The Horror of the Good Looking Family

The most upsetting thing to me when attending a church is the family with good looking children, even teens, all sitting next to their parents behaving themselves, the boys dressed in khakis, button down shirts, and polished shoes, the girls in skirts to their knees, appropriate makeup, attractive haircuts. No fads, no slogans, no shaved heads. A family to be proud of. And a family to be horrified by.

In the 1950s through the 1970s the goal of child rearing was to have obedient children. Obedient children did well in school and grew up to do well in factories, office jobs, and the military. They also took lots of Valium and drank a lot. In fact they were deeply unhappy.

Evangelicals and fundamentalists have taken the side of society that is terrified of change: Our society is going to hell in a hand basket, just look at what is happening: sexual mores are changing, the family structure is changing. People don’t know right from wrong anymore.

So let’s take them back to (what we think was) the 1950s and line our children up in the church pew with their hair combed, and their clothes starched and ironed. Let’s make them look good on the outside. The problem with this is that it takes a lot of haranguing and disciplining to get children to line up and sit up straight and wear what they don’t want to wear to church. And Jesus had something to say about focusing on the outside versus the inside.

Kernberg said that narcissists are bruised and bleeding children inside a good looking shell. On the outside the narcissist looks good or looks tough. This is a cover for the pain on the inside.

Narcissists don’t have a reservoir of good memories to draw on. They have far fewer good memories than someone who has grown up and reached the developmental stages normally. It takes far more energy for the narcissist to remain happy than for someone who has had a good childhood with many happy memories. This child cannot depend on a mother who will create happy memories. This child has an absence of good memories, an emptiness and a desperation.

Many people are amazed that narcissists can come out of “good” families. The problem with “good” families is they often focus on “looking good” versus listening to real needs. Pre-teens need to be able to lock their bedroom doors, and be respected in the home.

This “good” family is often one that is rigid, just waiting to crack and fall apart. The children are not prepared to leave home and make their own decisions. They will gravitate to rigid careers or latch onto a mate that will dominate them and make their decisions for them. Or they will make an effort to duplicate exactly the family they grew up in.

Dan Allender says when preparing children and teens for the adult world, it looks messy to those on the outside. Your children wear ripped jeans to church, with half their head shaved, the other half bright pink. The children are constantly negotiating with their parents. The children make mistakes that have the potential to humiliate and scare the parents. But parents who have confidence in their children are prepared to let their children make some of their own decisions and be available to those children when they make mistakes to help them recover and learn from their mistakes like adults. These children will not fall flat on their faces when they leave home. They are used to making decisions and taking the consequences for them.