Parentification
A role reversal in which a child meets a parent's emotional or practical needs: confidant, mediator, carer of siblings or of the household.
What drives it
Keeps the family functioning and secures the child a place by being needed. Leaves an adult who is competent and responsible and often unable to receive care.
How it shows
Work
Over-responsible; picks up others' work; manages up and soothes the boss's moods; superb in a crisis; resentful when nobody notices; delegates badly; a burnout candidate.
Relationships
Chooses partners who need looking after; uncomfortable being cared for; still the family's crisis manager at 45.
Self
Your antennae for other people's needs are always up, and you feel uneasy or guilty when someone looks after you.
What tells it apart
Codependency: Codependency is a popular term for over-focus on another, often an addict; parentification is the childhood role that often produces it.
Self-sacrifice schema: The schema is the adult belief that others' needs come first; parentification is the history behind it.
People-pleasing: People-pleasers seek approval and defer; parentified adults take charge and carry responsibility, sometimes bossily.
A test
Ask who looked after whom at home, then watch whether the person can accept help without immediately paying it back.
Questions to carry
- When offered help, how quickly does the person find a way to pay it back?
- Growing up, who looked after whom in my home, and where was I in that?
How strong the research is
moderate. Measured with filial-responsibility scales and linked to later distress; some studies find benefits, such as competence and empathy, when the caregiving was acknowledged and limited.
Where it comes from
Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy and Geraldine Spark, 1973
Sources
- Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child (Das Drama des begabten Kindes) (1979)