Among the clients of psychological counseling, it is not uncommon for them to not want to get married or have children, some people are willing to marry but refuse to have children, and some people do not even want to get married.
Today, I would like to talk about this situation, because most of the clients who encounter similar situations in psychological counseling are female clients, so the article refers to "them".
They had a conviction very early on: I will not have children in the future. They feel very bad about their family of origin, and they have no sense of security and belonging to their home. They don't want to start a family of their own, they don't want to have a child to repeat the pain of their early years.
Whether it is from biological genetic transmission or cultural requirements, marriage and childbirth have sufficient reasons and pressures, so it must be strong negative emotions, such as fear or anger, that make them have such a choice.
In my counseling practice, I have found that compared to family trauma such as absent parents and divorced parentsChildren who grow up in controlling and abusive families don't want to get married and have children when they grow up。These are narcissistic abusive parents who give their children a nightmarish childhood.
I have described the characteristics of narcissistic abuse of mothers in the article "20 Heartbreaking Characteristics of a Manipulative Mother", and you can take a look at it if you are interested. The following passage also very accurately describes the way these parents treat their children:
They take it for granted that their children live to please them. No wonder they are self-centered, bossy, possessive, and manipulative.
On the one hand, they want their golden boy and girl to be angelically perfect in every way to increase the glory of their success. On the other hand, they will be jealous of their children's abilities and threatened by their independence, so much so that they will drain their children's vitality and cut off their wings in bad ways, including derogatory language, comparisons, ridicule, and gaslighting manipulation to force the child to conform and ensure the relationship (control).
They manipulate and pour cold water on them for fun. They need to win at everything and show off as much as they can. Without enough praise and attention, they fall into an existential crisis, feeling that life has lost its meaning and hating whoever steals the limelight.
Their external image is always a hypocritical and likable appearance (as if everyone cares about him). Behind closed doors, the ruthless ** person is furious at home.
Any attempt to communicate or negotiate with them will be seen as a sign of defiance of their self-righteous authority. Engage in baseless childish self-defense by distorting your intentions just to make yourself comfortable. You have to walk on thin ice around them. Otherwise, if you dare to do something "wrong", you should be punished with the severest punishment.
They do not hesitate to say hurtful things and belittle and humiliate the inferior from their own superficial point of view in order to show their unbearable superiority.
They can be extremely aggressive, taking up the entire shared space at will, disrespecting boundaries.
They don't listen. They don't apologize. They don't Xi. They won't change. Never expect them to empathize or understand. Basically, they don't care. They are absolutely adept at ignoring needs and denying feelings other than themselves.
The father in the recent hit movie "Wading the Sea of Wrath", Jin Meteorite, is a father with a narcissistic and abusive trait. He completely neglects his children emotionally and never knows what the children really need. After the death of his daughter, on the surface, he went to revenge for the child, but the truth was just to maintain the dignity of the father. His daughter, Lina Jin, was severely lacking in love, was lonely and depressed for a long time, and was tormented by a sadistic relationship, eventually committing suicide.
So, what are the psychological mechanisms that make people who grow up in abusive families refuse to marry and have children?Let's take a look at them one by one.
1. Strong resistance.
Narcissistic parents are especially face-loving. If the children don't get married and give birth, they feel that they have lost their faces. As a result, parents will do everything in their power to force their children to do so.
Once again, adult children feel that their parents don't really think about them, only for themselves. Because parents don't care about the reasons why their children don't want to get married and have children, they just blindly persecute them.
They no longer want to repeat the life of being controlled by their parents in the past, so they began a strong resistance when it comes to getting married and having children. On the one hand, they are indeed not ready to marry and have children, and on the other hand, they can finally rebel and reject their parents, which gives them a kind of joy of rebirth.
Some people also want to get married and have children deep down, but they are especially angry when they think that their parents will be happy about it. By not marrying and not having children, they reverse their relationship with their parents: in this case, it is the parents who ask for them, not the other way around.
2. Fear of recreating the psychological trauma of early life.
Becoming a parent subconsciously awakens the psychological trauma of early life. Some women with postpartum depression, in addition to the cause of hormonal changes, are also related to the infantile helplessness and dependence aroused after becoming a mother. In order not to re-experience these pains for yourself, not getting married and having children is the safest option.
