DARK SECRETS: Entitled parents cross boundaries - The Real Truth

Look, nobody’s here to parent-shame. You’ll quickly see these aren’t your run-of-the-mill tired, overwhelmed, or occasionally inconsiderate parents simply trying to do their best for their children (props to all of those out there). These are folks who seem to believe that having a child entitles them to special treatment, even when it inconveniences everyone else, as if the rest of us signed up for their life choices.

You likely know the type: the colleague whose PTO takes precedence over that of the childfree members of the team, the family member who expects free, last-minute babysitting, or the friend who asks you to give up your seat at the dinner table so their all-important 5-year-old can sit with the adults in “her” chair.

Someone with a sense of entitlement, as Arlin Cuncic writes for Verywell Mind, “believes they deserve special treatment or recognition for achievements they haven't earned.” But add a kid to the equation, and entitlement can become a whole different breed. As Caroline Bologna writes for HuffPost, citing author Susan Groner, some parents “believe they and their families deserve special treatment, favors, and anything they deem the ‘best.’” For these folks, as Mona Lazar puts it, parenthood can become “a badge that grants special permissions, exemptions, and deference from others,” rather than simply “a responsibility they chose.”

That doesn’t mean parents should never receive special consideration, of course. In fact, there are plenty of things we can do to make things a little easier for the parents around us. Some families genuinely need special accommodations, and offering one is a perfectly reasonable act of kindness. But willingly offering up your seat on a flight so a family can sit together is very different from being expected to do so. And yet, that’s what entitled parents seem to do best. According to Lazar, “They don’t ask. They presume. And if you don’t comply, you’re framed as selfish, cold, or anti-family.”

Perhaps part of the problem is that parents can understandably see their children as the most important people in their lives. But that doesn’t necessarily make them the most important people in everyone else’s. Lazar calls this “category error,” where “People conflate ‘important to me’ with ‘important to everyone.’” And according to Groner, entitled parents can take that a step further, expecting their child to be treated as “the smartest, most talented child” and fighting with teachers, principals, coaches, or directors when they don’t get that treatment.

And sure, there’s nothing wrong with being your child’s biggest cheerleader. But that doesn’t mean everyone else is equally invested—or that they’re obligated to be. As Bologna quotes psychotherapist Perri Shaw Borish, “It’s important for children to feel special in their parents’ eyes but they don’t need to feel special in everyone’s eyes.”

But sometimes, this seems to come from a more self-focused place, when the line between parent and child starts to get blurry. Psychotherapist Noel McDermott told Bologna that “the entitlement is projected onto the child as a set of expectations and belief in perfectionist views of the child.”

He also noted that “any criticism of the child will be a criticism of the parent,” suggesting that some parents may have a hard time separating their own sense of self from their child’s behavior or achievements. And that line gets blurry, the entitlement can run in both directions: some parents don’t just expect the outside world to accommodate their children—they also expect their children to accommodate their own wants and expectations.