Surviving Narcissistic Parents
This post is the first on a series on the emotional pain of surviving narcissistic parents. In my previous posts on Understanding Narcissism, I described Narcissism and narcissists. I suggest you read that post in as an introduction to this one.
In that article I classified narcissists in two subtypes:
1-The “malignant” narcissists
2-The more benign kind
All narcissists however are very difficult people to deal with even if they do not belong to the malignant kind. So, in this series I will focus on surviving parents with narcissistic personality disorders and that will include the different types. In this first post, I will introduce the subject from a historical perspective. I will review some of the social factors that have led to a massive growth of narcissistic attitudes in parents in the postmodern western world. I will begin the series by focusing on parents with typical narcissistic personality disorders. I will not address here the more severe antisocial or borderline personalities. These people are narcissists too, but they have other more dysfunctional psychological characteristics.
The hallmark of Narcissism is a self-centered attitude regardless of the type of narcissist in question.
Narcissistic people are “all about themselves “as it is commonly said. Their supersized Egos rule their lives and their interaction with others mercilessly. Because of their extreme self-centeredness, narcissistic people have problems taking other people’s needs into account. They see others as “extensions” of themselves or as objects to be used for their self-satisfaction. They may be conscious or oblivious to their own narcissism. The narcissists apply the same self-centered attitude when they relate to their children.
The “attitudinal position” toward others defines the different types of personalities
From this perspective, in regards to the Other (all others) orientation, we grossly find three types of people:
1-The Narcissists who are “all about themselves.”
2-The Altruists that are “all for the Other.”
3-The “normal” individual, who has an intermediate positional attitude.
This last group is somewhere in between these extremes two polar opposites. He or she can think of himself and their needs, but they can also take into account the needs of the others to some degree.
The rise in narcissistic attitudes
–The narcissists is a group that has been constantly increasing in American society and in the rest of the Western world in the last half century. This process of leaning towards self-centeredness started in the late 1950s and continues unabated today. Particularly in American society, more and more, we find people of all ages with self-centered traits. These are people that do not or cannot take into account the needs of others.
–The altruists in general are in a declining minority in today’s world. This type used to be more common in past eras. With the growth of consumerism and radical individualism that took place in American society since the 1960s, altruism as a social attitude has been on the decline. This is the case as altruism is the result of religious and moral education. An altruistic attitude results from the implementation in daily life of the ten commandments of the Judeo-Christian tradition. And as it is well known, religiosity has been on the decline in the last half-century in the Western world. America has today the lowest percental numbers of church membership in her history.
In the third group, what we could consider the (statistically) “normal” individual, both attitudes can be seen at times, with a less predominance of one or the other in individuals at different times. People have degrees of Egoism (self-centeredness) and Altruism mixed in different proportions in their personalities. However, this group of so-called “normal” are also declining in numbers. They are dwindling in favor of the advance of the narcissistic personality traits ever-more-prevalent in postmodern society.
The changes in parental figures’ roles since the 1960s
The generations that were children in the 1950s and 60s were the last ones to get parental figures that responded to the traditional role of parents as adults and children as children. The traditional family oriented American TV shows of the 1950s, of which “Father Knows Best” was the epitome, were common in the fifties, less common in the sixties, and virtually disappeared in the late seventies and beyond.
With the 1960s revolution, more and more, the youth of those times (the Beatles’ generation), became obsessed with remaining “forever young.” This tendency to believe in “eternal youth” present in many of the Baby Boomers led to a very different style of parenting from earlier generations in years to come. It led to a more self centered attitude in children rearing. The boomers rebelled against the previous generations that had retained the notion of respect for parental authority and trust in the system. There were at that time leftovers of the patriarchal society that had predominated in the Western world in the XIX and in the first half of the XX century. These leftovers were gradually erased in the following decades. This is now known as the “the fall of the patriarchy.”
The traditional family–although it was rapidly eroding in the US after 1950–was still present in American society. Children then benefited from that structured social arrangement. At that time most children still grew with the presence of both parents in the home most parents being married and living together. To give an idea of the massive family and social changes that took place in two decades of the XX century in this country, we see that while in 1950 there were 300 thousand divorces in the US, by 1978, the total number had skyrocketed to 16 million!
So, what changed so drastically in that 18-year period?
The sixties were “the bridge transformational decade” between the conservative fifties and the liberal seventies. This revolutionary decade saw many social uprisings and social mores changes. These movements included the Civil Rights Movements, the Hippie Movement, the Feminist movements, the anti-Vietnam war movement, and the antiestablishment movement. All of these–except for the Civil Rights movement–were anti-traditional family movements. They all took place at the same time in a synchronistic way during that extraordinary decade. And the changes introduced by them continued—and intensified markedly–in the late 1970s and beyond. We are still evolving from the seed and roots of “the new post-patriarchal social arrangement” established since then.
The birth of the drug culture in America
The sixties also saw the first explosion of generalized drug use in the US which generated the so-called “Drug Culture.” Since that time–and for 6 decades now– this “drug culture” has only grown stronger in America. This is so, to the point that today–more addictive drugs keep being legalized and their use has become widespread. The best case in point of this trend is the legalization of Marijuana in the US and in many countries around the world.
The young generation of Boomers in the sixties rebelled against the “greatest generation” that had fought world war II and the late Victorians that had fought “the Great War.” This generation of then young boomers are today the grandparents or great-grandparents of the 2020s children.
The Baby Boomers—the group of people born between 1945 and 1964–are the largest cohort (age group) in American history. It still has some 70 million representatives alive and well today. Most of them are retired, retiring now, or a few years short of retirement. And the Baby Boomers, a generation to which I belong myself, were the first “All about Me generation.” Not for nothing, George Harrison (an older Baby Boomer) wrote in 1968 a song that he named “I, Me, Mine.” In family matters, and for better or worse, they were the turning point generation.
