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'The Interview': Dr. Lindsay Gibson on What We Owe Our 'Emotionally Immature' Parents
Sat, 22 Mar 2025
The clinical psychologist explains the foundations of egocentric parental behavior, the impact it has on their children and the freedom of saying “no.”Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: How do parents affect our emotional development?
From the New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. There's a poem by Philip Larkin called This Be the Verse, and it's been buzzing around in the back of my mind the entire time I've been working on today's interview. The poem starts like this, though literary fans will know I'm swapping in a clean word for a foul one. They mess you up, your mom and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had and add some extra just for you. That rings true for me, and I bet I'm not alone. But what do we do with that knowledge? For help answering that question, a lot of people have turned to the work of clinical psychologist Lindsay C. Gibson.
Her book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, has been a slow-burning bestseller with over a million copies sold since it was published in 2015. It's also a viral presence on social media where it fits in with the larger trend of children reconsidering their relationships with their parents or even if they want to have a relationship with them at all.
So I had lots to ask Dr. Gibson, and some skepticism to bring her to. We talked about what emotional immaturity looks like in a parent, how much parents really shape the adults we become, whether we owe problematic parents compassion, and a bunch of other very easy topics. Parents, oi. Here's my conversation with Lindsay C. Gibson. Hi, Lindsay. How are you?
Chapter 2: What are the characteristics of emotionally immature parents?
Hi, David. I'm doing great.
There are so many things I want to talk to you about. Also, maybe I'll squeeze in a little attempt at getting free therapy from you.
That's what I'm here for.
You know, the broad definition of emotionally immature parents are parents who refuse to validate their children's feelings and intuitions. They might be reactive, lacking in empathy or awareness. Can you... Maybe give me a couple sort of specific examples of emotionally immature behaviors from parents.
Sure. The biggest one is the egocentrism. If you just imagine that a person starts and ends all their consideration with what's best for them or how they see things, that's egocentrism. And, you know, David, I just started watching The Sopranos for the first time. I'm like the only person in America that had not watched The Sopranos. You're in for a treat.
Yeah, well, I'm on season five now, so I'm, yeah. But if you listen to the dialogue, they completely nailed it. Because everything always comes back the same. to the viewpoint of the person who is the emotionally immature character. It's always all about them. Another one is the lack of empathy. The parent just doesn't get it.
They say, why are you so upset about this, or stop it, or this is not a big deal. They cannot enter into the reality of their child's emotional experience. It just doesn't make sense to them. Maybe it's the teenager who wants to talk to their parent about their girlfriend or boyfriend. And then the parent says, oh, tell me about it. That reminds me of your father.
Let me tell you what he did yesterday. And suddenly, you know, we're back talking about the emotionally immature person's issues with no sense of, you know, sticking to the subject of the other person.
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Chapter 3: How can we identify emotional immaturity in our parents?
Of course, as any parent knows, those characteristics show up even among the best parents sometimes. How do people distinguish between normal, flawed parental behavior and behavior that's detrimental enough to sort of rise to the label of emotionally immature? Yeah. Like, where's the line? It's not a clinical diagnosis, so where's the line?
Right, right. Where's the line? Okay. If you think of emotional maturity and immaturity as being on a continuum, all of us have a spot that we tend to hang out on that continuum. It doesn't mean that we stay there no matter what. For instance, like, if you're tired or you're sick or you're stressed...
I can guarantee that you are not going to be as emotionally mature as you could when you're rested and well and not stressed. I mean, that's just what happens. We all slide down the scale when we have those kinds of stresses.
However, if you're in one of these other compromised states, you may not be at your finest moment and you may do some things that look immature, but it's going to bother you. You're not going to feel okay about what you did. In fact, you're going to think about what you did. The emotionally immature person, it's like, you know, that was in the past. That was then, this is now.
Why are you wallowing in it and why are you still upset? the more emotionally mature person would totally get why you're still upset because they have empathy and because they're self-aware emotionally. They know that you don't get over things just because time passes.
So they're going to come back and they're going to do something that indicates that they have felt for the other person's experience.
My hunch, and you tell me if I'm wrong, is that people are generally arriving at the conclusion that their parents were emotionally immature in their adulthood. I think it's sort of like a hindsight situation. If that's true and the adults are feeling, you know, a lack of fulfillment or unhappiness, how do they know that those feelings are the result of
their parents' behaviors and not the result of any number of other factors that might be causing them to feel the way they do in the current moment.
Yeah, yeah, no, that's a really, that's a great question. I can just tell you what tends to happen in therapy is that the person comes in and they have some immediate issue, right? Maybe they're having a problem in their relationship or their work. Maybe they just had a panic attack. They have no idea what's going on. And usually, first few sessions, you don't necessarily hear about the parent.
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Chapter 4: How do adult children cope with emotionally immature parents?
But isn't labeling someone's parents emotionally immature also a kind of pathologizing?
I think you could argue that. There's no way of getting around that you're boiling down this person that they love into a set of traits, and it calls them a name. It's pejorative. But when you say emotionally immature, it's not from the diagnostic manual. And although, yeah, it is a way of categorizing them, but it has a, to me anyway, it has a more explanatory kind of tone to it.
