Reply to People with good parents/nice childhoods who are selfish, unkind, unempathetic?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How does this happen? I have encountered several people like this. Very loving families, would themselves describe their parents and families as loving, supportive, and functional and also it looks that way via observation. No childhood trauma or evidence of abuse/neglect. Continued support into adulthood.

But then they are jerks. Or have the capacity to be jerks in certain circumstances where it's surprising to see it come out. I know several women with this background, for instance, who are total "mean girl" gossips -- spread nasty rumors about women they claim they are friends with, can be very selfish with their time, demand attention and can be petty or cruel if they don't feel they get it.

How does this happen? I thought good parenting was supposed to address behaviors like this. Were they too doted on? Favorite daughters whose behavior didn't get corrected? I always figured people who acted like this were acting out of insecurity and some kind of childhood wound, but perhaps I was wrong.

Asking partly out of curiosity, and partly because I want to avoid raising a person who behaves this way in adulthood.[/quote]

So many assumptions, so little time, OP.

Truth is, you have zero idea what people are going through. [/quote]

That's... not an answer. If it isn't family dysfunction or poor parenting that causes this behavior, what is it? [b]What are people "going through" [/b]that causes people with good parents and happy childhoods to be unkind or even cruel?[/quote]

Grief 
Illness
Divorce
Addiction
Adultery 
Financial troubles 
Job instability

Or any other adverse condition that happens to adults over their lifetime [/quote]

The people I'm talking about are not going through divorce, illness, job instability, or financial troubles. And they are protected from the last two because of comfortable backgrounds that helped ensure they started out life with the best possible education and a lot of financial stability.

Why would someone with loving, supportive family and no childhood trauma develop addiction issues? Does that actually happen? Everyone I know with addiction and mental health issues can trace it at least in part to childhood issues.

So that leaves grief and adultery. Which sure, can befall anyone. But shouldn't someone from a loving, supportive, UMC or UC home know of ways to handle those things that don't involve treating other people terribly?

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but these responses are still not explaining why someone who has the background we'd all like to give our children (presumably) would behave in ways that are unequivocally unkind.[/quote]

Brains can break in all sorts of ways and having a financially stable loving home environment is not a guarantee that personality disorder won’t arise.

Narcissists can come from loving homes, some people are deeply ego wounded in childhood simply by the dethroning that occurs when a sibling comes along after years as the only child. Or it happens because some parents are sadly loving to one child and not very much so to the other, which can also cause an ego wound that gives rise to personality disorder.

As for addiction - addictive disorders happen to all kinds of people of all walks of life including many who grew up well loved and supported. The ignorance that exists in assertions otherwise is a manifestation of the deeply rooted belief that addiction is about character - it absolutely is not, and neuroscience has proven this irrefutably. Or, you could just ask some of the hundreds of thousands of parents who lost a child to the opiod epidemic- many of them really good kids whose doctors got them hooked on oxy by prescribing it for dental procedures and minor sports injuries. [/quote]

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