The Raising Of Narcissists

It’s a trite concept, for sure, but how true is it?

I think the word “narcissism” has had some scope creep in the last five years, and some people I see writing + doing videos will use the term to denote almost anything they don’t like, whereas in fact “narcissism” has a set definition. It’s not perfectly set and there is some semantic wiggle room, but just because some guy is an asshole in a gym TikTok doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a narcissist. He might be, but we don’t know just from that.

There is a trope out there that new parents are raising a bunch of narcissists, which seems to be underscored by (a) current elementary school teachers and (b) Sephora employees. I am not sure if this is true, and even if it’s true in certain families, it’s not true in others. Nothing is universal when you’re talking about millions (billions?) of kids around the world.

This video hits some of the topics:

That’s pretty comprehensive, so if you’re interested in parenting trends, you can give it a whirl.