Alfred Alder: Inferiority Complex
According to the theorist Alfred Adler, every child has a sense of inferiority and inadequacy when coping with the challenges of the world. The child compensates for these feelings by honing other strengths and skills, sometimes to the point of overcompensation (Hoffman, 2020. However, if the child does not attain a sense of competence, he or she may develop an inferiority complex, or a sense that he or she is less rather than equal to his or her peers. This feeling may carry over into adulthood.
According to an article in the Washington Post by Hax (2021), many parents have an inferiority complex about the act of parenting themselves, comparing themselves to other parents and their children to other parents. The Washington Post article takes the form of a letter from a mother whose child is about to attend a preschool, who feels increased inferiority relative to the other parents, expressing the feeling that she does not know what she is doing, compared to her peers. Parenting experts respond with reassurance as well as analyze what is termed an inferiority complex.
The...
Online social media, as well as parenting groups, books, and other online sources telling parents how to parent better, have, according to Hax (2021) increased the anxiety...
…children the best, and not psychologically damage their children by not providing their children with the full range of opportunities.
Adler tends to analyze the inferiority complex as something that begins with the individual, even though larger social forces can reinforce it. The article reinforces the idea that there is no expert in parenting, and parenting is something that everyone feels he or she is doing wrong from time to time. While Adlers inferiority complex is the result of a disruption of normal development, the concept of the inferiority complex detailed in the article reflects the more generalized, colloquial understanding of the inferiority complex that has become accepted in popular culture, thanks to the popularity…
