It’s common for narcissistic parents to treat their children differently. Unbeknownst to my mother, Suzan Lee, my brother Colby and I were cast into the classic narcissistic scapegoat / golden child dynamic by my father, Thom.
To a narcissistic parent, the scapegoat / golden child dynamic is like a car battery. If you hook the red cable up as the positive side, and the black cable up as the negative side, the narcissist has a lifetime supply of narcissistic juice (validation, admiration, control and selfobject functioning). My father could point to my brother, his golden child, as evidence of his good parenting, while using me, his scapegoat, as a downward comparison target, portraying me as selfish, unstable, or cruel. And when you factor in how narcissists shame and emotionally dysregulate their children, it’s not hard for them to portray the scapegoat as selfish, unstable or cruel, particularly when the abuse starts early like mine did.
“Over the scapegoat the vulnerable narcissistic parent positions themselves as the reasonable, moral, long-suffering, ‘good person.’ When others accept and reinforce that contrast, their sympathy and agreement provides the vulnerable narcissist supply that stabilizes their fragile self image.”
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Evidence shows the narcissistic parent selects the golden child based on temperament, being emotionally attuned to the parent’s expectations, and being less likely to openly challenge authority. The scapegoated child is the one more likely to challenge the narcissist: is more emotionally expressive, strong-willed, sensitive to unfairness, or more likely to expose dysfunction. (Hi Eliza).
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Someone reading this may think if given a choice they’d pick the role of the golden child. A golden child, however, is far more likely to become a narcissists themselves than a scapegoated child. It’s believed that some children of narcissistic parents recognize the advantages their parent(s) gain through narcissistic behavior. For some golden children, these early observations can make the narcissistic model inevitable, even desirable. A devalued scapegoat, by contrast, is more likely to recognize the harm caused by the same behaviors and reject the narcissistic model altogether.
In this video below, skip to 1:30.
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