The children of Love
The summer of 1967 was dubbed the “Summer of Love.” This “summer” was not so much about “love,” but about free drugs, indiscriminate sex, and rock and roll. The epicenter of this event was San Francisco Ashbury Heights. Of course, all these liberation movements were stronger in liberal California, but the rebellious attitude affected the fabric of the whole nation.
The growth of the hippie movement then led many Americans to join a counterculture lifestyle. The “counterculture” preached “make love and not war” and an attitude of enjoying today and of not thinking about tomorrow. This new “alternative” lifestyle included community living, the widespread use of drugs, the sharing of free sexual activities—and they had a much more liberal and antireligious view of sex, marriage–and children.
The problem with the hippies’ liberal approach is this: Whether we like it or not–and regardless of how enjoyable free sexual activity can be–children are the product of sexual activity. This is the truth even in the age of effective contraception methods. And when sex became casual after the pill was invented in 1960, many children became the product of one-night stands. As a result of this relaxation in sexual morals pushed by psychoanalysis, feminism, egalitarianism, and consumerism, more and more children began to be born out of wedlock and the single mother phenomenon exploded.
The new American family
It was in the sixties that the first ensembled families appeared. They were the result of the epidemics of divorce that took place in those years. By the early seventies they were the rule rather than the exception. The traditional family with the two heterosexual parents married and present shown in 1950s shows such as “Father Knows Best” or “Lassie” had given place to the much more liberal “Brady Bunch.” This seventies’ sitcom was the first American show that portrayed—and glamorized–the life of an ensembled American family.
The hallmark of the narcissistic parent is self-centeredness and lack of assumption of adult responsibilities
The narcissistic parent is someone who—emotionally–never made it past the 5-year-old stage of emotional development. This is the age in which a child feels he is “the King or Queen of England.” At age 5, a self-centered attitude can be considered “normal.” At 35–and as in the role of parent–it is definitely not.
So, the narcissist is someone who–for whatever reasons–maintained the childhood narcissistic stance in their lives past the age in which this attitude can be considered normal. The narcissist child became a narcissist adolescent and then a narcissist young adult. The individual grew mentally and cognitively–but emotionally, they did not. They were never able to leave behind the childhood stage in which parents and others had to cater to their needs. These individuals remained entrenched in an attitude of “I am entitled”; “I deserve love and admiration regardless of my merit; “and “The world owes Me something.” Unfortunately, that entitled worldview includes the fruit of their sexual activity, their children.
It takes a quota of altruism to be a “good enough” mother or father
The position of being a child in life is one of passivity, of receiving love and care, and of learning by trial and error. Responsibility is absent in infants. It is inculcated in children’s minds by parents, religious authorities, and by educators and it takes many years and hard work to develop. In American society, by the time someone is 18, an individual is considered “an adult.” He or she is now free and enjoys constitutionally protected individual rights. But the individual has no safeguards, containments, or support from society.
Society now expects full responsibility from this young “adult” individual’s actions, including of course for the consequences of their sexual actions. But that social expectation does not necessarily mean that the person will step up to the plate and assume the expected adult role. The individual that remains in a childhood mindset past adolescence cannot become a good enough parent. This is so as he or she is not a good enough responsible adult.
The narcissists do not need a license to have children
While in the United States it is considered “a privilege” to drive–and it requires taking a 6 months class and passing rigorous exams to get a driver’s license–no such requirement is necessary to have children. Anyone can engage in sex, become pregnant–or make someone pregnant–becoming in the process a biological parent, whether one is apt for the task or not.
Since the age of first sexual intercourse went down to the early teens since the 1960s, it is no wonder that there was a rapid increase of teenage pregnancies and/or early unwanted ones. And adolescents and young people are ill-prepared to be parents. This is so as becoming a good parent requires getting established as an adult in life and being engaged in a supportive, loving, and stable relationship.
This stable situation in the life of women became ever rarer in the last half-century. As sexual activity became casual and common outside of marriage, there was no longer a need for marriage to stabilize the relationship permanently through marital vows. Easy sexual access to women created lack of responsibility in men. The result of this relaxation of social, sexual–and legal social mores–we see today as we deal with millions of people affected by narcissistic parental sexual activity.
This does not mean–by any stretch of the imagination–that every person that gets pregnant or makes someone pregnant out of wedlock is a narcissist. But the reality is that– unless one can become a responsible adult in a stable relationship with a person of the opposite sex–the conditions for parenting well are hindered. In short, good parenting requires marital commitment and a measure of altruism and self-sacrifice. People that are narcissistic, not fully responsible adults, cannot offer to their children this kind of loving environment children need to be in the position to “receive” unconditional love and care from their families. This results in emotional pain and suffering for their children that have to grow up in these conditions.
The narcissists create a situation in which she or he must be loved by her child
The narcissistic parent expects others in his or her family to cater to his or her needs. Narcissists by definition come first, before the children themselves. In the case of the narcissistic male, he expects all the attention, love, and the care from his wife, in detriment of his children. In the case of the narcissistic woman, the man is a mere appendix to her and her child. The husband in that situation is not respected and considered subservient to her needs and wishes. She comes first, the children second–and her husband in a far back third place.
In this post I have focused on social historical background and on understanding where narcissistic parents are coming from. In the following post I will get more specifically into the matter of the narcissist parents behaviors and into how to cope with them and extricate yourself from their toxicity.
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I hope to see you in my next post,
Till then,
Dr T