I know of a narcissist who once told me she wanted to have a child to have an heir for her money because she didn't want some of her family members to get her money.
She's misplacing or transferring all of her unresolved repressed hatred into some of her aunts and cousins. That's sad to have a child to take revenge on her aunts and cousins.
Some of her aunts and mother, whom she hates so much never had access to enlightened information when they were young to help them break the vicious circle. She on the other hand has been introduced to enlightened information and still can't break free from the chains of compulsion repetition. She is taking the same footsteps as the people she judges and hates so much.
As long as people's childhood repression goes unresolved they will be driven by the repressed emotions of the child they once were into the state of repetition compulsion sooner or later in one form or another. There is no escape.
The easiest way to guarantee to always have a scapegoat or a poison container at your disposal to constantly use to alleviate your unresolved childhood repression is to give birth to them.
The narcissistic parent, by contrast, sees their child as an extension of their own ego and as their “property.” The child is a reflection of the parent and belongs to the parent. Either the child is seen by this parent as conferring some advantage in life, or the child is seen as a burden and a nuisance; often both.
The child of extreme narcissists is never seen for who he or she is, and is never appreciated just for him or herself. The extremely narcissistic parent can only enjoy and exploit their child for what the child does for them or how the child makes them look to others.
The “love” the extreme narcissist gives to their child is a pseudo-love that’s shallow and conditional and doesn’t come close to meeting the child’s real needs. As a result, the child grows up with an empty space inside them that was supposed to have been filled with parental love and validation.
As they’re growing up, the child of the extreme narcissist can go in one of two directions. They can channel their low self-esteem and need for love and approval into people-pleasing, trying to get others to accept and validate them. Or, they can compensate for their deep feelings of inadequacy by inflating their fragile ego and becoming grandiose. They can become as narcissistic as their parent was.
The children who grow up to be people-pleasers seem, on the surface, to struggle a lot more in their lives, as they look to others to make them feel good about themselves. They are insecure and they go to great lengths to obtain approval from those around them. They focus on making other people happy, rather than on taking care of themselves.
The children who grow up to be narcissists might achieve some measure of success, in that their inflated self-worth can lead them to attain certain goals, but they can never be truly happy. The emptiness within them will never be filled by following in their narcissistic parent’s footsteps. They will never have real love in their lives and all their accomplishments will ultimately feel meaningless.
The paradox is that the children who grow up to be narcissists don’t see that they have a problem. Their inflated ego denies the deep wound within them. They’re unable to recognize the empty hole where self-love should be, so they can’t conceive of real ways to fill this void. They’re doomed to remain narcissists, pursuing external gratification and seeing others merely as a source of this gratification or an obstacle to it.
The children who grow up to be people-pleasers, on the other hand, have the capacity for insight into their own behavior. They’re able to look at their choices and take responsibility for their behaviors. These people-pleasers can use counseling or therapy to build their self-esteem and fill that emptiness within them. They can learn to love themselves and receive love from others, without having to earn it through pleasing.
The child of the extreme narcissist who grows up to be a narcissist themselves is doomed, in the same way as their parent is, to a life of empty, exploitative relationships and the compulsive pursuit of external solutions – money, fame, power, influence – for their real inner needs for closeness, happiness, and meaning.
The child of a narcissist who grows up to be a narcissist themselves might look like they’re doing better, but they’ll never live a good life. The child of the narcissist who grows up to be a people-pleaser is the much luckier one, as they have a real chance to change and to live a full and satisfying life with real love and real meaning."
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https://marciasirotamd.com/
