Narcissistic Parenting EXPOSED (with Kathleen Saxton, UK Psychotherapist and Author)

Kathleen Saxton

QUOTES

"Vulnerable narcissism was significantly positively correlated with parents who were inconsistent with discipline and had poor monitoring and supervision skills (Mechanic & Barry, 2014).

Grandiose narcissism was negatively associated with subjective well-being, meaning parents with higher grandiose narcissism scores had little satisfaction with their parental and child bond resulting in a lower well-being score (Horton).

Our results showed that vulnerable narcissism is linked to a more negative sense of self in the adult child, as opposed to grandiose narcissism, which did not seem to negatively affect the adult child’s self-esteem or well-being.

Vulnerable and grandiose narcissism are both linked to more negative parenting styles—known as overprotection and rejection vulnerable and grandiose narcissism are both linked to negative attachment styles in the adult child. These attachment styles are known as anxious attachment and avoidant attachment, both of which correlated with vulnerable and grandiose narcissism.

We were able to conclude that vulnerable narcissism was linked to therapy attendance and knowledge of familial mental illness, but grandiose narcissism was not.

vulnerable narcissism was linked with adverse effects of low well-being, low self-esteem, adverse parenting styles, and attachment styles. Grandiose narcissism was linked with adverse parenting styles and adverse attachment styles but did not have any link to self-esteem or well-being.”

“In the specific transition-to motherhood context, grandiose traits predicted better short-term maternal well-being postpartum through more positive body experience, stronger prenatal attachment that carried forward into bonding, and higher maternal self-efficacy, suggesting situational advantages of agentic self-enhancement in early caregiving tasks.”

"Regarding global maladjustment, maternal vulnerable narcissism was found to predict child difficulties through maternal perception biases.

Regarding the quality of the parent-child relationship, antagonistic grandiosity co-occurred with reduced intimacy, admiration, and monitoring, alongside increased conflict and negative communication.

However, it did not drive changes over time at the population level …

Three cross-study consistencies stand out.

First, vulnerable narcissism is the more reliable correlate of adverse child outcomes across reporters and contexts, largely via perception-, scapegoating-, and attachment-based mechanisms.

Second, grandiose narcissism is facet-sensitive: antagonistic features track poorer relationship climate and parenting, whereas agentic/leadership features can coincide with more positive tactics or short-term maternal adjustment, helping explain mixed direct associations with child symptoms.

Third, pathways are mostly indirect, emphasizing the leverage points of parenting behaviors, parental cognitions, and children’s attachment security rather than strong direct effects on symptoms.

Contingencies include parent gender, with clearer direct risk linked to paternal grandiose traits in one retrospective study and father-specific overvaluation pathways in intergenerational narcissism”

LITERATURE

Orovou E, Jotautis V, Vousoura E, Koutelekos I, Rigas N, Sarantaki A. Impact of Parental Narcissistic Personality Disorder on Parent-Child Relationship Quality and Child Well-Being: A Systematic Review. Cureus. 2025 Dec 27;17(12):e100229. doi: 10.7759/cureus.100229. PMID: 41608003; PMCID: PMC12843898.

European Journal of Psychological Research Vol. 10 No. 3, 2023 ISSN 2057-4794 THE IMPACT OF PARENTING WITH NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER by Atikah Dwi Fauziyah, Irawati Damanik & Alvin Mahendra

Lyons, Minna, Gayle, Brewer, AnnaMaria Hartley, and Victoria Blinkhorn. 2023. “Never Learned to Love Properly”A Qualitative Study Exploring Romantic Relationship Experiences in Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents. Social Sciences 12159.

Mirror, Mirror on the WallImpact of Narcissistic Parenting on their Children by Chengze Li, Ng et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 2025 10th International Conference on Modern Management, Education and Social Sciences (MMET 2025), Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research 961,

Palumbo, Amy. (2023). Narcissistic Parenting and its Effects on Parenting Styles and Child Development. In BSU Honors Program Theses and Projects. Item 625. Available at

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