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When parents rely heavily on their children for emotional support, those children may face a higher risk of depression in adulthood. A recent study published in Personality and Individual Differences found that this blurred emotional boundary bridges the gap between perceived parental narcissism and later depressive symptoms in adult children across American and Turkish cultures.
Psychologists distinguish between grandiose narcissism, which involves outward arrogance, and vulnerable narcissism, a trait characterized by deep insecurity and a constant need for validation. Adults exhibiting high levels of vulnerable narcissism often struggle with interpersonal relationships, frequently experiencing attachment anxiety and romantic dissatisfaction. When these individuals become parents, their relationship difficulties may lead them to seek emotional support from their children rather than from adult partners. Elif Cimsir of Anadolu University in Turkey and Ashley Hansen-Brown of Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts wanted to understand how this specific parental dynamic affects children as they grow into adulthood.
The researchers focused on a relational pattern called parent-child emotional enmeshment. This phenomenon occurs when a parent crosses developmental boundaries, relying on a child for comfort, conflict resolution, or companionship typically expected from a romantic partner. Emotional enmeshment differs from instrumental parentification, which involves assigning a child physical responsibilities like household chores or caring for younger siblings. Instead, emotional enmeshment places a heavy psychological burden on the child, prioritizing the parent’s emotional needs over the child’s autonomy and social development.
Cimsir and Hansen-Brown suspected this boundary violation might explain why children of narcissistic parents frequently report higher rates of anxiety and depression in adulthood. The researchers also wanted to investigate whether cultural backgrounds alter this relational pathway. They selected participants from the United States, a society that heavily prioritizes individuality and independence, alongside participants from Turkey, a society with a collectivistic orientation that emphasizes family cohesion. The researchers theorized that cultural expectations surrounding family loyalty might change how emotional enmeshment is experienced or reported by young adults.
To test their ideas, the researchers recruited 513 university students, including 266 from the United States and 247 from Turkey. The participants completed a series of online questionnaires during the 2023 to 2024 academic year in exchange for course credit. The American sample consisted largely of female students with an average age of 19, while the Turkish sample was similarly predominantly female with an average age of 20. Participants were asked to focus on one specific parent, either their mother or their father, as they completed the assessments.
The students filled out three distinct psychological surveys to assess their past and present experiences. First, they completed a widely used inventory measuring their current symptoms of depression, rating how they felt over the previous two weeks. Next, they evaluated their chosen parent using a modified psychological scale designed to measure hypersensitive narcissism, rating statements such as whether the parent’s feelings were easily hurt by slight remarks. Finally, the students completed a questionnaire measuring their experiences of emotional enmeshment before the age of 16, responding to items about acting as a surrogate spouse or feeling they could not fully experience childhood.
Before comparing the two cultural groups, the researchers verified that their primary measurement tool for emotional enmeshment functioned properly for the American participants. The enmeshment scale was originally developed in Turkey, but statistical tests confirmed it reliably measured the exact same concepts in the United States. Following this confirmation, the researchers analyzed the relationships among the three main variables and found that perceived parental vulnerable narcissism was positively associated with emotional enmeshment. In turn, higher levels of childhood emotional enmeshment were linked to increased depressive symptoms in the adult children.
The statistical model indicated that emotional enmeshment served as a connecting mechanism between how participants viewed their parents’ narcissistic traits and their own current levels of depression. This indirect pathway was present even when accounting for the participants’ age and gender. The researchers observed that while there was also a direct statistical link between parental narcissism and adult depression in the full sample, emotional enmeshment accounted for a substantial portion of that association.
When the researchers separated the data by country, they found that the indirect pathway through emotional enmeshment was present in both the American and Turkish samples, and none of the structural paths differed significantly between the two groups. The cultural background did not significantly change how perceived parental narcissism, emotional enmeshment, and depressive symptoms were related to one another. The researchers also conducted exploratory analyses to see if the gender of the chosen parent or the gender of the child altered the results. They found that the relationships among the variables remained consistent regardless of whether a daughter was rating a mother, a son was rating a father, or any other gender combination.
However, the researchers did find an unexpected difference in the overall rates of emotional enmeshment between the two countries. The researchers initially hypothesized that Turkish students would report higher levels of enmeshment due to societal norms encouraging deep family interdependence. Instead, the American participants reported higher average levels of parent-child emotional enmeshment than their Turkish counterparts. The researchers proposed that in individualistic societies, parents might rely more heavily on their children for emotional support, whereas collectivistic cultures might normalize emotional closeness in a way that prevents it from being perceived as a boundary violation.
The study relies on a single snapshot in time, which means the data cannot definitively prove that a parent’s personality causes a child’s depression. Because the researchers used self-report measures, the results reflect the adult children’s retrospective perceptions of their parents rather than an objective clinical diagnosis of parental narcissism. The sample consisted exclusively of university students enrolled in psychology and counseling programs, which may not represent the broader population. Finally, participants had to recall events from their childhood up to age 16, introducing the possibility that their current depressive symptoms influenced how they remembered their past family dynamics.
Future research tracking families over multiple years could help clarify the exact sequence of how parental personality traits influence child development. Incorporating direct evaluations of parents, alongside reports from the children, would also provide a more complete picture of these family dynamics. Exploring these relational pathways in different age groups and outside of university settings could reveal how emotional enmeshment operates across a wider spectrum of society.
The study, “Parental vulnerable narcissism and depression: Emotional enmeshment as a cross-cultural mediating mechanism,” was authored by Elif Cimsir and Ashley Hansen-Brown.