Of course, this feeds her emotional turbulence, because it makes her prone to worrying. However, her Ne does surfaces when she needs to produce new ideas, such as replacing traditions that can no longer be continued (such as when she’s kicked out of church). Similarly, she gets particularly excited about the prospect of coming up with the different messages to put on the church sign. These messages are almost exclusively some kind of pun or word play. She gets almost overly giddy when sharing what she has come up with to place on the sign.

Mary’s mother, Connie Tucker, indicates that in Mary’s younger years she was reckless and a handful, but getting pregnant and finding religion suppressed most of that behavior. Any spontaneous or reckless behavior she attempts to conceal. Ironically, Mary finds an outlet for some of this behavior with the youth pastor at the church, as they both have smoking as a secret vice.

Inferior Ti:

Mary’s Ti manifests mostly in the contradictory arguments and justifications that she forms for some of her actions when in service to her dominant Fe priority. For instance, Sheldon isn’t invited to a birthday party, and doesn’t want to go. She manipulates events to get Sheldon invited so he isn’t left out, only for him to say that he doesn’t want to go. In the process of insisting that Sheldon should go, Mary also makes Missy unhappy, because Missy doesn’t want him to go. When Missy throws this contradiction in Mary’s face, she says, “Everyone’s going and everyone’s gonna have fun.” Essentially, Mary makes everyone unhappy in the process of trying to make one person happy.

Mary also seems susceptible to other people twisting logic in order to get what they want. When she briefly works with Mr. Lundy selling Mary Kay makeup, he manages to twist logic in such a way to make it seem like breaching some of her religious and ethical stances isn’t a bad thing. Initially, she accepts the rationale, without fully realizing what’s going on. Inevitably, Mary comes face-to-face with the reality of what she’s doing, and drops selling it altogether.