This is a tough one to take.
But, these creatures love no one.
Not me, you, her, him…not even their own babies.
So, why do sociopaths have babies?
Why do sociopaths have babies? Maybe you’re calling them a “narcissist” and here we all are… We’ve had children with this partner or spouse thinking we’re building a family. As time passes, and maybe from early on, we notice they aren’t quite participating the way we expected in the pregnancy, the birth or child rearing.
They easily withdraw financially, emotionally and even physically. It’s common for male sociopaths to show up for the birth and take photos holding the newborn, posing as a proud parent. As the weeks and years go by we watch them abuse their kids, control them, steal from them, use them, manipulate, and ignore them, and even abandon their children… So, why do sociopaths bother having children? – Let’s find out.
Why Do Sociopaths Have Babies?

Sadly, for the pathological user, a baby is something else to use.
To the pathological parasitic predator, this is normal. They use all things and all people. So, how can a parasitic predator use a baby or children to their advantage?
There are three consistently common ways…
Three Reasons Sociopaths Have Babies
- To appear normal
- To gain money or property or both
- As a legal (and emotional for us) link “back in” to take from and use us
Let’s go over each of these benefits parasitic predators, whether male or female, find in having babies.
Sociopaths Have Babies to Look Normal
Having babies is important to parasitic predators and once it’s accomplished it gives the sociopath a sense of having done something well. That “job” they imagine they’ve done well is to fulfill an innate survival need: To seem normal. They can do anything to come across as normal. Having a baby is a biggie in seeming normal. Notice how male sociopaths refuse to wear condoms…?
Seeming normal is pathological parasitic predators most basic survival need. In having a child not only have they done a great job seeming normal enough to make that happen, they get their official “normal” card. The proof is in the bassinet. Attaining this badge of normal carries immense benefits. For instance, it gets their parents off their backs. Those parents who have been deeply worried sick over their own strange child.
Having a child let’s the parasitic predator’s parents think, Oh, they finally got their life together… To peripheral onlookers and to just about everyone, the nutter now seems “good” and “normal” because having a baby is something we think is good and normal. In this case, them seeming normal is at the expense of an innocent baby and everyone in that babies life potentially for decades.
Sociopaths Have Babies For Money
Children and babies create what sociopaths see as a permanent open doorway into someone’s life whenever they want it and as a money stream. They know a child means the earth to normal people (though they have no idea what that feels like). They know that because of our ideas about having children that as long as we don’t know what a pathological user is and what that means, we stay in it longer. Therefore, they can use us longer. Because of the children.
Female sociopaths know that courts and the world at large feel a man must continue to pay out child maintenance and/or spousal maintenance. In this way, for the female sociopath, the baby is a paycheck.
Those worried parents who are now grandparents just might put that wayward son or daughter back in their Will, or deed them the family home… or buy them a new one. And sociopaths know that photos of themselves with a new babe or sporting a kid in a stroller around the park bring many, many, many opportunities to suck in new prey who have wallets to dip into as well.
Babies Leave a Door Open to Use and Take
For us as normal humans, if we’ve given birth of fathered a child with someone, we believe that the the child needs both parents. Society, culture tells use that the father or mother ought to equally be able to have access to and raise the child. We believe the kids need this. And, we believe ideally both parents will be there for that child for the rest of our lives. – And the children believe this too, the tragedy here is, that’s the last thing any child needs.
We so firmly believe that each parent ought to be in the child’s life that we’ll even fight, go to court, pay thousands of dollars to ensure that they are… Well, guess what? If that other parent is a pathological parasitic predator this is the last thing any child needs. No child deserves a sociopathic parent.
For all sociopaths babies represent a forever-door. An opening to walk back into your life and use you…forever. They love this. – This is the deal even if you’re calling them a “narcissist” or a “narc” or “narcopath”.
Legal Ramifications Leave the Door Open to Use Us
It’s likely we don’t give it much thought, but if asked, we say we think having a baby is our individual right, choice, and experience. Unfortunately, having a child, whether in or out of a contractual legal marriage, causes laws to fall into place. Legal things loom in to dictate our lives and the child’s if the other bio parent is known, notified or listed on a birth certificate.
