“An unpredictable parent is a fearsome god in the eyes of a child.”
Family dynamics can be complex at the best of times, but especially so when it involves our parents. Responsible for driving our socialisation through discipline, education, empathy, and love, our relationships with our parents constantly grow and evolve as we go through life. However, these relationships are not always healthy, and toxicity from parents can be more impactful, troublesome to identify, and even harder to break away from and recover. Here at What We Reading, we have compiled a selection of the best books about toxic parents that offer a compassionate lens on healing and growth.
Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy And Reclaiming Your Life – Susan Forward And Craig Buck
Dr. Susan Forward kicks off our list of books on toxic parents with her bestselling 1990 work. In it, she explores the emotional deficiencies that emerge from parents who fall short and offers a brisk and unreserved guide on overcoming these effects.
Guilt and power trips are two of the biggest opponents of self-worth, but Forward explains how these forms of parental manipulation can be overcome. Toxic Parents is one of the leading psychological books for readers looking to deal with the pain picked up during their childhood and move on from the unhealthy relationship patterns learned at home.
Adult Children Of Emotionally Immature Parents: How To Heal From Distant, Rejecting, Or Self-Involved Parents – Lindsay C. Gibson
If you’ve grown up with a selfish, emotionally immature or unavailable parent, it’s natural that you may have leftover feelings of abandonment, loneliness or betrayal. These unwelcome byproducts are commonplace with children of toxic parents but, in her breakthrough book, clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson explains how these wounds can be healed.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents educates readers on the destructive potential of toxic relationships. She breaks these difficult parents into four different types: the emotional parent, the driven parent, the passive parent and the rejecting parent. Finally, Gibson explains how readers can free themselves from their parents’ immaturity, control how they react to them and how they can create new and positive relationships to build a better life.
Children Of The Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up’s Guide To Getting Over Narcissistic Parents – Nina W. Brown
Professor Nina W. Brown introduces readers to the term ‘parentified children’ in her book, Children of the Self-Absorbed. Millions of people around the globe grew up with immature parents who made them responsible for their emotional and physical well-being. These parents regularly expected constant attention and often reacted to disappointments or things going wrong with blame and criticism.
If any of this sounds similar, this might be the toxic parents book for you. Brown’s work not only explores the lasting effects of this destructive upbringing but also offers practical solutions on how to sort through what has happened to them. Through her challenging self-exploration exercises, Children of the Self-Absorbed will help readers identify unhealthy patterns, evaluate behaviours and attitudes that may be affecting their relationships at present, deal with their lasting negative feelings and begin rebuilding their self-esteem.
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When You And Your Mother Can’t Be Friends: Resolving The Most Complicated Relationship Of Your Life – Victoria Secunda
The relationship between a mother and daughter is one of the most complex and significant in terms of emotional development. Victoria Secunda’s When You and Your Mother Can’t Be Friends is a toxic parent book that aims to highlight the nature of mother-daughter relationships, identify how and why obstacles can arise, show the differences between healthy and unhealthy bonds and, finally, how to redefine this dynamic more positively.
Secunda’s book is designed for daughters, and sons, who have a lingering feeling of being controlled, neglected or abandoned. Through her insights, she teaches readers what the ‘bad mommy’ looks like, demonstrates how mothers often do their best (even if it feels otherwise), and how they can better hone their relationship with their mother now in the hopes of moving forward as friends.
Toxic In-Laws: Loving Strategies For Protecting Your Marriage – Susan Forward And Donna Frazier
Another toxic parents book from Dr. Susan Forward, Toxic In-Laws tackles the often complicated relationship readers can have with the parents of their spouse. Forward and Donna Frazier explore how to navigate these complications, even when they appear to be draining their marriage, without causing further tension with their partner.
One of the most invaluable guidebooks going for identifying challenges and presenting a range of strategies designed to protect marriage, Toxic In-Laws provides a handy overview of broader family dynamics and how they can jeopardise a reader’s marriage, communication strategies, as well as how to set boundaries, express needs and resolve conflict.
Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect – Jonice Webb And Christine Musello
Jonice Webb and Christine Musello provide readers with an informative guide on how to identify and heal from childhood neglect, providing a roadmap to feeling healthier and more connected in the present in Running on Empty.
One of the best books for assessing the lasting imprint emotional neglect can have from childhood into adulthood, Webb utilises over twenty years as a practising psychologist to demonstrate how so often it can be the things that were unsaid or not done that can have the most profound consequences. Through the book, Webb coaches readers to make sense of their experiences, presenting clear and concise strategies they can use to overcome the harmful imprints they have left behind.
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Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
