Narcissistic Parenting, Part 2

Infuriating entitlement to the innocent

Let’s face it: the vast majority of people don’t procreate due to their alleged abundance of love to give. They procreate to own an obedient Tamagotchi, a mindless pet compelled to worship them and feed their ego, no matter how badly they treat it. For most, having children of their own is self-serving: a way to mitigate loneliness, and an immortality project — a delusion of “cheating death” by having “your genes live on” or “leaving behind a legacy”.

But mostly, having kids is just ego-stroking self-aggrandising, and the feeling of complete ownership over someone smaller and weaker than you. It’s just a power trip for the desperately power-hungry. It’s the same as owning a needy pet that will love you regardless of how disrespectful and abusive you are to it or anyone else. You beat your wife? The child will still love you. You cheat on your husband? Your child will still adore you. You’re rude to the waiter whenever you feel circumstantially empowered? Your child will still worship you, not because you’re evil, but despite it.

I observe young parents with their wide-eyed descriptions of how amazing they feel after having children, and in most cases, all I see is narcissism and the enthusiasm from getting a new pet, a slave condemned to satisfy their emotional needs for the rest of their lives. Even in their old age, even after having burdened their now adult children with irreversible trauma, they still complain: “Why don’t the kids visit? Why don’t they call? They’re so ungrateful!”

The gall of the parent calling the child ‘ungrateful’, when the child’s entire existence has always been about gratifying the parent.

The child never asked to be born. Parents chose to have (and keep) the child because, apparently, the parents had a need to satisfy; otherwise, they wouldn’t have chosen to procreate. The same goes for gods: If a conscious entity did in fact create us, then it cannot be perfect, otherwise it would not have had the need to do anything.

For the vast majority of cases, becoming a parent is about securing forced love from people who have no choice but to love you, at least for the first decades of their lives. It’s receiving unconditional and exclusive affection and attachment, without you having to lift a finger to improve yourself, to become worthy of that love. Having kids is a way to receive love without earning love. There is nothing more narcissistic and selfish than that.

Some people imagine themselves as heroes solely on the fact that they obeyed their biological and emotional programming to procreate. They feed their narcissism and tell themselves they are benevolent gods for reluctantly and resentfully providing the mere sustenance a small child needs to survive; provisions they are morally obligated to provide, since they were the ones who decided to bring a child into this world, a child who never chose to be born, and most importantly, never had a choice of parent, no less.

Claiming that your children somehow “owe their lives to you” is peak narcissism and insane entitlement. Your children don’t owe you their lives; you owe them yours. If you don’t like this dynamic, then you should not have had kids in the first place. The peace of never having been born in the first place is better than having such parents.

Feeling entitled to someone’s life, claiming ownership over them while denying their self-sovereignty over some imaginary debt they have to you, is not parenting; it’s slavery. We see this authoritarian parenting in the way we imagine our gods, our celestial parents.

The debt is owed to the children, not the other way around. Your kids owe you nothing at all. You never had their permission, never asked them if they wanted to be born — under your leaky roof, no less — and they never asked to be involuntarily attached to you and all your neuroses, to be at your mercy, of all people, whereby you get to choose their identity and character-defining trauma for them.

Your kids owe you nothing. The miniscule time and money you spend on them is nothing compared to what they give you with their physical and psychological labour that serves your emotional needs, without which you probably wouldn’t survive or keep your sanity. Yet, you spend more time trying to please your cringe-worthy coworkers than you encouraging your children. You spend more time in front of the fucking TV than you spend paying attention to your children who are forced by their nature to hopelessly need your attention the most. And it’s your fault they’re in this vulnerable position. And you have the audacity to pretend they owe you? Are you fucking deluded?

Some will still insist that I am “entitled” for saying that parents owe their children, and not the other way around. But how entitled are you to obsess over your child’s imaginary debt to you? How is it not the worst kind of entitlement to imagine that a child owes anything to the parent when the child never chose to be born, or, even more importantly, never chose the parent? Especially so when the child has no power over the parent, while the parent holds absolute power over the child, even in choosing the child’s life-defining trauma and shaping the child’s personality? Are we serious here? The audacity!

You can tell a narcissistic parent by their entitlements, by their deluded beliefs that their children somehow “owe” them, and not the other way around. A friend of mine who is a mother told me this: “I don’t own my children. They aren’t mine. I know God entrusted me with their upbringing, and I must do my best to give them the best life possible. I am responsible for them and to them.”

It takes humility to make yourself smaller and thus appreciate the big things in life; perhaps the biggest among them, the miracle of childhood innocence, and that misplaced admiration they have for undeserving adults.

You don’t owe your parents anything. Your parents owe you everything.

Now apply the same dynamic to the demiurge of this reality, even more so.