Parentification

Have you ever met a young person and said, “That person seems like an old soul”? Or maybe you have met a child or young person who seemed exceptionally mature for their age. You may have even complimented the young person or their parent/s for the mature behavior. What you may actually be seeing is something called emotional parentification.

Emotional parentification is a role reversal. It occurs when a child is forced to act as an emotional caretaker for their parent or caregiver. Instead of an adult supporting the child, it becomes the child supporting the parent. It describes what
happens when a child takes on the role of emotional caretaker for a parent: keeping the peace, absorbing adult tension and managing the feelings of the adults before their own needs.

Two types of parentification

While people may be more familiar with thr term emotional parentification. Actually there are two forms of parentification: instrumental parentification and emotional parentification.

Instrumental parentification occurs when a child takes on day-to-day household responsibilities that are developmentally inappropriate for their age. For example, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of younger siblings. Sometimes children are willing and interested in these activities. When it occurs more often than not, it interferes with normal childhood experiences and can cause the child to feel chronic stress and burnout.

Emotional parentification occurs when a child is expected to fulfill the emotional and psychological needs of their parent or caregiver. For example, acting as the parent’s confidant, providing comfort during distress, mediating conflicts between parents (especially during a separation or divorce), or being responsible for keeping peace in the home. This can lead to severe attachment disruptions, anxiety, depression, and a tendency to suppress their own emotions.

While the two forms of parentification are distinctly different, they frequently overlap.

Origins of Parentification

Instrumental or emotional parentification develops in a variety of homes:

• authoritarian homes, where a child learns very early that the adult’s emotional state is the one that sets the rules.
• homes where there is domestic abuse. It is another situation where the safest thing to do is to read the room and comply.
• households with an uninvolved or emotionally absent parent, where the child fills the gap because no one else does.

In any case, the child early on learns there wasn’t space for their needs. A child who notices their parent is struggling quietly puts their own feelings away to accommodate that.

This dynamic usually occurs in families dealing with parental substance abuse, mental illness, divorce, or a general lack of adult support. The parent relies on the child to fill their own unmet attachment or emotional needs.

Roles Children Play

There are four primary roles that children play when parentification occurs:

1. The “Therapist” or Confidant: Parents may confide in their children about adult issues, such as financial struggles, legal troubles, or marital infidelity. The parent may ask a child to listen to or give advice on the parent’s dating life or personal trauma. Additionally, the child might be used as the primary source of emotional comfort and validation after a stressful day or a breakup.
2. The Peacemaker and Mediator: The child acts as a buffer by taking responsibility for keeping a parent in a good mood to prevent yelling or abuse. Maybe the child gets pulled into refereeing to two warring parents, or being forced to act as the primary emotional support for younger siblings because the adults in the home are neglectful.
3. The Supporter of the Parent’s Ego: A child feels the need to provide constant reassurance to the parent that they are a good parent or that everything is going to be okay. Or the child will downplay personal achievements or hide normal childhood struggles so as not to upset, burden, or trigger the parent’s own emotional reactions.
4. The Secret Keeper: The child is burdened with keeping inappropriate family secrets. Interestingly, parentification frequently appears in households that look from the outside as if they are functioning perfectly normally. Children take on the responsibility of not calling attention to the dysfunctional household.

Long-Term Effects

While parentified children often grow up to be highly empathetic, capable, and responsible, this comes at a heavy cost. In adulthood, these individuals frequently struggle with:

• Hyper-responsibility: Feeling constantly responsible for other people’s feelings and well-being.
• Poor boundaries: Difficulty saying “no” or prioritizing their own needs over others’.
• Suppressed emotions: Pushing down their own feelings to avoid being an emotional burden.
• Relationship anxiety: Fear of abandonment or gravitating toward needy, dependent partners.

Healing

Healing of a parentified child requires unlearning the habit of over functioning and actively prioritizing your own needs. Key steps include: 1) grieving your lost childhood, 2) practicing re-parenting, 3) setting strict boundaries, and actively 4) allowing yourself to ask for help.

Navigating this trauma takes time and intentional effort. The most effective strategies to guide your healing journey include:

1. Grieving your lost childhood: Acknowledge the loss by allowing yourself to feel the anger, heartache, and grief for what you missed out on. Validate your experience by recognizing that being treated as an adult confidant or caregiver was a form of invisible trauma, not just a way of “being helpful”.
2. Practice reparenting yourself: Identify your needs by taking the time to ask yourself, What do I need right now? Speak to your inner child by addressing the younger version of yourself with compassion. Let your inner child know that it is safe to rest and that they don’t have to be perfect to be loved.
3. Set strict boundaries: Drop the rescuer role by stopping anticipating the needs of others or rushing in to fix their problems. And by learning to say, “No.” Practice turning down requests without feeling guilty. You are allowed to be unavailable when you are tired.
4. Practice asking for help: Start asking for help in small ways, for example, asking friends, partners, or colleagues for minor assistance to break the habit of handling everything on your own. And accept support by embracing the relief that comes from sharing the load instead of carrying it all alone.
5. Seek Professional Support: Unwinding deep-rooted family patterns and nervous system hypervigilance is best done with a licensed, trauma-informed therapist.

Summary

When you have been emotionally or instrumentally parentified, its becomes part of who you are and how you think. It doesn’t have to be that way. Setting boundaries and asking for/accepting help are the first steps to making changes in your life.

With warmest regards,

Thank you so much for reading this blog. If you enjoyed the content, please check out other blogs at:
RelationshipsRelearned.com
RVingNomads.com

In addition to blogs and articles, I have written a series of self-help books called The Personal Empowerment Series and a fictional series named The Charlotte Novella Series. To view my books and novellas I have written, please go to my Amazon Authors Page.

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Kathryn Maietta, MSW, LCSW Licensed Clinical Social Worker / Author and Blogger

I am a licensed clinical social worker in Maine and in Texas. The focus of my practice has been working individually with adult men and women and working with couples. I received my BSW from Baylor University and my MSW from Boston University. Since 2020 I have published a series of self-help books and written a bi-weekly mental health blog.

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