UPDATED: Childhood Emotional Neglect vs. Emotionally Immature Parents vs. Narcissistic Parents: What’s the Difference?
UPDATED: When you start unpacking your childhood, it can be hard to put words to what you went through. The terms Emotional Neglect, Emotionally Immature Parents, and Narcissistic Abuse get thrown around a lot, and are sometimes used interchangeably.
While, these terms do overlap in some ways, there are important differences. Understanding them can help you name your experience more accurately, and take the right steps toward healing.
This post is intended to be an overview and place to begin, rather than an exhaustive description of each issue. I have listed additional resources for further exploration at the end of the post.
Childhood Emotional Neglect
Emotional Neglect is defined not by what happened in childhood, but rather by what was missing. Childhood trauma is often the result of an event (incarceration of a parent) or a behavior (physical abuse). Emotional Neglect is a form of childhood trauma defined by what was missing from your life. Specifically, consistent and nourishing emotional connection.
There are two types of emotional neglect. The first is unintentional. For example, one parent dies at a young age, and the other parent does not have the emotional bandwidth to manage their own grief and their child’s. Other causes include extreme poverty, racism, and severe mental illness.
Willful emotional neglect however is quite different. In this case willful means that a parent doesn’t want to put in the work to have a healthy relationship with their child.
Often this happens because parents have their own childhood trauma that they have not worked through, so they are avoiding the inevitable challenges of having any close relationship, even with their child.
This could also be generational. Parents who are Boomers or of the Silent Generation, may never be willing to speak about their own childhood trauma, or even understand it as such. Additionally, fathers of these generations likely grew up being taught that it was the mother’s job to do all of the emotional caretaking, and that such work was either beneath them, or simply not their concern.
Emotional neglect can also be the result of having emotionally immature parents or narcissistic parents, which we will get to a bit later in the post.
Regardless of the reason, these parents don’t want the pressure of taking any ownership for how their child feels in relationship with them.
Core experience
Your feelings were ignored, minimized, or you felt invisible. This likely occurred both in your relationship with your EN parent, and because of the way you were taught to contextualize life experiences.
Relating to the EN parent
Children who suffer from emotional neglect often don’t know how to act around their parents. Because when an emotionally neglectful parent sees a happy kid, they perceive that the child doesn’t need them, so they disconnect to do their own thing. So to the child, being happy means abandonment.
But if the child is unhappy, an EN parent cannot handle the pressure of being needed, so they make the child the problem for that neediness, which can result in being scapegoated. EN parents may say things like, “You have a problem with your anger, you should go to therapy”, or “You are making this into a bigger problem than it is.”
EN parents are simultaneously pushing you away and moving away from you. In short, they want their kids to be just fine regardless of what they do or don’t do. This results in children feeling invisible in their families, and who understand that they have to meet their own emotional needs, rather than relying on their parent.
Putting Experiences into Context
So much of what we absorb as children is based on how the adults around us respond to events. EN parents are not able to handle strong emotions, so when a genuinely sad event comes along, for example, they may not be able to feel the emotions that come along with it. A child who attends a funeral for a beloved grandparent and feels genuinely sad, will observe that their EN mom or dad is not feeling sad, indeed, they may be brushing it all off as not a big deal.
As a child in that situation, you perceive that the (very normal) grief that you feel after losing your grandparent must be wrong, because it does not match what you see in the environment around you.
What it looks like
You may have been fed, clothed, and cared for on the surface, but no one asked how you were feeling or helped you on an emotional level.
Impact
Emotionally Neglected children often grow into adults who have no faith in their own emotions, which can lead to a variety of challenges, including:
Obsessing over decisions or difficulty making decisions
Debilitating shame that something must be fundamentally wrong with you
Fear of the inner experience of emotions, for example, not wanting to feel anger because of the physical discomfort it causes
Profound loneliness and the feeling that it’s impossible for you to be seen and known, so trying to connect with others is useless
Unconscious self-abandonment
Creating problems to explain our deep emotions, rather than understanding them as normal parts of life
Anxiety and depression
Emotionally Immature Parents
Though not a clinical diagnosis, "emotionally immature parent" describes a caregiver who lacks emotional maturity, self-awareness, and empathy. Growing up with Emotionally Immature Parents can lead to feeling emotionally neglected, for slightly different reasons. While parents who willfully emotionally neglect do so because they do not want an emotional connection or to cope with others’ emotions at all, emotionally immature parents more likely neglect you because while they want a relationship with you quite badly, they want it only on their terms. For it to be pleasurable for them and for you to follow their rules. So if you don’t abide by their rules, you are rejected.