Surprisingly, if we’re married, as women, our pregnancy from the day of conception isn’t fully our own. For example, several states will not finalize a divorce if the wife is pregnant with the spouses child. Missouri just passed a law in 2026 to make finalizing a divorce legal when a woman is pregnant.
California is one of the states where divorce while pregnant is not allowed. Shocking…? Yes. Appalling. And a good bit of info is that in the state of Texas if the bio-dad has not seen the infant within the first year of its life, the mother can have their name removed from the birth certificate. – But the best route- no matter where you live, if they’re absent, list the child as “unknown” on your newborn’s birth certificate.
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Sociopaths Use Babies as Bait and a Prop
When a baby comes into the picture, particularly when it’s within a legal marriage, lots of miraculous things come into place. These things are so wonderful when between two normal folks.
For the sociopath, these legal bindings play to their dark desires. To be clear, along with the marriage, inherent in a contract of marriage come rights, such as property rights, and laws of possession. Laws of mutual property, mutual access to bank accounts, securing loans and all kinds of access to your life, by law, because you married. – And guess what? These parasitic predators know this well.
Children are objects and a commodity to a sociopath. For male sociopaths, or female sociopaths pursuing women as partners, children enhance their tool-kit because children are bait. Having a kid makes them seem normal. The kids are a prop to seem normal and to open the way to further personal gain.
Emotions Hook Us Into Sociopaths Having Babies
Not only do legal and contractual things fall into place when a child comes on the scene, with or without marriage but so do emotions. These emotions normal people experience now become the rope that binds us to a sociopath. After all, who doesn’t want the baby to have a father, or be cared for by their mother?
Yikes. When that mother or father is a sociopath our job becomes to keep the child from that monster at all costs. Their work is to keep playing the baby, the courts, normal emotions, our lack of awareness as to what they really are for a paycheck, and that ever-needed respectability facade of “normal”.
And until we take all this in and accept that these creatures exist, there’s a fourth unwavering yet incredibly confounding and frustrating reason sociopaths have babies and do any and all of the things they do: They can’t *not* be what they are.
So, basically and literally as normal people vs the pathologically parasitic, we’re at opposite ends on why to have a child and what that means.
We Have Babies Because We Are Normal
The thing is, we want babies. Genuinely want babies. I they introduce the idea, we assume they want a baby for the reasons that we do and for the reasons that normal people want babies. We believe it’s out of love.
It’s normal to believe people so, we believe them. There’s nothing else to believe when we didn’t know there was this possibility of a lying, thieving life-jacking monster. So in this way, can you shift your gaze around this thinking to another explanation? To see, or at least consider, that in reality maybe they aren’t so talented?
Sociopaths Have Babies to Look Normal
Looking normal is a sociopath’s main job. Pathological predators try as hard as they can to keep a normal face. All day, when other people are around they put a face on top of their real face, which is that of a monster.
This underneath actual face shows itself eventually, but the fact is, we can’t see something we don’t know exists. And “monster” wasn’t in our ability to see because of not know they really are real.
Our normal expectations of how humans behave and our normal innate hard-wired bonding functions cause us to see them through the eyes’ of “good”… The very same good that we are.
Sociopaths Must Seem Normal
They need this “normal” posturing in order to get their hooks into us, and to keep their hooks in, and get those babies as insurance that they have a foot in the door of our lives. This is that thing we call a “mask”.
On the whole, they are not very successful at this, though it’s frequently said that they’re “geniuses”, or “great actors”, they give themselves away.
Narcissistic Abuse Unwound: The Podcast
Safeguard Your Children
As early as possible we are best off if we learn how to maneuver the sociopath out of the child’s life. Here’s the thing: there’s one thing we and the sociopath have completely in common: we both want them gone. As in, we want them gone, and news flash: they want to be gone as well
The sociopath’s ultimate and only motivation and goal is to do whatever they like whenever they like and to get away with it. – Yes, if you’re calling them a narcissist, a narc, a narcopath… Then yes, this stands as the reality. These are sociopathic creatures. Sociopaths.
