Narcissism and Adoption

In a recent comment, fellow adoptee and newbie blogger (welcome!) Mary Ann said she'd always wondered what role adoption played in parents with NPD.

Well, Mary Ann. I think adoption PLAYS INTO the hands of prospective a-parents with NPD. Maybe their efforts to find a narcissistic supply source have been thwarted elsewhere. Maybe their spouse won't cooperate or being a celebrity just isn't enough or maybe their "friends" have caught on and fled the scene. Maybe everybody with an ounce of sense has abandoned them.

But a child can't flee. It doesn't know better.

Mary Ann asked an important question.

Not just because we're trying to make sense of our lives but, it seems to me, that there's a lot of self-centeredness going on in adoptions today.

Just look at what some prospective a-parents and a-parents say, on the record, for all to hear. A stream of noxious justification and self-promotion about rescuing children and giving them a better life in the U.S. of A. A throwback to the days of Loring Brace's orphan trains and the reckless child placement practices of his making...when poor (as in no money) biological families were intentionally broken up in order to "save" the children. Today, it's orphan planes and a sense of entitlement to foreign babies often cloaked in the language of martrys.

Sure, there's TALK about the love and time and money spent on these abandoned children, but sometimes, the apparent lack of EMPATHY for the inner world of these children is troubling.

But back to Mary Ann's question. Narcissism and adoption.

Well, here goes.

Imagine a voracious beast of some sort. My favorite is the vampire. Send it a baby who grows into a child desperate to please and you've just fed the beast. The vampire will continue to feed off the child, stunting its growth, holding it back, making it impossible to leave the vampiric nest in a natural way. No, the teen or the young adult must take drastic action to escape. In my case, escaping to college 450 miles away. Then, because that wasn't far enough, took a job even further away.

This kind of adoptive parent does not want a child. It wants an audience. It wants attention. It does not want to love and raise the child. It wants to be loved. It wants to control, not parent.
Because a narcissist is incapable of being a parent. It can't be in tune with their child. It can't put their interests first.

As if being adopted wasn't hard enough.

I think we can't help asking: "How did I end up with her?" (or him) and "Which idiot is responsible for sticking me there?" and "What would my life have been like if they'd placed me with nice, caring people instead?" (better!!!) and "What would I think of adoption if I hadn't had such loser a-parents?"

But I don't think I answered the question. Not really. It just seems to me that quite a few of us ended up with at least one narcissistic (parasitic) parent and that there's still a disturbing number of self-centered a-parents still getting babies except, this time, they've wrapped their disfigured egos in fancy Martyr Cloaks.