How does not being hugged as a child by one’s own parents affect one’s personality as an adult?

My parents never hugged us kids. They never said “I love you.” I can only speak for myself and not my brothers, but I don’t like people touching me. I don’t like people close to me in elevators or close spaces. I start having mini panic attacks when someone insists on hugging me. Of course there is no way of knowing if this was caused by my parents never hugging me, but there you have it.

This question begs a very deep and complicated multitude of answers that vary from child to child. I am one of those children among far too many in this world. Volumes of books could fill a library to the brim and probably not answer everything. I can not possibly provide you an adequate answer but I hope somehow you may find it for yourself.

Way too many variables involved to answer. Every personality develops by itself and, at least in part, independant of outside influences. The nature vs. nurture debate definately plays a part in this.

I’m not a hugger, neither is my most awesome daughter who just scored Taylor Swift tickets while cloning a gene in her molecular biology lab at UCLA

I agree that results must vary significantly. Many folks are non huggers, whose children understand perfectly well that their parents love them deeply. On the other hand there are prolific huggers who abuse the shit out of their kids. Would you guess Trump received a lot of hugging from his folks?

Everybody’s different, so the same actions or lack of actions will have different outcomes for different people, plus there are other mitigating factors, like what the households are like, is there abuse, neglect, no abuse, no neglect, etc. Also, just because someone is not a hugger doesn’t mean they have a cold personality, so there are too many factors to say “A + B =C.”

Are you asking for personal experience or some kind of research into the effect of not being hugged in general?

Personally, I was raised in a similar environment to @chyna, and I became o contradiction. I like to be touched, but I would feel weirded out if someone touch me. I feel awkward giving touch too. It’s like something you can only dream of having.

From the books that I read, touch is more important than we realize. We human generally benefit from touch, and children who don’t get touch thrive less than those that do. But I think the point is less about the touch itself, but about affection. You may not need to touch someone to show affection, but if you are actually cold and uncaring, that would have an effect.

I don’t know how non hugging as a kid affects or relates to adult personality.
My dad died when I was 4 and my mom never hugged me (she was always gone working or sleeping). My two older sisters took care of me. They were mean to me most of the time.
As an adult I have an introvert personality and according to medical doctors I have an “anxiety problem” (I refuse to take drugs for that).

My folks weren’t big huggers. I don’t think it affected me in any way.

Sorry @Dutchess_III, but I have to disagree. You are always posting pics of spiders on Facebook. Clearly the lack of hugging affected you. :-)

LOLL!!!!!!

See @chyna you were right ;)

Congorats to your remarkable daughter @caravanfan!