Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting,

[YinYang]

Keeping in mind this previous research on infant attachment, let’s now take a look at what I’ve categorized as the four main types of emotionally immature parents, who are all especially likely to create feelings of insecurity in their children. Although each type undermines a child’s emotional security in different ways, all of them relate to their children with limited empathy and unreliable emotional support, and their fundamental lack of sensitivity is the same. Also, be aware that each type exists along a continuum, from mild to severe, with varying degrees of narcissism. In severe cases, the parent may be mentally ill or physically or sexually abusive.

Emotional parents are run by their feelings, swinging between overinvolvement and abrupt withdrawal. They are prone to frightening instability and unpredictability. Overwhelmed by anxiety, they rely on others to stabilize them. They treat small upsets like the end of the world and see other people as either rescuers or abandoners.

Driven parents are compulsively goal-oriented and super busy. They can’t stop trying to perfect everything, including other people. Although they rarely pause long enough to have true empathy for their children, they are controlling and interfering when it comes to running their children’s lives.

Passive parents have a laissez-faire mind-set and avoid dealing with anything upsetting. They’re less obviously harmful than the other types but have their own negative effects. They readily take a backseat to a dominant mate, even allowing abuse and neglect to occur by looking the other way. They cope by minimizing problems and acquiescing.

Rejecting parents engage in a range of behaviors that make you wonder why they have a family in the first place. Whether their behavior is mild or severe, they don’t enjoy emotional intimacy and clearly don’t want to be bothered by children. Their tolerance for other people’s needs is practically nil, and their interactions consist of issuing commands, blowing up, or isolating themselves from family life. Some of the milder types may engage in stereotyped family activities, but they still show little closeness or real engagement. They mostly want to be left alone to do their thing.

As you read the following descriptions, keep in mind that some parents are a blend of types. While most parents tend to fall into one category, any may be prone to behaviors that fit a different type when under certain kinds of stress. And within the following descriptions, you’ll see a unifying thread: none of the types are able to consistently act in ways that would make a child feel secure about the relationship. However, each type has its own unique way of falling short. Also, note that my purpose here is just to provide an outline of the four parenting types. I’ll discuss the best ways of dealing with emotionally immature parents in later chapters.

The Emotional Parent

Emotional parents are the most infantile of the four types. They give the impression that they need to be watched over and handled carefully. It doesn’t take much to upset them, and then everyone in the family scrambles to soothe them. When emotional parents disintegrate, they take their children with them into their personal meltdown. Their children experience their despair, rage, or hatred in all its intensity. It’s no wonder that everyone in the family feels like they’re walking on eggshells. These parents’ emotional instability is the most predictable thing about them.

At the severe end of the spectrum, these parents are, quite frankly, mentally ill. They may be psychotic or bipolar, or have narcissistic or borderline personality disorder. At times, their unbridled emotionality can even result in suicide attempts or physical attacks on others. People are nervous around them because their emotions can escalate so quickly, and because it’s so frightening to see someone you know come unglued. Suicide threats are especially terrifying to children, who feel the crushing burden of trying to keep their parent alive but don’t know what to do. At the milder end of the spectrum, emotional instability is the biggest issue, perhaps in the form of histrionic personality disorder or a cyclothymic disorder, characterized by alternating episodes of high and low mood.

Regardless of severity, all such parents have difficulty tolerating stress and emotional arousal. They lose their emotional balance and behavioral control in situations mature adults could handle. Of course, substance abuse may make them even more unbalanced and unable to tolerate frustration or distress.

Whatever their degree of self-control, these parents are governed by emotion, seeing the world in black-and-white terms, keeping score, holding grudges, and controlling others with emotional tactics. Their fluctuating moods and reactivity make them unreliable and intimidating. And while they may act helpless and usually see themselves as victims, family life always revolves around their moods. Although they often control themselves outside the family, where they can follow a structured role, within the crucible of intimate family relationships they display their full impulsivity, especially if intoxicated. It can be shocking to see how no-holds-barred they can get.

Many children of such parents learn to subjugate themselves to other people’s wishes (Young and Klosko 1993). Because they grew up anticipating their parent’s stormy emotional weather, they can be overly attentive to other people’s feelings and moods, often to their own detriment.

The Driven Parent

Driven parents are the type that tends to look most normal, even appearing exceptionally invested in their children’s lives. Being driven, they’re always focused on getting things done. Whereas emotional parents are obvious in their immaturity, driven parents seem so invested in their child’s success that their egocentrism is hard to see. Most of the time, you wouldn’t notice anything unhealthy about them. However, their children may have trouble with either initiative or self-control. Paradoxically, these very involved, hardworking parents often end up with unmotivated, even depressive children.

If you look a bit deeper, you can detect the emotional immaturity in these upstanding, responsible people. It shows up in the way they make assumptions about other people, expecting everyone to want and value the same things they do. Their excessive self-focus manifests as a conviction that they know what’s “good” for others.

They don’t experience self-doubt at a conscious level and prefer to pretend that everything is settled and they already have the answers. Rather than accepting their children’s unique interests and life paths, they selectively praise and push what they want to see. Their frequent interference in their children’s lives is legendary. In addition, their worry about getting enough done runs them like a motor. Goals take precedence over the feelings of others, including their children.

