The BDSM community has spent years combating the stubborn notion that being kinky is somehow the result of an unhappy or abusive childhood. Into spanking? Then you must have been spanked as a kid. Into being dominated by a man? You must have daddy issues. It was a relief when some studies showed that kinksters aren’t any more likely to have childhood trauma than vanilla people. But research is always evolving, and now a 2025 study paints a more complex picture. Here’s what you need to know.
Exploring the Link Between BDSM and Childhood
The study authors surveyed BDSM practitioners and vanilla people to learn about three things related to their parents:
- Parenting styles of participants’ mothers and fathers
- Relationship between participants’ parents
- Whether participants were abused by their parents
How the Study Was Conducted
The study authors administered a survey to over 400 Dutch-speaking BDSM practitioners recruited from FetLife, but only 263 of those completed the survey. They gave the same survey to 300 Belgian vanilla people via a market research company. Out of the 263 kinksters, 190 identified with a particular role: 25 percent were d-types, 46 percent were s-types, and 29 percent were switches.
Survey questions focused on the following areas:
| Parenting Styles | Parental Relationship | Abuse |
| Warmth and affection | Emotional togetherness (i.e., communication) | Emotional abuse |
| Hostility and aggression | Dominance and control in the relationship | Physical abuse |
| Indifference and neglect | Unfriendliness toward each other | Sexual abuse |
| Perceptions of not feeling loved | Conflict management | |
| Parental control (i.e., authoritarian parenting style) |
Key Findings: How Parenting Styles Affect BDSM Interests
The BDSM group in this study noted less affectionate and more authoritarian parents than the control group. The BDSM participants also reported higher levels of hostility and aggression and perceptions of not feeling loved by their mothers as compared with vanilla respondents. These differences were mostly present in s-types and switches, not d-types. Switches reported having more authoritarian and hostile fathers than the non-BDSM control group. And d-types observed more unequal power dynamics between their parents.
Additionally, the BDSM group—especially d-types—reported experiencing more childhood physical and emotional abuse than their vanilla counterparts. Reports of sexual abuse and neglect were low in both the BDSM and control groups.
The study authors present a number of hypotheses to account for these findings:
- People who experienced authoritarian parenting styles may be drawn to BDSM because it replicates this power dynamic and enables them to play with it in a safe, consensual way.
- Some people who were abused as children may use BDSM as a way to process this trauma.
- People who were raised in an authoritarian household may be drawn to BDSM as a form of rebellion.
The Study’s Shortcomings
This study has a few limitations. Most importantly, it relied on online convenience sampling from FetLife for the BDSM group, which is representative of people who may be involved in the BDSM scene, but not of all BDSM practitioners. The study excluded BDSM practitioners from the control group, thus only comparing people embedded in BDSM communities versus people reporting zero interest or experience. This overlooks a substantial part of the population that fantasizes about kink without scene involvement. According to the study itself, “The prevalence of BDSM fantasies in the general population…has been reported to reach up to 69%,” yet this majority of kinksters is entirely excluded from the study.
Further, the study depended on participants’ recall of past events, which may not have been completely accurate. Finally, kinksters tend to be more aware of sexual boundaries and therefore may be more likely to identify certain acts as abuse than vanilla people.
What This Means for BDSM Psychology
The study found a strong correlation—not causation—between being raised in an authoritarian home environment and being in the BDSM community, especially for s-types. Given that the way we’re raised affects everything from social skills to self-esteem, it shouldn’t be surprising that it would influence our sexual preferences as well. But it also doesn’t mean that BDSM is inherently unhealthy or negative, even if some people’s reasons for being kinky stem from unhappy childhoods. Life is full of opportunities to make lemonade out of lemons.
Interested in learning more about BDSM research? Check out our other Research Recaps!