Myth: sugar babies all have low self-esteem

False as a rule. Sugar babies report agency, but research shows a mixed picture of vulnerability and economic need alongside choice.

4 minute readUpdated 2026-09-30

The stereotype is false as a rule, and the research backs this up. A scoping review found sugar babies overwhelmingly report agency in their arrangements. But three other studies show a more complicated picture: one found openness to sugar relationships linked with vulnerability and poor emotion regulation, and another linked it with childhood trauma and financial need. The research measures different things in different samples, and sweeping claims about who enters these arrangements do not hold.

What the scoping review shows

Stenersen and colleagues screened nearly 3,000 articles on sugar dating and included 27 studies spanning different countries and populations. Their finding: sugar babies overwhelmingly reported agency in their arrangements ¹. They made choices, set terms, and named their reasons for entering them. That is not a picture of low self-esteem or people who could not do anything else.

The review also noted that research on sugar dating still tends to use narrow samples and focus almost only on heterosexual arrangements. The picture is incomplete. But within what is known, agency is the pattern. So is stigma: the same people who described making deliberate choices also described shame. The two can coexist.

What the Hungarian study measured

Meskó and colleagues surveyed 500 Hungarian women aged 18-35 about their openness to sugar relationships. They found that openness was predicted by impaired personality functioning and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies ². That sounds like low self-esteem, but the researchers point out a crucial detail: they measured attitudes, not people in actual arrangements. The study cannot say whether people who are open to the idea and people who are actually in arrangements are the same group.

The distinction matters. Someone can be open to an arrangement in a survey and never enter one. Someone might answer yes because they are curious, or because they checked a box without thinking hard. The survey measured willingness to consider, not choices actually made or arrangements that lasted. And low scores on personality measures are not the same as low self-esteem.

The researchers call for a psychological lens instead of a moral one, and note that openness may reflect both deeper vulnerabilities and strategic or permissive attitudes. Vulnerability is not the same as low self-esteem, and it does not mean someone has no choice.

What the student survey found

Patel and colleagues surveyed 1,582 undergraduates at one US university over five months in 2019 and 2020. Of them, 5.2% had sugar dated. Students who had sugar dated were 2 to 5 times more likely to report childhood trauma on the 10-item ACE questionnaire, and more likely to receive financial aid ³. The authors concluded that financial need and childhood trauma could heighten the risk of exploitation.

This study links sugar dating with economic stress and adverse experiences, which is different from what we mean by self-esteem. A person can have stable self-regard and still be broke. A person can have experienced hardship and still make deliberate choices about their own life. The study shows a correlation, not a cause. Financial need and past trauma do not mean low self-esteem, and they do not automatically mean exploitation happened.

Why the stereotype persists

Sugar dating flips the usual scripts about dating and money. The person usually expected to earn money does not. The person usually expected to pay may do so explicitly. That breaks a norm, and norms get protected by stereotypes: she must be desperate, or broken, or she would not do that. He must be buying something he cannot win. Stereotypes feel more comfortable than admitting the script can be written differently, or that people's reasons are complicated.

The stereotype also lets people on both sides distance themselves from any discomfort or harm. If she has low self-esteem and he has money to spare, it can feel like a mismatch that justifies itself. He is not taking advantage of her; she is not settling for less than she deserves. Research that complicates this picture is harder to hear. If she has agency and he has to negotiate terms, both people become accountable for what they agree to.

Three honest questions

Am I assuming low self-esteem because the arrangement itself looks wrong to me, or because I have met someone in one who told me about their own struggles? Stereotype or evidence.
If someone you know entered a sugar arrangement, would you assume they lacked self-esteem, or would you ask why they did it? Double standard is a tell.
What would it look like for a person to have high self-esteem, stable self-regard and agency and also be in a sugar arrangement? If you cannot picture it, that is the stereotype at work.

Sugar dating exists because people's needs and wants do not follow one plot. The person entering an arrangement may be thoughtful about money, or experimental, or strategic about time. They may have been through hard things. Self-esteem and self-awareness are separate from any of that.

If you are thinking about whether sugar dating is for you, get clear on your own reasons first. Read the sugar baby guide for what to watch for, and the page on sugar dating for how Dateable works.