Core experience
Your parent lacked the emotional skills, flexibility, or empathy to handle the responsibility of parenting. Some of the hallmarks of emotionally immature parents include:
Fear of genuine, especially difficult emotions
Allergic to accountability, rarely apologize
Low personal insight, think of the skillset of a toddler (maybe this is why they are so often good with small children).
Inconsistent and unreliable, especially emotionally unreliable
Setting a reasonable boundary results in huge reactions and as a personal attack
Often adult children are frustrated with EIPs because they assume that their parents must have the skills to respect a boundary or apologize. But the reality is, whether from their own trauma, having their own emotions punished as kids, or simply never learning skills with feelings, EIPs genuinely cannot access emotional maturity.
A particularly difficult combination to grow up with is an emotionally neglectful father and emotionally immature mother. The parents who wants to connect with you cannot manage boundaries or limits, and the parent who can do some of the hard work of parenting is not willing to take any responsibility for your emotional wellbeing.
What it looks like
Parents may have been self-preoccupied, rigid, or unable to tolerate stress.
Conversations may have felt shallow or one-sided.
They were great at play and the happy times, but disappeared or were unwilling to cope with difficult issues, or failed to provide consistent emotional safety
Your role in the family may have been to manage their feelings rather than have your own.
EIPs often violate boundaries and invade privacy
Impact
You may feel like you grew up faster than you should have, becoming the “responsible one,” the “peacekeeper,” or the “invisible child.” Adult children frequently struggle with people-pleasing, self-doubt, caretaker tendencies, and low emotional self-worth. In addition, there is often a deep sense of confusion as your parent may not have been cruel, but they weren’t capable of being emotionally reliable.
Narcissistic Parents
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a diagnosable mental health condition marked by grandiosity, entitlement, and a pervasive need for special treatment; it often severely disrupts the emotional safety of a child’s environment. While a diagnosis of NPD is relatively rare, many children will see narcissistic traits in their parents who do not carry the diagnosis.
Core experience
Your parent’s needs, image, and control came before everything else. Parents use harsh, coercive control and manipulation that is often physically abusive.
What it looks like
Love felt conditional. You were valued for how you reflected on them, not for who you were.
They might have been critical, controlling, or manipulative.
Your achievements could have been stolen, minimized, or used as proof of their success.
Impact
In addition to the impacts described from Emotional Neglect and Emotionally Immature Parents, Narcissistic abuse often leads to a deep sense of feeling lost, a lost sense of reality, Stockholm syndrome, self harm, self abuse, and dissociation.
Additionally, while parents who are emotionally neglectful or emotionally immature typically have some capacity to respond to boundaries and conversation, Narcissistic parents do not recognize feedback, often don’t get diagnosed or seek therapy, and routinely turn blame on you.
Why Naming It Matters
Putting language to your childhood isn’t about blaming but about it’s about clarity. When you can recognize whether what you lived through was neglect, immaturity, or narcissism, you can start choosing the healing tools that fit best. All three experiences usually require re-learning to trust your emotions, setting boundaries with parents and releasing any caretaking roles in the family.
No matter what you experienced, always remember it wasn’t your fault, and it’s never too late to start healing.
Additional Resources
Patrick Tehan on YouTube for general childhood trauma
Connected Therapy on IG for emotional neglect/EI Parents
Healing Emotional Neglect on IG
Book: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Linda C. Gibson
Heidi Priebe on Youtube on Emotional Neglect
Breaking Free from Willful Emotional Neglect on YouTube
Jess Miller at Mind Your Boundaries
Therapy in a Nutshell and Jess Miller on Emotionally Immature Parents
Dr. Ramani on YouTube on the difference between EI parents and narcissistic parents. Dr. Ramani also has loads of good videos on NPD.