Recognizing the Self-Involved Parent
Astrid Burke, MHC
Perhaps you’ve known that your relationship with your parent hasn’t felt right; that you had a good childhood but something is missing. You may have felt that love and affection from your parent need to be earned, or that your parent lives vicariously through you and does not see you as your own person. The relationships between parents and their children are impossible to put into boxes, but in her book, Mothers Who Can’t Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters, Susan Forward offers language that can be helpful in recognizing and describing how relationships with five possible types of self-involved parents may look:
The Severely Narcissistic Parent
This parent is typically self-absorbed and has an intense need for admiration. Although they have a grandiose sense of self-importance, they are very insecure. They must be the center of attention, so much so they become critical and competitive with their child, particularly when the child is thriving. They often create drama, deflect responsibility, and deny any wrongdoing, turning the blame on their child.
The Overly-Enmeshed Parent
The overly-enmeshed parent views their child as their “best friend,” although without having their child’s needs, wants, or independence at heart. This parent typically demands attention and time from their child and has weak boundaries, if any, and struggles to separate their identity from their child’s. They rely on their children to fulfill their own emotional needs, feel that, “You are my whole world,” and need to feel like they are the most important person in their child’s life.
The Controlling Parent
The needs and wants of the controlling parent are clearly known and, if these needs are not fulfilled, there are consequences for the child. This parent attempts to control multiple aspects of the child’s life, great and small, from what school they go to, who they marry, their body or appearance. Any questioning is met with, “Because I said so.” Stemming from their own feelings of powerlessness, they see their child as someone who is responsible for making them happy and justify their behaviors by insisting that they know what’s best.
Parents Who Need Parenting
Here, the roles are reversed; the parent who needs parenting depends on their child or the rest of the family to take care of them rather than caring for their child. Children of these parents often feel like they were mature for their age, identify as having been a very responsible child, and reflect on not having a childhood due to being a “little adult.” These parents are often overwhelmed by their own depression, illness, substance use, etc. As a result, their children care for them all the while not having guidance and protection of their own.
Parents Who Neglect, Betray, or Abuse
These parents are unable to feel warmth or offer kindness and care for their children. They feel resentful towards their child and blames them for their dissatisfactions in life. They emotionally abandon, neglect, betray, or abuse their child, or leave their child unprotected from others’ abuse. They leave their children feeling unwanted and unloved.
It’s important to mention that these parents do not wake up every day and wonder how they can hurt their children. Often, their behaviors are a result of feelings of disappointment in their own lives, need for power or control, insecurity, feelings of deprivation, and are outside of their conscious awareness. They struggle to empathize and truly recognize how their actions impact their child. This does not make their actions okay but recognizing our parents’ patterns of behavior and understanding where they come from can help us heal from these wounds and set boundaries from a place of love while also validating and giving language to our experience.
For additional reading about self-involved or narcissistic parents:
Mothers Who Can’t Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters by Susan Forward, PhD
Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers by Karyl
McBride, PhD