What is an Emotionally Immature Parent?
I wish my Mom/Dad would go to therapy!
A phrase I have heard more than a few times. Often expressed in response to frustrating interactions with parents. Yearning for parents to offer more empathy, impose less ambition, ask more open-ended questions or make things less about them.
While many of these interactions are within the expected bounds of challenging family interactions, sometimes folks may be dealing with an emotionally immature parent. If a parent is emotionally immature with their adult children, they likely interacted this way with them when they were children too. This can have damaging and enduring implications for personality development.
There are different types of emotionally immature parents, with author Lindsey Gibson identifying 4 sub-types:
Emotional Parents – These parents can be very unpredictable. Warm and loving in one moment but then angry. They tend to draw children too far into their own emotional world. Child can feel unsure and grow up to be hypervigilant and intensely emotionally attuned to others.
Driven Parents – These parents look for results from their children, such as academic or sporting achievements. They can be very involved, but their involvement may feel managerial or task focused. Children may be discouraged from expressing vulnerability and grow up with challenges around expressing needs.
Passive Parents – These parents tend to be absent in times of emotional need. They appear nice a lot of the time but are not equipped to deal with challenging emotional needs of children. This can lead the child to feel neglected and drive the child towards early self-sufficiency. This child may grow up with similar challenges dealing with emotionally charged moments with their partners or children.
Rejecting Parents – Unlike passive parents who avoid emotionally charged moments, rejecting parents may more actively reject their children, minimizing their need for support in times of strife. This again can lead to movement towards self-sufficiency, and feelings of anxiety that their needs will be met by adult partners.
If you recognize some of these traits in your own parents, it may be worth exploring how it may have affected you as a child and your personality development. For children of driven or passive parents it may be less immediately obvious that you grew up with emotionally immature parents. You may appreciate the competitive spirit instilled on you from your driven father, or the niceness of your passive mother. It is still possible to hold this gratitude, while exploring some of the emotional attunement or nourishment that may have been absent with these parents. You may not be able to get your Dad to go to therapy but understanding their personality and how it affected you can increase understanding of how you operate in the world and relate to others.