If they get married and have children, they may be swayed by anxiety and fear, including not being able to be intimate with their children after giving birth, or being overly strained and careful in their parenting. They have no confidence in their ability to become parents for fear of delaying their children.
Deep down, they are full of fear and anxiety about their children, and this fear is more than the fear of their parents.
3. An infinite desire for freedom and autonomy.
They finally broke away from the suffocating family of origin and fully enjoyed the freedom of independence. They don't want another family, another child to tie them down.
They have a suffocating, very helpless ego within them, which is what they experience in their early years when dealing with their parents who are controlling, neglecting, and abusive. Therefore, they always want to have a free relationship to avoid the suffocation and helplessness in their hearts.
Stable relationships can gradually leave them feeling powerless, empty and depressed. Some people choose open relationships, and this state of having more choice will make them more energetic and feel more loved and needed.
Being away from home is a deepest desire in their hearts. In middle and high school, they want to go to school as far away from homeWhen they become adults, they will find ways to study abroad and settle abroad. Only when they are sufficiently away from their families of origin will they feel safe and free.
The average person will long to take root and survive and thrive somewhere;Their desire is to wander, to live in different places at different times, to live a free and easy life.
4. Fear of parent-child attachment.
Their early experiences of parent-child relationships are marked by fear, hostility, invasiveness, and rejection. Therefore, in front of their parents, in their families of origin, what they feel is not relaxation and security, but tension and fear.
They are rarely liked by their parents as children. Parents will only be happy if they do what they do to their parents' satisfaction, otherwise, it will be all kinds of emotional abuse and moral blame.
They have suffered from abandonment, verbal abuse, and moral kidnapping, and have lived in a home with high emotional conditions for a long time, with little safety and comfort.
They go home out of responsibility, but they don't want to go home in their hearts. Interestingly, their parents didn't know this, and in their parents' imagination, the children loved the family very much. Therefore, these parents have neglected their children emotionally for a long time, and children rarely have the courage to show their true emotions to their parents.
When they think of having an intimate attachment relationship with a child and staying with them for a long time, they feel not warmth and intimacy, but fear and strangeness. They have not experienced a comfortable parent-child relationship, and they do not believe in forming an intimate attachment relationship with their children.
5. I don't want to identify with my parents.
Becoming a parent means identifying with one's own parents, and this identification is more likely to arise in a relationship based on love.
A child who is deeply loved by their parents, after becoming independent**, will form their own family, and by becoming parents, they maintain a sense of psychological identity with their parents.
If the parent-child relationship is primarily based on hate, then this hatred can hinder the occurrence of identity. After leaving their parents to become independent**, by not becoming parents, they are psychologically far away from their parents.
Deep down, one or both of their parents are the ones they hate the most, and this disgust prevents them from identifying with their parents.
6. An expression of hate.
A person who is full of love for their parents will give birth to children as an adult and give them as a gift to their parents. Because this is passing on the family lineage, so that the genes of the parents can be passed on.
Not having children is a punishment for parents, and letting parents "cut off their children and grandchildren" is also the strongest revenge on parents on a symbolic level.
By not getting married and having children, you are also expressing to your parents: You used to hurt me so much, and now, you see it, right?
But sadly, narcissistic parents never seem to see their children's pain and needs, they only see that their own demands are not met and are forced again.
In summary, children who grow up in an emotionally controlled and abusive family may not want to get married and have children when they grow up.
Maybe at a certain age, they suddenly change their minds. This may mean that the psychological trauma of the early years of the family and its subsequent effects have been largely diminished.
They seem to have stepped out of the shadow of their original family, let go of their resentment towards their parents, and reconciled with their painful childhood. They are even willing to have a certain degree of identity and loving connection with their parents by having children.
From the parents' point of view, when they can truly understand and respect their children's inner desires and unconditionally support their children's choices, then the children's feelings of resistance and resentment will be greatly reduced, and their inner desire to marry and have children will be more aware of them.
Others may be forced by parental or external pressure to marry and have children, they may experience depression, anxiety, physical and mental symptoms, estrangement from their children or excessive exertion, lack of confidence in parenting, and emotional breakdowns from time to time. It is not until they overcome the psychological trauma of their early years that they will have a better parent-child relationship and inner state.