Emotional maturity is a trait that the best parents have mastered. It allows parents to focus on their children, control their reactions, and acknowledge their kids’ emotions in a healthy manner.
However, having a child doesn’t automatically make an adult emotionally mature. Some fathers and parents are emotionally immature, and this directly impacts their children throughout their entire lives.
Here are 5 signs that you were raised by an emotionally immature father:
1. Your father threw temper tantrums like a child
Strong emotions, like anger, sadness, or embarrassment, often overwhelm emotionally immature people. Instead of coping and acknowledging these feelings, they throw tantrums and take their unpleasant emotions out on other people — their children included.
This can create an unstable environment, especially for young children, because the threat of an outburst is ever-present. Whether you’re chatting at dinner or getting in trouble for being a teenager, you’re living on edge, always worried that your father will lash out.
In adulthood, anger, frustration, and yelling may be overwhelming for you, even in small, healthy doses. You might also seek control in relationships — either through self-sabotaging or emotional detachment. After all, if you don’t get too invested or involved, then they can’t hurt you.
2. Your dad relied on another parent to emotionally regulate
As psychologist Dr. Nicole LePera demonstrated in her TikTok, emotionally immature fathers often rely on the support of a spouse or child to regulate their emotions.
Hand in hand with throwing temper tantrums, these emotionally immature adults never learned to manage uncomfortable emotions and rely on others to do so for them. They likely blame others for their feelings and struggle to navigate daily conflict, something inevitable in a family with kids.
If you were the person tasked with regulating an emotionally immature father — or simply witnessed your other parent doing so — you might find yourself doing the same for partners in adulthood. You likely feel a sense of responsibility for other people’s emotions, leading you to people-please or become an emotional support blanket of sorts.
3. Instead of openly communicating, your father resorted to ‘silent treatments’ or petty phrases
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Kids need reassurance, comfort, and stability from their parents. However, emotionally immature fathers are unable to provide that, often resulting in a form of neglect and abandonment.
While they might be physically present, making meals, paying bills, and attending soccer games, their emotional stability and support are nearly void.
Many emotionally immature parents resort to petty and emotionally abusive tactics like the silent treatment to get what they want or to “prove a point” to their kids. No matter their objective, this kind of treatment always negatively affects children who often resort to attention-seeking behaviors or clinginess to get attention from their parents.
4. Your dad took everything personally
Kids, by definition, are not yet mature and will act out from time to time. Emotionally immature parents take this as a personal slight.
Lacking the emotional intelligence needed to investigate strong feelings in a more “big picture” way, they take everything their children do personally. From forgetting a chore to sneaking out or failing a test, they die on every hill, attacking their kids as punishment.
As a result, in adulthood, you might find yourself to be overly adamant about communication or constantly anxious about hurting or offending others.
5. Instead of empathy, your father resorted to anger
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Intertwined with their tendency towards tantrums and their inability to emotionally regulate, emotionally immature fathers also lack empathy towards their children. When they’re frustrated, sad, or anxious, all of those emotions spiral into rage.
Often fearing vulnerability around their children — especially for fathers who were taught to maintain composure and superiority over their families — these parents turn reactive during arguments or when their needs aren’t met.
This often breeds overcompensating children who search for their father in partners, friends, and mentors. As LePera put it, these kids learn that “it’s fine to end up with a partner who doesn’t take accountability for the way they impact the people around them.”
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.
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