Parentification

What Is Parentification?

Parentification is a family dynamic in which the child takes on a role reversal and becomes the parent in the family.

In instances of parentification, the child feels it is their responsibility to take care of the parents because the parents are unable to manage their own emotions or care for themselves or their children. The child may be required to take care of their younger siblings or become the negotiator in family feuds.

Examples include:

• Calming down a parent after they yell at younger siblings
• Comforting a parent when they talk about financial stressors
• Cleaning the house and helping feed siblings because the parent is upset or absent
• Missing out on age-appropriate interests and experiences to help manage household responsibilities

Parentification impedes the healthy and natural development of a child because they are so busy caring for their parents and other family members, they are not able to fully embrace their childhood. They miss out on childhood milestones and may struggle with emotional and social development into their adolescent years and adulthood. They may not even realize they experienced parentification until they become an adult and enter into romantic relationships or parenthood themselves and have difficulty coping.

Parentification does occur in families characterized by abuse or neglect, but it is not limited to these situations. It may also arise when parents are overwhelmed by illness, financial hardship, or other stressors that lead them to rely on a child in age-inappropriate ways.

Young children naturally want to help and comfort their parents in a time of need, but when a child becomes expected to take on the role of emotional caretaker is when the line crosses from natural empathy and love to parentification.

Kristen Fuller, MD

What Are The Main Types of Parentification?

The two main types of parentification are:

• Instrumental parentification, where the child takes on tangible adult tasks.
• Emotional parentification, where the child provides emotional support for the parent.

Instrumental parentification centers around the work the child does within the household. In many households, it is normal for children to help out, which helps them develop a sense of pride. However, the lines become crossed when this becomes an everyday task, when it is age-inappropriate, and when family members don’t see this as a sacrifice but rather as an assumed role.

Whether a child’s responsibilities are considered parentification often depends on whether they are developmentally and age-appropriate.

For example, a 7-year-old child who is responsible for bathing and putting three younger siblings to bed is taking on caregiving duties that are well beyond what is appropriate for their age and is experiencing instrumental parentification.

In contrast, a teenager who completes weekly household chores, such as sweeping and vacuuming the floors, is generally engaging in age-appropriate responsibilities that contribute to the household and support the development of independence, rather than assuming a parental role.

Examples of instrumental parentification include the following:

• Managing household chores
• Running errands
• Helping with financial responsibilities to support the parents
• Taking care of younger siblings
• Caring for sick parents

Children naturally want to provide comfort to their parents, but when this becomes their duty because the parents are incapable of managing their own emotions or are seeking attention from their children, it becomes emotional parentification. The child becomes the emotional confidant, helping carry the parent’s emotional burden.

Examples of emotional parentification include the following:

• Helping a parent work through hard emotions
• Helping a parent navigate the emotional turmoil of divorce
• Navigating conflict resolution between parents
• Mediating arguments between parents
• Soothing an angry parent to keep peace in the home
• Providing emotional support to a parent who is mentally unwell
• Parents seeking advice from their children about adult topics

6 Signs You Experienced Parentification as a Child

The effects of parentification often extend well into adulthood, shaping how a person thinks, feels, and relates to others. Although these signs can have many different causes, recognizing several of them together may suggest that parentification was part of your childhood experience.

• Acting as the Family Mediator or Peacemaker: A child constantly steps between parents when they are fighting to keep the peace in the house. This is especially common in divorced households when the child is the communicator between the parents because the parents do not want to communicate with each other.
• Becoming the Parent’s Emotional Confidant: A parent going through a difficult time who shares private, age-inappropriate information with the child or tells the child personal information they expect to keep secret from the rest of the family. This could even be sharing things such as finances with the child. This also happens when the child becomes the constant shoulder for the parent to cry on when the parent is struggling emotionally. Instead of talking to an adult or a therapist, the parent shares their emotions with their child who then comforts them.
• Managing Adult Household Responsibilities: This goes beyond completing age-appropriate household chores and includes paying the bills, operating machinery such as the lawnmower, or being responsible for cleaning the entire house.
• Operating as the Primary Caregiver for Siblings: This can include making school lunches, helping with bathtime and bedtime each night, or changing diapers and preparing meals regularly. It is okay if a teenager wants to help with their baby sibling, but when older children are responsible for taking care of their younger siblings daily, it becomes parentification.
• Being Constantly Praised for Being “Mature”: Parents will often praise their children for being “grown up” because they are taking on the role of being a parent. This praise may come from parents, other adults, or even strangers who see them caring for younger siblings. While the praise may be well-intentioned, it can be confusing for the child, reinforcing the belief that their worth comes from meeting others’ needs. Because children naturally seek approval from caregivers, this positive reinforcement can make it more difficult for them to recognize that they are carrying responsibilities that should not belong to them.
• Feeling Guilt for “Being a Kid”: Children may feel like they cannot go out and play with their friends or enjoy childhood activities because they should be at home taking care of their family.