What Does A Sociopath Really Want?
What the sociopath – a pathological user – wants most is to roam free, unencumbered, regardless of spouses, jobs (if they have one), children, parents, siblings, or any other human. They do not want to give up their toys or their cash – wherever they might have gotten or stolen those things. Once babies come on the scene – unless they gain financially or in some other key and significant way by hanging onto those babies, ultimately they don’t want them.
What the sociopaths want is to be able to slip away. They want to go away. How ironic, in this case, we both want the same thing. And we can facilitate this. How we facilitate this depends on the details of your circumstances.
The first step is to learn how to decode “sociopath-speak”. Every word they say has meaning far beyond hurting our feelings, way past – and more specific than for “power” or “control”. Knowing the sociopath’s language which is so different from our own, is the beginning of setting yourself free.
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The Mask and More
This revolutionary (not easily seen and not talked about) concept of where the mask comes from is life-changing for us. It isn’t a criticism of us or a fault in us. This doesn’t put us further on the back foot: This causes us to see our power in the situation. Our goodness. Their “badness”… And I hope for you to take off the glitter and sparkling awe we hold for their diabolical “abilities”.
In addition to keeping their face in place – literally, physically, they’ve got to paint some markers around themselves that give of the signal of “normal”. These markers are things like money… flashing cash, a place of employment or a self-employment venture, and children, babies… but not too many.
This is why we’re told about a few children, but usually not their multiple batches and litters. – Children are objects and a commodity to a sociopath. In particular for male sociopaths or female sociopaths pursuing women, children enhance their tool-kit: kids are bait for other women in the sense that having a kid makes them seem normal. The kids are a prop. (And, yes, this is true even if you’re still calling them a “narcissist” or a “narc” or “narcopath”.)


You are 100% correct about sociopath’s attitude about children. They view them as possessions, bargaining chips, as accessories to their ‘normal’ mask, using them as bait to lure caring family-type women, and as a tool to keep abusing the healthy parent and mentally tormenting them by manipulating the situation: such as denigrating the other parent in attempts to turn the kids against their healthy parent, being a Disneyland parent where there are no rules or bedtime, and they can eat garbage food, play video games instead of homework, buy them iPhone and laptops without parental supervision, and teach them indulgence instead of discipline.
Everything you’ve written is true, and these types are all the same carbon copies of one another. Your informative site is like reading the manual to a dangerous weapon. The manual doesn’t remove the danger, but it helps to minimize the damage. I definitely paid the price for marrying a sociopath, and I thank my lucky stars that I did not have a child with them during the 12+ year terror campaign.
He had two tween daughters when we met, which he used to create the illusion that he was a loving, caring, and involved parent, which was intended to lower my defenses and quickly create trust when we first began dating. He also used them for cover when he was out conning other women, claiming he was a super busy superdad doing superdad things. I would applaud him and tell him how lucky his kids are. That was actually not the case, I later learned.
He would usually dump them off overnight with random people he barely knew, like harem side-chicks and exes who still pined for him or had a crush on him, or he’d once used as a one-night stand. They would often watch his kids for free and over the weekend thinking it was a sign their relationship was becoming serious, but it was just free childcare to the sociopath. They expect others to do things for them for free, but never reciprocate. He used people to his advantage, and he was only friends with those he could get something from.
When he did spend time with his kids, it was chaotic without structure, rules, or consequences, which worked okay for the one who was a perfectionist and got straight-As, the shy straight-laced daughter; but the oldest one almost didn’t graduate due to poor grades, and she was immediately exploited by traffickers and lured into pornography as soon as she turned 18. That was so devastating, going days without sleep wondering if she was okay and trying to get her back safely after the traffickers convinced her she could make tons of money and become famous. She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which makes it difficult for her to keep friends and jobs due to extreme emotional reactivity and impulsive, self-destructive behavior. She compulsively goes from one horrible abusive relationship to another without any reflection or participating in therapy in between, which I’ve encouraged her to do. She keeps picking men like her father, basically, which is a trauma response. She’s used drugs, and her self esteem is incredibly low, as she has internalized her father’s misogyny.
