It's a sad thought, but we really can't blame our mothers for how they are.  We can, to a point, but at it's core, it's really not their faults.

Mental illness coupled with being abused by their own mothers is what makes our mothers special.  And not just abuse by their mothers, but their fathers (who support the mother's behavior) and their brothers and sisters, too.  They all abuse each other.  Their mothers see to that.

In a maternal narcissistic family, you have the mom who's abusive to the children and the husband.  The husband was also raised by a narcissist, so therefore he was taught to bow down to the abusive woman (as he probably saw his father do) and let her do what she wanted.  Why?  Well, a little word called "codependency".  Codependency means that your father cannot find self-worth without your mother. 


Your mom, the narc, will seek out a codependent spouse because she can get away with anything she wants.  That's what she was taught.  This choice is usually subconscious and not something she thinks about.  She just will gravitate towards that type of relationship. 

Wikipedia states:

Codependents can provide the narcissist with an obedient and attentive audience — the perfect backdrop.  Among the reciprocally interlocking interactions of the pair are the narcissist's overpowering need to feel important and special, and the co-dependent's strong need to help others feel that way.

Now the narc and the co-narc (which is what they are sometimes called) have kids together, usually more than one, but not always.  When there is one child, you become both the golden child AND the scapegoat.  When you are in a multi-child household, then you have either one to two golden children and one scapegoat or one to two scapegoats and one golden child. 

Take Ashley Judd, Winona Judd and Naomi Judd.  Naomi, the mother, wanted to be a famous singer, so she dropped everything when she saw Wynonna could sing and followed her to stardom, leaving Ashley behind.  You can see it in Wynonna's demeanor when her mother joins her on stage.   She is a strong sure of herself lady when alone.  But even her posture changes when her mother comes near.  BUT she is the one that her mother is living through vicariously, so we can deduce that Wynonna is the golden child (who is still very abused) and Ashley is most likely the scapegoat.  

Golden children learn they are not their own person they are reflections of their mothers.  Scapegoats learn they are their own person, but everything is wrong with them because their mother tells them so.  

And as we know, scapegoats are normally bullied by their golden children siblings.  Why?  Because their mother pits the against one another.  My father-in-law's mother did that to her kids.  My mother-in-law's mother did the same.  Luckily, my hubby and his brother brother and sister were all so far apart in age from each other, it was almost impossible to do (other than the gossip his mother tells his brother and sister about us, but I have no idea if they even believe her).

Narc mothers don't just pit her children against each other with secrets and lies, but just by sheer treatment of the scapegoat.  "Mom tells me I am smart and tells you you're dumb, so it must be true."  


Then those child grow up to be narcs or the codependents who marry a narc.  SOME scapegoats escape this cycle (but hardly any golden children do) and grow up to live better lives and marry other scapegoats and raise kids without narcissistic parenting.  But sadly, most do not.  Most grow up to repeat the cycle, and their kids repeat the cycle and so on and so forth.


If you were to trace your narc mother's and enabling father's lineage, you'd find a deeply rooted line of narcissists and co-narcs (enablers/codependents).  It will keep going and going back to the beginning of history (or some crazy sociopath in your bloodline). 

And so, like I said in the beginning, can we really blame our mothers for their behaviors?  We know they can't change (so therefore they can't help their actions) and we know it's a mental disorder.  But is it nature or nurture?  Nurture would suggest it's changeable and nature would suggest it's not.  But it's not quite that simple, as years of child abuse-style thinking and behaviors is a hard habit to break and sometimes can be unbreakable.  And lots of child abuse can be damaging to the empathy parts of our brains, among other things. So what looks like choice, is most likely their damaged brain seeking out to nurture some subconscious need that they don't even understand.  They NEED to feel angry, so they do something to make you look like a bad guy so they can be angry.  They NEED to feel revenge or better than someone, so they do what they have to do in order to feel those things.

Their mother or father did the same thing.  Their mother's mother or father did the same thing.  And THEIR mother or father.  And so on.  It was bred into them from the beginning.  And their particular brain, perhaps more than their sibling's brains (or just as much) was primed for passing this behavior to.  Certain people are born out-going and/or more selfish so they make perfect narcs.  Some are born more mild and quiet, and make perfect codependents. 

So why are you not a narc?  Or me?  I was born bossy and annoying.  I was raised by a narc.  So why not me?  But I had one thing she didn't: empathy.  Was she born without it?  I would think so.  There are some theories that say that narcs are a type of sociopath, which are born without empathy.  Which makes total sense. 

As a teen, I was very narcissistic.  I was selfish and did careless things to people.  But eventually, I outgrew that behavior.  True narcs do not outgrow anything (although I do hear sometimes dementia can wipe it out).  True narcs do not have real empathy.  They have fake empathy: something they feel in the moment that suits them and benefits them.  But as soon as that benefit is gone, they turn it off like a light switch.  The rest of us cannot turn off our empathy if we truly care about someone. 

But knowing that makes you realize we might be possibly dealing with sociopaths, to which there is no cure.  And that it runs in family lines like water runs in the earth.  So while we cannot excuse our mothers' behavior, we can realize that deep down, she honestly can't help it.

Does that make it better?  No.  It just means, if she can't help it, it will never change, and we have to be the ones who change.  Either change how see them, how we deal with them, or how much we see them, if at all.  We know what to expect from them.  They will never, ever change.  But we can.  We've beaten the odds already, by escaping whatever gene was passed down from their family lines that turns them into narcs.  

If we can do that, we can do anything. 

And this means your siblings, aunts, cousins, uncles, grandparents, and everyone else in your family: narcissism doesn't just stop with your mother.  You can escape them all by changing YOU and your perceptions of how they are and how you'll deal with their behavior.  They can't help it.  But at the same time, they'll also never change. 

So.  How will YOU change?