Driven parents usually grew up in an emotionally depriving environment. They learned to get by on their own efforts rather than expecting to be nurtured. Often self-made, they’re proud of their independence. They fear that their children will embarrass them by not succeeding, yet they can’t offer their children the unconditional acceptance that would give them a secure foundation from which to go out and achieve.

Whether they mean to or not, driven parents make their children feel evaluated constantly. An example would be a father who makes his kids practice the piano in front of him so he can point out their mistakes. This kind of excessive oversight often sours children on seeking adult help for anything. As a result, in adulthood they may resist connecting with potential mentors.

Certain they know the best way to do things, driven parents sometimes do outlandish things. One mother insisted on going to her adult daughter’s house to pay her bills because she was sure her daughter wouldn’t do it right. Another mother bought her adult son a used car he hadn’t asked for and was hurt when he didn’t want it. And one young man’s father made his son weigh himself every day in front of him when he gained weight.

If you think back to the infant attachment studies described at the beginning of this chapter (Ainsworth, Bell, and Stayton 1971, 1974), driven parents seem similar to some of the emotionally insensitive mothers of insecurely attached babies. Out of sync with their child’s moment-to-moment experience, they don’t adapt themselves to their child’s needs; instead, they push their child toward what they think he or she should be doing. As a result, the children of driven parents always feel they should be doing more, or be doing something other than whatever they are doing.

The Passive Parent

Passive parents aren’t angry or pushy like the other three types, but they still have negative effects. They passively acquiesce to dominant personalities and often partner with more intense types who are also immature, which makes sense given that people with similar emotional maturity levels are attracted to one another (Bowen 1978).

Compared to the other types, these parents seem more emotionally available, but only up to a point. When things get too intense, they become passive, withdraw emotionally, and hide their heads in the sand. They don’t offer their children any real limits or guidance to help them navigate the world. They may love you, but they can’t help you.

Passive parents are as immature and self-involved as the other types, but their easygoing and often playful ways make them much more lovable than the other three types (emotional, driven, or rejecting). They are often the favorite parent and can show some empathy for their children, as long as doing so doesn’t get in the way of their needs. And because they can be as egocentric as the other types, passive parents may use their child to meet their own emotional needs—primarily their need to be the focus of someone’s affectionate attention. They enjoy the child’s innocent openness and can get on the child’s level in a delightful way. The child loves his or her time with this parent—but because the child is often filling the parent’s need for an admiring, attentive companion, it becomes a kind of emotional incest. This kind of relationship is never completely comfortable for the child because it poses the risk of making the other parent jealous, and may even feel sexualized.

Children wisely know not to expect or ask for much help from these parents. While passive parents often enjoy their children, have fun with them, and make them feel special, the children sense that their parents aren’t really there for them in any essential way. In fact, these parents are famous for turning a blind eye to family situations that are harmful to their children, leaving their kids to fend for themselves. When the mother is the passive parent, she may stay with a partner who demeans or abuses her children because she doesn’t have an independent income. Such mothers often numb themselves to what’s going on around them. For example, one mother later referred to her husband’s violent attacks on their children with the mild statement “Daddy could be tough sometimes.”

In their own upbringing, passive parents often learned to stay out of the line of fire, keeping a low profile and subjugating themselves to stronger personalities. As adults, it doesn’t occur to them that they have a mission not only to have fun with their own children, but to protect them. Instead, they go into a kind of trance during the worst times, retreating into themselves or finding other passive ways to weather the storm.

In addition to unthinkingly abandoning their children when the going gets rough, these parents may leave the family if they get a chance at a happier life. If the passive but more emotionally connected parent leaves the family for any reason, the wound to the child can be especially deep, since the abandonment came from the parent who meant the most to the child.

Children who adored a passive parent can become adults who make excuses for other people’s abandoning behavior. As children, they believed nothing could be done about their childhood situation and that the passive parent was truly helpless. They’re often taken aback by the idea that their wonderful, nice parent actually had a responsibility to stand up for them when they couldn’t protect themselves as children. They’ve never considered that parents have a duty to put their children’s emotional welfare at least on an even footing with their own interests.

The Rejecting Parent

Rejecting parents seem to have a wall around them. They don’t want to spend time with their children and seem happiest if others leave them alone to do what they want. Their children get the feeling the parent would be fine if they didn’t exist. These parents’ irritated demeanor teaches their children not to approach them, something one person described as running toward someone only to have the door slammed in her face. They summarily reject attempts to draw them into affectionate or emotional interactions. If pushed for a response, they may become angry or even abusive. These parents are capable of punitive physical attacks.

Rejecting parents are also the least empathic of the four types. They often use avoidance of eye contact to signal their distaste for emotional intimacy or sometimes employ a blank look or hostile stare designed to make others go away.

These parents rule the home, with family life revolving around their wishes. A well-known example of this type is the aloof and scary father—a man with no emotional warmth for his children. Everything revolves around him, and the family instinctively tries to not upset him. With a rejecting father, it’s easy to feel apologetic for existing. But mothers can be rejecting too.

Children of rejecting parents come to see themselves as bothers and irritants, causing them to give up easily, whereas more secure children tend to keep making requests or complaining to get what they want. This can have serious ramifications later in life when, as adults, these rejected children find it hard to ask for what they need.