Children With
A Narcissist.
One of the most important decisions you will ever make is who you have children with. This guide is for the women who didn't know. And for the women who are still in it.
Who you have children with determines the quality of your life. For a very long time.
This is not said to frighten you. It is said because nobody said it clearly enough, early enough, to any of us — and the cost of not knowing it has been enormous.
Having children with a narcissist is not like a bad relationship you can eventually walk away from cleanly. It is a lifetime tie. To the chaos, to the manipulation, to the legal battles, to the financial games, to the emotional exhaustion of co-parenting with someone who does not co-parent — they counter-parent. It does not end when the relationship ends. It reconfigures.
Your children are never the mistake. They are the blessing — the deepest, most irreversible blessing of your life. The mistake, if there is one, is being tied forever to someone who was never capable of the partnership, the empathy, the respect, that parenting — and that you — deserved.
If you are still in the early stages of a relationship and something feels wrong — this guide is for you. If you are already in it — this guide is also for you. What comes after the knowing matters as much as the knowing itself.
To change one thing is to change everything. I would not change my children for anything in this world. And I would not wish what came with them on any woman.
The signs were there. We just didn't have the language to name them.
In hindsight, the signs are always visible. Not always dramatic — often quiet, subtle, easy to explain away when you are in love and hopeful and choosing to believe the best. But they are there.
The absence of empathy in small moments. The self-centredness that reveals itself when you are vulnerable. The lack of genuine excitement about your joy. The way his needs always quietly moved to the centre of every situation. These are not personality quirks. They are information.
The most important thing you can do before having children with someone is watch how they respond when you need them. Not in the big moments — in the ordinary ones. When you are tired. When you are unwell. When you are frightened. When you need comfort and get nothing.
I had two miscarriages before my first child. I sat in the bath after one of them, crying, with him in the room. He did not come. There was no comfort, no presence, no empathy. Nothing. I felt it. I knew something was wrong. And still — I could not name it, and I did not listen to it. That knowing, that I could not yet act on, came at an enormous cost later. If something feels wrong in the small moments, it is wrong. Trust that.
A time that should have been held. Instead, I was alone in it.
Pregnancy is one of the most vulnerable states a woman's body and mind can be in. It is a time that requires presence, care, and a partner who shows up. What it looks like with a narcissist is something else entirely — and the contrast between what you need and what you get is one of the most quietly devastating experiences of this whole situation.
A narcissist sees your pregnancy as an inconvenience. Your suffering as something happening to them. Your needs as an imposition on their life. The empathy that should be automatic — that most partners give without thinking — simply does not come.
I had hyperemesis gravidarum with my first pregnancy. Twelve weeks of being violently, relentlessly ill. I lost seven kilos. My mother drove me back and forth to hospital. He stepped over me on his way to work. He told me I was pretending. Six months pregnant with our first child, I found out he had been at a strip club. I remember sitting with that knowledge, six months pregnant, and the rails already coming off. When I found out I was pregnant with our second — our first was only five months old — I remember crying and pretending it was because I wasn't ready for another baby so soon. But that wasn't why I was crying. I was crying because deep down, I already knew the truth. My body knew before my mind could say it out loud.
A narcissist sees your suffering as an inconvenience. Your pregnancy will expose exactly how little empathy they are capable of. Believe what you see.
They don't co-parent. They counter-parent. And you carry everything.
There is a particular exhaustion that comes from parenting two small children largely alone while also managing the emotional weight of what is happening in your relationship. It is physical, relentless, and invisible to almost everyone around you.
Co-parenting with a narcissist is not co-parenting. It is two entirely opposing forces — one trying to create stability, routine, safety, and nurturing for the children, and one who undermines every single element of that. Not accidentally. Consistently. As a pattern.
Whatever you say, they say the opposite. Whatever boundary you set for the children, they cross it. Whatever routine you build, they disrupt it. Not because they have a better idea — but because control is the point. Your authority as a mother is something to be dismantled, not respected.
I had two babies fourteen months apart. I felt alone from the moment they were born. I had two live-in helpers and I still did almost everything myself — because he was absent, constantly, for reasons I didn't fully understand at the time. When he was there, he was fun dad — no rules, no consequences, no respect for the routines I had built to keep two babies this close in age functioning. He would give them Coca Cola and chocolate cake before they were even eating solid food. He would disrupt bedtime, jump on beds, say yes to everything I had said no to. And slowly, through this constant tug of war, I felt a distance open between me and my firstborn — because he was being pulled. No consequences on that side. All the fun. And me, holding the line alone, becoming the difficult one. That is not parenting. That is a campaign.
