80 Quotes For Toxic And Selfish Parents

Find solace from your unhealthy home environment with these wise words of comfort.

Reviewed by Roma Williams Roma Williams, LMFT
By Shivani Chandel Shivani Chandel, Certified Relationship Coach • May 9, 2023

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Dealing with toxic and selfish parents can be challenging. A child’s mental health is affected when the parents are emotionally detached and unavailable for their kids. Also, some parents burden their children with their dreams and aspirations or neglect them due to work or other preoccupations. Sadly, these neglecting attributes can lead to a toxic and unhealthy environment in the family. In this article, we have listed lines from various poets, writers, and influencers about selfish parents. Check them out below.

In This Article

Unhealthy Relationship And Selfish Parents Quotes

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“As a parent, you should be more concerned with your child’s happiness than your petty insecurities and jealousies.” – Unknown
“Anyone can have a child and call themselves “a parent”. A real parent is someone who puts that child above their own selfish needs and wants.” – Unknown
“Being a selfish parent is a sign of not having learned from experience.” –
“My parents loved us, but I wasn’t always sure they liked us.” – Tahereh Mafi
“Children shouldn’t have to sacrifice so that you can have the life you want. You make sacrifices so your children can have the life that they deserve.” – Unknown
“Parents forgive their children least readily for the faults they themselves instilled in them.” – Unknown
“Being a parent shouldn’t be when it is convenient for you. It is a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year commitment.” – Unknown
“They are not sorry for harming you. So, don’t feel guilty for cutting them off.” – John Mark Green
“If you teach hatred to your children, one day your child will have that hatred reflected back onto them and onto YOU.” – Suzy Kassem
“Just remember when you are ignoring your child, you are teaching them to live without you.” – Unknown
“Selfish parents may someday realize what damage they have done that can never be undone.” – Unknown
“It is the selfish parents who are to blame. Pay attention, be involved in your children’s lives. They are your legacy, your only hope.” – Aaron B. Powell
“They should love you, just as you are. Parents should love their kids, right?” “You’d think so.” – N.R. Walker
“If mental abuse was a punishable crime, a lot of parents would be in jail serving a long term.” – Maddy Malhotra
“Good parenting gives headaches, but bad parenting gives heartaches.” – Shiv Khera
“Remember, you are not managing an inconvenience; You are raising a human being.” – Kittie Frantz
“We raise predators by treating children as prey.” – Stefan Molyneux
“Put your child’s likes before your selfishness.”– Anonymous
“No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.” – Plato
“If your parents ignored you, or if they are just not emotionally available, or if they yell a lot, that is a type of trauma.” – Tucker Max
“Instead of treating your child like how you were treated. Treat them with the same love and attention you wanted from your parents while growing up.” – Jonathan Anthony Burkett
“Unhappiness in a child accumulates because he sees no end to the dark tunnel. The thirteen weeks of a term might just as well be thirteen years.” – Graeme Greene
“In troubled families, abuse and neglect are permitted. It’s talking about them that is forbidden.” – Marcia Sirota
“Most children would rather preserve the fantasy of a loving connection with their fathers and mothers, at all costs, even if it costs them their self-esteem.” – Keith Ablow

Though parents are a child’s primary caregivers, they may turn selfish and abusive. This can affect the child mentally and emotionally during the formative years and teenage period. Check out our next sections about selfish fathers and mothers that identify the parenting mistakes while raising a child.

Selfish Fathers Quotes

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“Denying a child, the joy and memories of being with the other parent is an act of “pure evil.” – Unknown
“Fathers should know that sons follow their example, not advice.” – Unknown
“It doesn’t matter who my father was. It matters who I remember he was.” – Anne Sexton
“Real dads support their children without the law telling them they have to.” – Unknown
“A real parent is someone who put their kids above their own selfish wants and needs.” – Unknown
“Sons aspire to either become their father or vie to be his exact opposite.” – Unknown
“A greedy father has thieves for children.” – Serbian Proverb
“Becoming a father is easy enough, but being one can be very rough.” – Wilhelm Busch
“There’s really no point in having children if you’re not going to be home enough to father them.” – Anthony Edwards
“Anyone can be a father but it takes someone special to be a dad.” – Unknown
“When a father, absent during the day, returns home at six, his children receive only his temperament, not his teaching.” – Robert Bly
“Every father should remember that one day, his son will follow exactly how his father put his needs above everyone else.” – Unknown
“A father shouldn’t have to think of his needs first and then accommodate the child’s needs.” – Unknown
“A narcissist parent is easily frustrated by a healthy independent child that they can’t control through parental emotional manipulation.” – Shannon Thomas
Related: Emotional Manipulation: 10 Signs, Effects, And How To Deal
“Some fathers wonder why the streams are bitter when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.” – John Locke
“My dad taught me everything I know. Unfortunately, he didn’t teach me everything he knows.” – Al Unser
“There’s nothing worse than a man that can be everything to everybody else. Except a father to their own child.” – Unknown
“Boys want to grow up to be like their male role models. And boys who grow up in homes with absent fathers search the hardest to figure out what it means to be male.” –Geoffrey Canada
“When you grew up with an absent father, you grew up dreaming and wanting.. But most of all, you grew up way too fast.” – Unknown
“My dad had limitations. That’s what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.” – Gillian Flynn