I have a son who is a year older, and he chose to live at his father’s for the majority of time and visit our house, which was probably a healthy choice to minimize his exposure to the general toxicity. I remember my son was upset when his stepfather cheated on a board game during the holidays, because he had to win at all costs. It was embarrassing. I had to counsel my son to be the bigger person, and made an excuse that the ‘adult’ has issues. That was the generous and forgiving mentality which kept me hooked and on the line for all kinds of abuse and psychological torture for too many years. He weaponized my good character and used it against me, things like loyalty, compassion and forgiveness, tenacity, generosity, genuinely wanting to help a person who claimed they were abused all their life.
They’re always the victim or hero. I was naive and didn’t know that there were people like this, and I underestimated how dangerous he was. Once I started to see the ghoul behind the mask, I was terrified, but I didn’t want to abandon his kids while they were under court order to spend time with him. I tried to make it as nice as possible when they stayed and provide a healthy and safe environment. When I first met him, he was renting a basement studio with only one queen sized bed, which they had to share with him. They were starting middle school, which seemed weird to me. They had no space of their own when they’d stay, which also meant no friends could come over to visit. None of that motivated him to do better. He’d leave work early just to shuttle them back and forth twice a week after school, wasting hours sitting in traffic, just to exercise his visitation rights, even when it was to their detriment. They couldn’t do homework while getting shuttled around, and he didn’t want to pay for them to attend after-school enrichment activities. He’d take them to the zoo over and over, because he had a pass that made it free. The van didn’t have seatbelts for them, either.
So just wanted to confirm that sociopaths aka narcissists are truly terrible parents, and their super caring super-parent persona is fake just like everything else about them. They aren’t emotionally attached to their kids or feel any sense of duty to do right by them. It’s all performative, so they can show off their superiority to others and pretend that they are the best parent ever, whilst actually doing as little as possible for them. They are notoriously cheap, and they avoid spending money on their children even for school supplies or to play sports or participate in field trips and after-school activities. They feel no guilt whatsoever when they turn down their kids’ reasonable request for funds and then buy drugs or expensive shoes for themselves or take a date to a fancy restaurant, which that treatment never lasts past the live bombing stage, fyi.
They triangulate their kids just like they do everyone else. They’ll play favorites and pit them against each other, so the kids will resent each other and they get all their attention. My sociopath seemed to be grooming the oldest child to be like them and not care about others and their feeling or property. He would reward her when she would get into trouble at school or get caught shoplifting. He resisted my suggestions that the kids should help out with chores and cleaning up after themselves, creating more work for me. It’s tragic, and it hurts my heart to think about what the future holds holds for them.
This is the pattern that they all follow. Unfortunately there’s no escaping these outcomes if you stay in the relationship and have children together. These mentally disordered individuals are extremely harmful to their children, and the courts often don’t recognize it, or they believe that children should spend time with both parents, no matter what, even if the other parent is abusive and doesn’t act in their children’s best interest. Healthy parents often will try to intervene on their children’s behalf and notify the court that the sociopath is physically harming the kids or cruelly demeaning them, which is what sociopaths consider as having fun, and the court won’t do anything about it, treating the healthy parent like they’re lying because they want to get back at their former partner, or like they’re just making things up for attention or bargaining power.
In some cases, the sociopath petition the court to order the children attend a parental unification camp to counteract parental alienation, blaming the healthy parent for interfering in the parent-child relationship, and the kids are forcibly taken, like kidnapped, and subject to indoctrination and coercive control where they are forced to make false statements against their healthy parent or acquiesce to the sociopath’s demands under threat that they will never see their healthy parent again unless they comply. It’s very traumatic for the children.