Emotionally immature parents can affect their children’s development in ways that may make them more prone to substance use disorders as adults. What does it mean to be emotionally immature? 

We know what it means to mature biologically. If we think about animals or kids, we can easily point out what maturity looks like. An adult giraffe is mature. A typical adult man or woman is physically mature. We can also extend the idea to art, writing, or sports. A mature artist, writer, or athlete enjoys the benefits of fully developed capabilities. 

An emotionally mature person is someone who can appropriately control and express their emotions. This means that their reactions to any type of event, stress, or setback are more or less reasonable and coherent. Emotionally mature adolescents and adults tend to perform the following actions or behaviors:

• Make fairly thought-out, logical decisions
• Not require, crave, or demand attention
• Address confrontation in real time without avoiding it or aggressively seeking it out
• Regularly display humility, positivity, and receptivity to deeper-level communication 
• Voice their own needs, opinions, thoughts, and desires openly 
• Treat others with respect and dignity

In emotionally mature environments, people’s feelings, thoughts, well-being, and needs carry immense value. If someone is emotionally mature, they’re more likely to get a lot out of their interpersonal relationships and support systems. Emotionally mature people find deep satisfaction in their friendships, work relationships, love lives, parenthood, and their relationships with themselves. They tend to be stable, consistent, adaptable individuals with predictable behaviors, making them trustworthy and dependable. All in all, emotional maturity looks and feels healthy.

What is Emotional Immaturity, and How Does It Manifest?

Emotionally immaturity, depending on its severity, interferes with an adult’s ability to adequately understand and express their emotions. They struggle immensely to control their disproportionate reactions to obstacles or triggers and find it difficult to express themselves in healthy and conducive ways. 

Emotional immaturity can look like bullying, physical or verbal abuse, narcissism, conflict avoidance, emotional distancing and unavailability, strong aversions to intimacy, general cruelty directed toward people closest to them, and impulsivity. 

Communication, coping with stress, staying positive, and adjusting to different situations or environments are highly challenging for the emotionally immature. Emotionally immature environments and people look and feel tense, distant, strained, codependent, egocentric, or chaotic.

How Does Emotionally Immature Parenting Affect Children?

Emotionally immature parents tend to fall into four main categories. Each of these can overlap and can manifest subtly and infrequently. 

• Reactive. Reactive parents are ruled by their emotions, and they’ll allow their emotions to rule their household. If they’re elated one day, it’s a great day for everyone. If they’re annoyed, disappointed, or sad—everyone around them is forced to feel that way as well. Kids who grow up with one or more reactive parents tend to become people pleasers. They acclimate well to this role because they had to please their parent’s moods constantly. 
• Critical. The highly critical parent pushes and controls their children to the point of overexertion. Kids from this type of household tend to burn out quickly in adult life, painfully adhere to perfectionism, or live inauthentically as they bend over backward to perform actions they feel their parents approve of. 
• Passive. Passive parents can be emotionally present but play more of a friend or older sibling role. They shy away from direct confrontation, discipline, anger, or deeper emotions like sadness or disappointment when openly displayed. Kids under this type of rearing tend to be uncomfortable with standing up for themselves or communicating their needs and feelings. 
• Emotionally absent. For these parents, their child might as well not exist. The parent-child tie isn’t there. This may encourage children to link up with narcissistic partners or friends who give them unfamiliar attention. They’re also more likely to accept the bare minimum of emotional effort from their loved ones because that’s what they’re used to.  

People-pleasing, passivity, burnout, and the normalization of narcissistic or emotionally distanced behavior can all play a role in substance use disorder (SUD) development. 

Are Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents More Likely To Develop an Addiction?

While there is no way to determine a simple cause-and-effect relationship between immature parenting and addiction in children, we do know that challenging home environments are one of several risk factors for addiction. But at St. Joseph Institute in Pennsylvania, we believe there is always hope for healing. Even the smallest amount of self-awareness can improve emotional maturity and your ability to cope with the immature behavior of parents and loved ones in your environment.  

Through individual counseling and family therapy, you can identify where you fall on the emotional maturity scale, what type of parenting you experienced, and how that experience may be connected to your substance use disorder. Then, you can take the steps to gain back control of your life and become your own good parent and friend. Contact us at our Port Matilda, PA,

location to begin your journey toward emotionally mature sobriety.