The most painful thing you will witness is your children being used against you.
This is the part that breaks mothers. Not the legal battles, not the financial pressure, not even the years of fighting alone. It is watching your children be placed in the middle of something they did not ask for — and being used, consciously or unconsciously, as leverage against you.
It looks like this: everything you say no to, he says yes to — not because yes is the right answer, but because undermining you is the goal. He talks about you in ways that reach the children. He creates a version of events in which you are the problem and he is the victim. He is Father of the Year in public and entirely absent in private. And your children, who love you both, are caught in the centre of it.
This is not something you can control. You cannot make him stop. What you can control is the quality of the home you provide, the consistency of your love, and the stability you build around your children that he cannot reach. That is not small. Over time, that is everything.
- Children are perceptive. They feel the truth even when they cannot articulate it. What you build with them in your home is the foundation they will stand on.
- Speak about their father with as much neutrality as you can manage. Not for his sake — for theirs. Your children do not need to carry your grief about him on top of their own confusion.
- Document everything. Not obsessively — but consistently. Dates, incidents, patterns. If it ever reaches a courtroom, you will be grateful for the record.
- Find support. A therapist for your children if they need it. For yourself. This is too heavy to carry without professional help alongside it.
- The disruption he causes is real. Your stability is more powerful than his chaos — but only if you protect it fiercely.
The court system will often fail you. Building will not.
This needs to be said clearly because too many women spend years — and everything they have — waiting for a system that was not designed to deliver the justice they deserve.
Too many women are left to provide entirely on their own. Maintenance orders exist on paper and are ignored in practice. Enforcement is a years-long battle that costs more in time, money, and emotional energy than most women have available. The legal system is slow, expensive, and frequently inadequate when it comes to holding narcissistic, financially controlling men accountable.
This is not fair. It is not ethical. They get away with it. And that reality is one of the most enraging, demoralising truths in this entire situation.
But here is what is also true: spending years in that battle — chasing a court order that is not being enforced, fighting for justice that may never fully arrive — costs you years of your life that you cannot get back. Years that could be spent building. Growing. Creating the financial independence that makes you genuinely free — not free because he finally does what he is supposed to, but free because you no longer need him to.
My ex stopped paying maintenance in 2020. I have spent years trying to enforce a court order and the truth is that the system moves slowly, inconsistently, and often not at all. I made a decision — not to stop fighting for what my children are owed, but to stop making that fight the centre of my existence. To focus instead on what I could build. On becoming financially independent in a way that removed his power over our survival entirely. It is not fair. It is not what should have to happen. But growing is the answer. Not battling. Not because he deserves your peace — because you do.
You cannot control him. You can control the world you build for them.
Parallel parenting — not co-parenting, parallel parenting — is the framework that works when co-parenting is not possible. Two parents operating independently, communicating only what is necessary about the children, each responsible for their own home and their own relationship with the children.
You cannot make him be the father they deserve. That is one of the most painful realities of this situation and it deserves to be named without softening. What you can do is be so fully present, so consistently loving, so deliberately stable in your home that your children always know where their ground is.
- Grey rock in all communication — factual, brief, child-focused, nothing emotional for him to use
- Keep your home a sanctuary — consistent, warm, predictable, the opposite of chaos
- Never speak badly about him in front of your children — they will work it out. Your job is to be safe, not to be right.
- Seek legal advice about your specific rights and his specific obligations — know what the court order says and what options exist if it is breached
- Build your financial independence as the primary strategy — not the backup plan
- Get support for yourself — you cannot pour from an empty vessel and this situation is designed to empty you
The children are never the mistake. They are your purpose, your reason, your proof that something extraordinary came from something devastating.
I know through them I will bring up two better men in this world than I have been exposed to.
My boys are everything. My purpose. My reason to live. I love them with every fibre of my soul — unconditionally, completely, without reservation. Everything I have built, everything I have survived, everything I have refused to give up on has been for them. And through them — through raising them with love and presence and honesty and boundaries — I am breaking a cycle. That is not a small thing. That is the whole point. Your children are watching you survive this. One day they will understand what it cost you. And what you chose to do with it.