Are My Parents Psychopaths? How Dark Parenthood Impacts Descendants’ Mental Health and Self-Esteem

Abstract

Relationships between parents and their descendants are necessary for healthy socioemotional development. For a better understanding of these relationships, past studies found that personality traits significantly impact parenting constructs, such as attachment patterns, parental care, and relationship satisfaction, suggesting that psychological aspects of parents can affect their descendants. In our research (N = 250), we asked participants to rate how they perceive their parents regarding their aversive personality traits (i.e., Dark Triad), parenting style characteristics, relationship satisfaction, and their own well-being and self-esteem. We then developed two mediational models (SEM), one for mothers and one for fathers. In these models, we assessed how the Dark Triad impacted mental health and self-esteem, mediated by authoritarian parenting style and relationship satisfaction. The models presented a good model fit (e.g., CFI > .90). Psychopathic traits positively influenced an authoritarian parenting style for both parents, which led to worse relationship satisfaction and affected their descendants’ mental health and self-esteem. Furthermore, we also observed indirect effects of parental psychopathy on our outcomes, with these effects being higher for mothers than for fathers. Overall, our study provides the first assessment of how parents’ higher levels of dark traits can influence their descendants’ mental health and self-esteem. We are confident that our findings could benefit researchers and family clinicians, providing a different overview of how aversive characteristics can influence well-being.