What Causes Parentification in Families?

Parentification is more common than most people assume. Studies show that it affects up to 30% of children worldwide; however, this number is most likely underestimated because most cases go unrecognized and unreported.

Causes of parentification often include:

• Living in a high-stress home
• Not having external emotional support
• Parental immaturity
• Financial stressors
• Generational trauma
• Parental substance abuse disorders

Children do not have the emotional and developmental bandwidth to shoulder adult problems. They do not know about finances, romantic relationships, addiction, or other deep problems that adults experience. Some of these deep-seated issues are even too much for many adults to handle, and oftentimes this is how parentification develops in the first place.

The Long-Term Effects of Parentification in Adulthood

Parentification can impact a child’s emotional and mental well-being and can show up in many ways throughout adulthood.

If a child is busy taking care of their parents and taking care of the home, they are not able to go through the normal developmental stages of childhood, which include playing with friends or focusing on their schoolwork. This can affect how they develop into adults.

Kristen Fuller, MD

Parentification can increase the risk of mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and emotional instability in adulthood.

They may also struggle with healthy relationships and may feel the need to “parent” their partner or, the opposite, and constantly need attention. They may struggle with setting healthy boundaries because they take on the role of “people pleasers” and may even seek out emotionally unavailable partners and try to “save them”.

Other characteristics of parentification in adulthood include hypervigilance, taking on all the responsibility, pushing people away because they are hyperindependent, or becoming completely disconnected from themselves because they have constantly suppressed their feelings and emotions.

Whether it is romantic relationships, professional relationships with co-workers, or platonic relationships with friends, the long-term effects of parentification play into nearly every relationship in adulthood, and to break these unhealthy behaviors and patterns, therapy may be warranted to properly heal.

How to Heal from Childhood Parentification

It takes a lot of self-work to heal from childhood parentification, and this can be done with or without a therapist, depending on what you prefer.

What happens in childhood shapes and affects how the person experiences throughout adulthood. If a child took on the role of a parent in childhood, then they have already adopted their expectation of how parent-child dynamics work and will carry this into adulthood.

Kristen Fuller, MD

Step 1: Identify, Recognize, and Reflect

The first step is to identify and admit that parentification happened to you during your childhood. This may require bringing up uncomfortable memories and experiences from childhood, and talking to a trusted friend or therapist could help you with these feelings.

Identify which kind of parentification you carried, come up with concrete examples that you experienced, and reflect on how this has impacted your self-esteem and your relationships in adulthood. Oftentimes, people will minimize their experience with parentification because they believe it was their job to help and comfort their parent in a time of need.

Step 2: Examine Your Relationships

The next step is to identify if you are parenting in your romantic relationships or playing the caregiver role to other adults in your life. Do you constantly clean up messes, either physical or emotional, for your partner or friends?Are you the one making all the decisions? Are you always the emotional punching bag? Do you manage the appointments for other people and help with their finances? It is important to understand if you are taking on this role, as this can negatively affect your relationships in adulthood.

Step 3: Learn to Set Boundaries

You must take a step back from parenting other people and take care of yourself by setting boundaries. Learn how to say “no” to others, stop overextending yourself, and learn the importance of taking care of yourself before you pour into others. Allow other adults in your life to handle their own problems and emotions, and keep in mind that you do not need to be “useful” to others in order to be loved. Instead of trying to prove your value, say aloud what you want and need. This allows you to start caring for yourself and what you need, rather than focusing on taking care of other people in your life.

Step 4: Get Professional Support

Seeking support from a licensed mental health professional can be an important step in healing from the effects of parentification. Evidence-based approaches, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), can help identify and challenge unhelpful beliefs that often develop through parentification, including feeling responsible for others’ well-being, struggling to set boundaries, or tying self-worth to caregiving. Depending on your experiences and needs, a therapist may also incorporate other approaches, such as trauma-informed therapy or interpersonal therapy, to help you process past experiences and build more balanced relationships.

Although the effects of parentification can persist into adulthood, healing is possible. By recognizing these patterns, setting healthy boundaries, and seeking support when needed, you can begin to build healthier, more balanced relationships today.