Dr. Pamela Cooper, M.A., M.B.A., PhD.,

Educational Diagnostician

Learning Disabilities Teacher-Consultant

The Parentification of a Child and its Effects

Children enter the world with countless needs. Until they are old enough to take care of themselves, children are supposed to be free from the demands and concerns of the adult world. Ideally, a child’s parents place their children’s emotional, physical, and developmental needs before their own.

Schools are experiencing an increase in the number of children parentized. Parentized individuals suffer in silence from life overload, stress, and inability to communicate the reasons. Parentification is the process of role reversal whereby a child is obliged to function as a parent figure over siblings and/or the household. In extreme cases, the child is used as a codependent to fill the void of the caretaker’s emotional life.

When a parent has not been parented well themselves or suffer from a disorder, the combination of unaddressed needs and parental power often lead to an unfortunate consequence for their own child, a type of role-reversal called parentification. Parentification is responsible for causing mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, self-abuse, inability to perform academically, perfectionisms and more. The effects and consequences of parentification are profound. Parentified children continually struggle to meet needs they are not able to fulfill, and consequently, they develop deep-seated feelings of inadequacy, a sense of hopelessness, and never being able to manage the challenges life presents.

Example of a parentized child, late to school because they have to get their sibling on the bus, cry if they have to stay after school because they have to be available to pick-up siblings from the bus, having to cook and feed siblings, having to care for siblings during illness or absence of a parent, unable to do homework because they have no extra time for themselves, constantly worrying about sibling, sleep deprived, sad, have to visit he nurse or bathroom often, and unable to concentrate, etc.

Parentified children are assigned a full-time job on the day they are born by their caretaker. Child Protection and Permanency (CP&P) labels these children as Parentized. It is difficult to place a parentized child in the same foster home with their siblings or to understand why their behaviors are different at school.

Two distinct modes of parentification have been identified: instrumental parentification and emotional parentification.

1. Instrumental parentification involves the child completing physical tasks for the family, far beyond normal looking after siblings, paying bills, cooking, housework, or aiding with younger siblings that would normally be provided by a parent.
2. Emotional parentification occurs when a child or adolescent must take on the role of a confidant or mediator for and/or between parents or family members. Emotional deprivation could lead parents to treat the child as a substitute adult figure. The child is expected to take care of and fulfill the emotional needs of the adult, i.e., reassuring the parent that they will be all right when upset, shielding the parent from the emotional consequences of their actions, and adjusting personal behaviors to suit the parent’s emotional needs. The child takes on the role of co-dependent.

The child develops a false-self, being forced prematurely to take on excessive responsibilities with given authority over situations and others (ordering siblings around), to care for the parent (feeding nursing, running errands, dressing, etc.). The child develops “compulsive care giving” behaviors due to the parent inverting the normal parent-child relationship and pressuring the child to be a co-authority figure. The parent encourages the child to develop an unnatural attachment and concern about the parent during times of absence, i.e., when the child goes to school, they are unable to concentrate because they are worrying about the parent, siblings, or what the parent will do to them when they return home.

Choice of child:

Usually, a first-born child is chosen for the parental role. Sometimes the eldest boy is skipped, and the girl child is selected to be parentized. Often, foster, step, different maternal parent, displaced, or adopted children are selected to be parentized.

When there is a disabled child or parent, older siblings, especially girls, are at the greatest risk of parentification. Where a mother-figure is missing, it may be the eldest girl who is forced to take on the mother’s responsibilities, without obtaining autonomy, mental and physical maturity.

Narcissistic parentification occurs when a child is forced to take on the parent’s idealized projection, something which encourages a compulsive perfectionism in the child at the expense of their natural development. Perfectionism is a personality trait that involves excessively exacting standards and critical self-evaluations. In a kind of pseudo-identification, the child is induced by any and all means to take on the characteristics of the parental ego ideal (the individual’s conception of their perfect self or an idealized version of how one wishes to be).

How parentization creates the narcissistic wound

The almost inevitable byproduct of parentification is losing one’s own childhood. In destructive parentification, the child takes on excessive responsibility in the family, without their efforts being acknowledged, appreciated, and without positive supports:  Adopting the role of parental caregiver, the child loses their real place in the family unit and is left lonely, unprotected, and unsure. In extreme instances, there may be what has been called a kind of disembodiment, a narcissistic wound that threatens one’s basic self-identity. In psychology, narcissistic injury, also known as narcissistic wound or wounded ego, is emotional trauma that overwhelms an individual’s defense mechanisms and devastates their pride and self-worth; shame or disgrace is so significant that the individual can never again truly feel good about who they are.

In later life, parentified children may be left struggling with unacknowledged anger, resentment, trust issues, struggle not being in control of all situations, and may end up struggling to form and maintain relationships.

However, not all results of parentification may be negative. Some studies have hypothesized that when a child is the subject of parentification, it might sometimes result in greater later life, psychological resilience (process ability to move forward by successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands). They may have more individuation, (the process of becoming a unique whole person by separating from the collective and the unconscious), a clearer sense of self, and more secure attachment styles during adulthood.

Parentification is extremely common The caregiver may suffer from  a combination of disorders: substance abuse disorders, other addictions, Personality Disorders, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Dependent Personality Disorder, other mental issues and disorders to include dysfunctional, economically depressed or toxic families experience leading to higher levels of stress are more likely to parentized a child.

It is critical that teachers understand how to identify and teach a parentized child in their classroom. School support services are available to assist with parentized identification, classroom accommodations/modifications, and follow-up resources.

The recovering parentized individual must engage in group or individualized therapy to assist with the transition process from being parentized, co-dependence, and transformation into self-actualization. Assistance from a mental health professional is essential on the road to recovery and a balanced life.

Recovery is doable