Emotional Incest, Part 3: Daddy’s Little Princess and Mommy’s Big Boy

Last updated on: September 16, 2013 at 9:44 am by Libby Anne

Emotional Incest, Part 3: Daddy’s Little Princess and Mommy’s Big Boy 2013-09-16T09:44:12-04:00 Libby Anne

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

In Part 1 I looked at the definition of emotional incest and in Part 2 I looked at how integral father/daughter emotional incest is to the Christian Patriarchy movement. I want to take a moment here to point out some other ways emotional incest can play out, both in families not involved with the Christian Patriarchy movement and between mothers and sons in families in the Christian Patriarchy movement.

First, this from Wikipedia:

Jungian analyst and author Marion Woodman describes psychic incest as “unboundaried bonding” in which the parent or parents use the child as a mirror to support their needs, rather than mirroring the child in support of the child’s emotional development.

Emotional incest can happen in any family. It can happen to married parents and to single parents. At the most basic level, it happens when a parent’s emotional needs are not being met and the parent responds by looking to the child to fulfill those needs. It is usually either father/daughter or mother/son.

There’s the Daddy’s Little Princess effect:

Consider a simple family of Father, Mother and Daughter. It is right and wonderful that parents love their Daughter – as a daughter. If a parent needs a substitute for a partner, chaos and suffering soon follow.

If Father loves his daughter as a substitute for loving a partner, few daughters can resist his love. If Daughter feels that Mother does not appreciate Father, Daughter may try to love Father in the way that Mother seems to withhold. Mother may feel that Father and Daughter betrayed her; and withdraw.

Father’s marriage to Mother may be the first sacrifice. An entangled Daughter may ignore potential partners – except substitutes for Father. The family may not confront this issue unless Daughter becomes depressed or suicidal.

And there’s the Mommy’s Little Prince effect:

Our story begins with a pregnant mother. While pregnant, Mother likely enjoyed her femininity and the attention of her family. When Baby is born, attention often shifts from Mother to Baby. Mother may feel abandoned, perhaps showing postpartum depression. Many mothers regain family attention, approval and respect, by becoming a Super-Mom.

The husband of a Super-Mom may feel rejected, particularly if he depends upon his wife to provide meaning for his life. He may feel that a a boy baby is a rival. He may withdraw from his wife’s requests for intimacy, support or responsibility. He may become depressed and/or have intimate affairs.

A Super-Mom sees her Son as special. Mother may dream that Son will make a special contribution to the world that Mother cannot or will not make. Mother’s expectations help balance her emptiness. For Mother to feel special, Son has to be very special – or risk losing Mother’s love.

For more, see here and here. See also an extremely creepy article by now-discredited author and speaker Hugo Schwyzer. Schwyzer’s sketchy relationship with women, which includes sleeping with his students and attempting to murder one of his girlfriends, makes his detailed description of his tendency toward emotional incest with his small daughter stomach-turning to read.

Families that are dysfunctional, abusive, troubled, and broken are especially prone to emotional incest. There’s the single mother (or abused wife) who ends up seeking to find in one of her children the emotional fulfillment she would normally find in a spouse, for example. Here’s a quote from one of the comments to illustrate:

My parents divorced when I was a teenager. I pretty soon had to take over house repair stuff, which wasn’t an issue. But pretty soon my mother looked to me for company, and got upset whenever I went out. That wasn’t healthy for either of us.

This can happen with father/daughter relationships too:

In the case of father-daughter emotional incest, disenfranchised fathers compensate by becoming emotionally over involved with their daughters. The emotional cost of father-daughter emotional incest includes stress and anxiety disorders, mental and physical illness, identity disorders and underdeveloped and confused sense of identity and depression.

It should be surprising that emotional incest should correlate with the amount of disfunction in a family. I suspect it also correlates with lack of strong outside support networks. If a parent’s emotional needs are already being met, after all, that parent is less likely to turn to the child to meet those needs.

Mothers and Sons in Christian Patriarchy

I want to finish by turning briefly to mother/son emotional incest in families involved in the Christian Patriarchy movement. After I started this series, focusing especially on father/daughter emotional incest in the Christian Patriarchy movement, blogger Sierra wrote a post about mothers and sons that I found fascinating:

In the last years of my fundamentalist sojourn, as I was about to turn eighteen and exert what independence I could, a thought occurred to me.

Women in Christian patriarchy frequently transmute their desires for equal partnership and respect from their husbands into an emotionally incestuous relationship with their sons.

… It existed with every mother and son I knew. Even that early, I had figured out that when you reduce the marital relationship into a master-subordinate equation, the affection, respect and mutual enjoyment get pushed out somewhere else.

…

The great thing about sons, in fundamentalist culture, is that you don’t have to obey them. My church retained the parental right to rule over the patriarchal one, so grown men could be compelled to “honor” their mothers by mostly doing what they asked. So when Sven’s mother wanted someone to share her interests – to watch movies with her, to go on trips, to have lighthearted discussions – she turned to her son.

I’m not surprised by the dynamic Sierra describes. Because most of the families I knew growing up in a family influenced by the Christian Patriarchy movement had older daughters and younger sons, I didn’t notice this dynamic. I would imagine, though, that it can also occur mother/daughter in these families as well, especially if the mother in question leads a fairly sheltered existence without a strong network of friends. Really, the potential that a mother in the movement might rely on her children for emotional fulfillment she is not finding elsewhere is not surprising.

Tomorrow I will write about some of the problems that flow from emotional incest.

Family

daughters

emotional abuse

Previous Post

April 3, 2012

Atheist Parenting: Call-Out for Tips and Anecdotes

Next Post

April 4, 2012 Documentaries: Jesus Camp

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Atheism Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism Family Feminism Homeschool Meta Parenting Patriarchy Politics Purity Quiverfull Social Justice Uncategorized Worthwhile reads

Select a Month February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

In the Parable of the Sower, what does the seed represent?

Select your answer to see how you score.

The Word of God The Law Judgment Money