Selfish Mothers Quotes

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“It takes someone really brave to become a mother. As it requires lot of strength to raise a child and love them more than one loves themselves.” – Unknown
“If we, as mothers, are not careful we can begin to find our identity in our children and their behavior.” – Sue Detweiler
“Do your kids see your kindness or are you always telling them NO?” – Brenda M. McGraw
“When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your child.” – Unknown
“No one, however powerful and successful, can function as an adult if his parents are not satisfied with him.” – Frank Pittman
“Your children vividly remember every unkind thing you ever did to them, plus a few you really didn’t.” – Mignon McLaughlin
“She shrieked and shrieked for her mother, but her mother was already there. Her mother was the monster.” – Holly Black
“The hateful and stinging words of a narcissistic parent can linger in the mind of an adult child long after the adult has left home.” – Shannon Thomas
Related: Best Narcissist Quotes That Help You Understand Them Better
“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.” – Jackie Kennedy
“Don’t make your selfishness ruin your child’s life.” – Unknown
“Any mother that could be cruel to a child is not going to apologize to that child when they have grown up.” – Rayne Wolf.
“A good mother never uses her child for her happiness.” – Unknown
“If a mother cannot sacrifice for her kids, she doesn’t deserve them!” – Unknown

Read on for famous quotes and saying about selfish family members. Unfortunately, you need to let go of such people before the relationship turns unhealthy and toxic. Try to portray your true self whatever be the situation and see your life change to another level.

Selfish Family Quotes

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“One of the saddest things in this world is to see a child grow up hating one of their parents because they only got one side of the story.” – Unknown
“Somewhat paradoxically, parenting programs should focus on the behavior of the parents not the behavior of the children.” – Timothy Carey
“Narcissist parents don’t care about their children’s feelings at all. Only their feelings matter.” – Kim Saeed
“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.” –Sigmund Freud
“Today’s troubled homes are made by parents who want to have children but don’t want their children to have parents.” – Agona Apel
“No child is born a delinquent. They only became that way if nobody loved them when they were kids.” – Jeannette Walls
“Wounded parents often unintentionally inflict pain and suffering on their children.” – David W. Earle
“Being a parent does not give you an excuse for bad manners.” – Rosalind Wiseman
“It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.” – Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
“All of us develop our expectations about how people will treat us based on our relationships with our parents.” – Susan Forward
“Parents. Honestly. Sometimes they really do think the world revolves around them.” – Randa Abdel-Fattah
“When you have children, there is no room for lies, no room for anything but the truth. Anything other than that is a bad example, I believe.” – Johnny Depp
“Anyone could father a child. But a good parent puts his child’s needs before his own. A parent should be selfless, not selfish.” – Penelope Ward
“A family who relies on their children for happiness make both their children and themselves miserable.” – Dennis Prager
“It is impossible to be both selfish and happy in a family that behaves the same way.” – Unknown
“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.” – Unknown
“People tend to raise the child inside of them rather than the child in front of them.” – Joe Newman
“To all you parents out there, don’t make your little girls, or little boys, so thirsty for love that they will want to drink water that will poison them.” – Lisa Bedrick
“Some parent will provoke an independent child to anger in order to feel superior and prove the child’s flaws.” – Shannon Thomas
“Being a selfish parent is the biggest crime you can do to your child.” – Anonymous
“Being a parent is easy but being a good parent is tough as it requires a lot of dedication and goodwill.” – Anonymous
“When you’re three or seven years old, it’s less frightening to think of yourself as an unlovable, disappointing screwup than to recognize the fact that you’re living with a monster.” – Keith Ablow
“Never substitute ‘presence’ with ‘presents’. Presents can spoil your child, but your presence will make them a true human being.” – Anonymous

Children do not fare well when neglected and isolated by their parents. It could be a tough pill to swallow, even for grown individuals. Moreover, it is not easy to accept that your parents could be toxic and abusive because those are not qualities usually attributed to parents. If you have noticed this within your domestic space, we hope these quotes on toxic and selfish parents will help you build some perspective. Take action if your parents are abusive. Remove yourself from an unhealthy environment that enables a toxic parent-child relationship.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you talk to a selfish parent?

You must balance compassion and self-compassion while dealing with a selfish parent. You should develop self-worth and confidence to be able to resist their gaslighting attempts. Furthermore, create clear boundaries and accept them as they are to prepare yourself better to face future challenges. However, if nothing works, you can always consult a counselor.

How does a toxic mother affect you?

A toxic mother can negatively affect your mental and emotional health. They can be abusive and violent, and over time, the child may also develop anxiety issues, lack self-worth, or even develop violent tendencies.

Does a toxic parent love their child?

No. Most toxic parents claim they love their children but, in reality, it never translates to nourishing, encouraging, respectful, or even acceptable behavior.

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