Too Much and Never Enough

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes alcohol addiction and emotional neglect, as well as discussions of sociopathy, narcissism, and other personality disorders.

The long-term impacts of family dynamics serve as an overarching theme running throughout Too Much and Never Enough, as the author highlights the role these relationship patterns play in shaping individual family members’ futures, even generations later. “Family dynamics” refer to the pattern of interaction among relatives, their roles within the relationships, and the factors that shape those relationships and interactions. Author Mary L. Trump, the granddaughter of Fred Trump Sr. and daughter of Freddy Trump, establishes family dynamics as a primary theme in her work by discussing not only her relationship to the seven members of the immediate Trump family, but also their relationships to one another. Chiefly among these are the relationships and interactions between Fred Sr. and his two oldest sons, Freddy and Donald. The other members of the immediate Trump family—the matriarch Mary, first daughter Maryanne, daughter Elizabeth, and youngest son Robert—play a less prominent role in the narrative, but their interactions with their Fred Sr. and Donald are critical to understanding the power structure of the family and their place within it.

Some of Trump’s primary focuses throughout her book are the ways in which Fred Sr. treated his oldest son, Freddy, the ways in which he knowingly created a rivalry between Freddy and Donald, and the ways in which he clearly came to favor Donald. In Chapter 2, Trump argues that “Fred dismantled his oldest son by devaluing and degrading every aspect of his personality and natural abilities until all that was left was self-recrimination and a desperate need to please a man who had no use for him” (43). As Trump points out a number of times, Freddy, as the oldest son, was initially chosen and prepared to become his father’s right-hand man, but his opportunities and responsibilities within Trump Management were stifled. Eventually, Freddy walked away to follow his dream of becoming an airline pilot, a decision that Fred Sr. and Donald would mock for years to come. When Donald graduated from college, he went directly to work for his father in his brother’s old job. According to the author, “from his first day on the job, my twenty-two-year-old uncle was given more respect and perks and paid more money than my father ever had been” (83). She suggests that this was purposeful on Fred Sr.’s part as a way to shame Freddy.

In terms of how family dynamics affect the other three Trump children, the author makes the case that all three lack their own identities because of the attention that Fred Sr. naturally gave to Freddy, as the heir apparent who ultimately disappointed, and Donald, whom they were eventually to defer to. In Chapter 3, Trump writes that Robert’s problem was that he was an afterthought as the youngest and that Elizabeth’s problem as the middle child was her family’s indifference. According to Trump, Elizabeth “was […] separated by her brothers on either side by an age gap of three or four years. Shy and timid as an adolescent, she didn’t speak much, having learned the lesson that neither of her parents was really listening” (50-51). Maryanne, on the other hand, was the oldest, but “was saddled with being a smart, ambitious girl in a misogynistic family” (50).

Throughout the text, the author establishes patterns of dysfunction and emotional neglect in the relationships among the Trump family to highlight their lasting impact on the family, and country, for decades to come.