It doesn't, if you say your father is narcissistic, I get an immediate caricature of a narcissist. If I say, your father sounds like he may be emotionally immature, I don't know, there's a little bit of grace in that. But I can tell you, David, that a lot of people have a lot of problem when they first hear that idea about their parent.
I've had people come in because of the book that once we get into the therapy part of it, they begin to hedge and balk at calling their parent that because they're just so accustomed to giving their parents the benefit of the doubt.
I also am curious about the idea of whether self-identifying as the child of an emotionally immature parent might lead to feelings of victimhood. Is there any risk in self-identifying as a child of emotionally immature parents and then feeling disempowered or a lack of agency in your own life and in how you manage your emotions?
Yeah, I think it's exactly the opposite. I think it really increases a person's sense of agency. Because what's really disempowering to them is the idea that I've been trying to interact with my parent using all the communication skills I know, using all the tact or the empathy that I know, and it doesn't go anywhere and we end up in a fight. So they feel...
The whole basis of a relationship with an emotionally immature person is that you often feel disempowered because they can't give either you or them the room to have you be understood. And when you realize that the reason that they're not listening, the reason that they don't seem to be responding to you is not because... you have poor communication skills, it's because they can't stand it.
They can't bear to be even mildly criticized. They don't have the emotional wherewithal to deal with that. And when you realize that, it's like, oh, this is not about my lack of skill or the fact that I get nervous around my parents. That's not the deal. And if I understand what's happening, I can change my behavior or I can change my responses because I understand what they're doing.
Back to the Sopranos. I mean, those guys were like masters of this. You complain to them about something, and the next thing you know, they're telling you that you're a crybaby victim, and they didn't do anything to you, and you're being unfair, et cetera, et cetera.
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Chapter 5: When should estrangement from parents be considered?
always exhausting, it's always frustrating, and you never feel like you're doing enough. This woman that I'm thinking about, she was developing stress-related physical symptoms. It was like, okay, let's talk about the effect on your health. So, then you may bring up to the person, do you want to keep visiting them? Do you want to keep going over there?
And lots of times, that's the first time that thought's ever crossed their mind.
Right, they didn't realize it was a possibility.
No, they really didn't. And so when they begin to get that idea, it begins to expose this whole arrangement that is implicit in the relationship, which is the parent gets to do whatever the heck they want, and that adult child is supposed to go along with it, or they're being a bad child. There's a moral obligation there.
That is not only implied, but explicitly stated that if I have a need, you should be there because you're my kid. I'm trying to get them to feel the cost of it to them, which oftentimes they have completely tuned out because they don't want to be a bad person.
And the book had the COVID era boost, but it continues to be popular, particularly on social media. What might the book's ongoing popularity say about the culture now?
Big topic. I think the book's ongoing popularity has been due to the fact that it said something about the cultural stereotype that we've had about parents for eons. Yeah. that all parents love their children. All parents only want the best for their children. All parents put their children first. Children can depend on their parents to be there for them when no one else is.
And I think people's actual experience many times with their parents, but with anybody in their life, is that these experiences stereotypes and these tropes don't match up with their emotional experience. And when there's, unfortunately, when there's a mismatch between a stereotype and what you're feeling inside,
Our typical response is to feel like we're off, that there's something that we're missing, that we're not doing right. Because how could I be having this feeling toward my parent when I know that they only want the best for me? Or I know, quote unquote, they really love me and they end up blaming themselves.
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Chapter 6: Why is Dr. Gibson's book popular in today's culture?
I think somebody who's more developed and more compassionate would probably figure out a way to have a relationship that isn't so distant. How do we think of the idea of compassion in that kind of example?
Yeah, for emotionally immature people, your compassion will be weaponized because their egocentrism makes them determined to be the innocent party, for them to be the victim, and for you to put aside your needs in order to meet theirs. That's the deal.
The emotionally immature person will always frame a situation that you are not being sympathetic enough, compassionate enough, seeing it from their point of view, being sensitive enough. So, when I'm working with people who've been raised by people like this, I am always very careful
about pushing for any kind of compassion, forgiveness, any of those things that say, well, even though you have treated me badly, even though you have invalidated me and made me feel bad about myself, even though you have tried to control me and manipulate my emotions, I'm going to be empathic and feel for you. I don't think that's a moral high ground.
Now, I know that there was a period in sort of the psychotherapy world where I think it was mostly dealing with narcissists. This is years and years ago. You were kind of supposed to have compassion for what the narcissism was about, that it was a reaction to poor sense of self, tremendous shame.
And if you could understand that, you could sort of reframe that to yourself so that you didn't get defensive and so you could manage them better. But my goodness, it's like, is that really what you want to be spending your energy on? So when somebody expects that we should have compassion for them,
I don't support that with people because I think it's not good for them to continue to frame it that way. You don't have to hate and revile the person. I mean, I certainly agree with that. But I'm after neutrality. I mean, after getting along in the best way you can with a difficult person, if that's what you want to do.
But to expect the person then to go into that next step of compassion and forgiveness, I don't feel in a position to make the judgment that that's what a person should do.
Do children owe parents anything in terms of relationship?
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