Burdened Children

Theory, Research, and Treatment of Parentification

Nancy D. Chase

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN: 9780761907640, 9780761907633
• eBook ISBN: 9781452235929
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

Editor Nancy Chase defines parentified children as parents to their parents—those are the children who are compelled to fulfill the role of parent at the expense of their own developmentally appropriate needs and pursuits. With uncanny sensibilities, these children are attuned to their parents? moods, wishes, vulnerabilities, and nuances. This volume is a comprehensive study of parentification in the family, covering both theoretical as well as clinical topics. Contributors have written chapters that are grouped into two sections: theory and research, and clinical and broader contextual perspectives. Part One of this book covers research related to parentification and gender, work addiction, families with a disabled or chronically ill child, and assessment for clinical or research practices. The chapters having a stronger clinical or contextual emphasis address varied interventions and theoretical orientations and posit parentification in cultural and ethnic contexts. Students, academics, and professionals in areas of family studies, social work, child abuse, developmental psychology, school psychology, and family therapy will find Burdened Children an excellent resource on this phenomenon.

PART I

---

Theory and Research Perspectives

CHAPTER 1

---

Parentification

An Overview of Theory, Research, and Societal Issues

Nancy D. Chase

INTRODUCTION

Parentification as a topic of scholarly investigation presents some special challenges in determining scope that, at the outset of this overview, are important to specify. These challenges are themselves factors offering insight into the concept of parentification and its workings in parent-child relations, in families, and in communities and societies across generations.

References to generational boundary transgression appear in a very wide range of clinical descriptions and empirical studies. Parentification, the parental child, role reversal, and generational boundary dissolution are concepts directly mentioned or implicated in literature on children of alcoholics and familial alcoholism, co-dependency, sexual abuse, single-parent families, the impact of parental death or mental illness on the family, marital conflict, divorce, addictive relationships, attachment styles, infant and child development, identity development and adolescent separation, hyperactivity/attention-deficit, depression, and anxiety. In other words, a comprehensive examination of parentification could lead into seemingly inexhaustible sources of relevant information and insight, thus making it difficult to know where to set limits on investigating this topic. With consideration of parentification most often embedded in related topics such as those listed, it is not surprising to find that studies of parentification per se are somewhat limited in number (see also Jurkovic, 1997). Perhaps it is easier to study parentification if the focus is actually directed to more tangible, less covert phenomena.

Determining which of countless theoretical constructs to use in explaining the nature and effects of parentification is another challenge to address in attempting an adequate review of this literature. In understanding the effects of parentification, one might begin with references to fundamental assumptions of psychoanalytic theory regarding “narcissistic injury” and transference (Burt, 1992; Lowen, 1985; Miller, 1981; Searles, 1975). Further understanding may be gained by considering various psychodynamic descriptions of parentification, most often according to its impact on psychosocial development (Erikson, 1959, 1963, 1968) or object-relations development (Mahler, 1968; Masterson & Costello, 1980; Winnicott, 1958, 1965, 1971), attachment (Alexander, 1992; Bowlby, 1980; Jacobvitz & Bush, 1996; Zeanah & Klitze, 1991), and development of self (Kohut, 1971, 1977; Kohut & Wolf, 1978). In addition to psycho-dynamic constructs for understanding parentification, the literature also includes descriptions that emphasize relational dynamics (Boszormenyi-Nagy & Spark, 1973) and strategic (Madanes, 1981) and structural aspects (Minuchin, Montalvo, Guerney, Rosman, & Schumer, 1967) in families. Various family therapy theories describe relevant concepts such as intergenerational transmission, triangulation, boundaries, and child-focused families. In addition, parentification can be examined from societal, cultural, and historical perspectives that still further broaden the context in which such phenomena are placed (Aries, 1960/1962; Elkind, 1982; Garbarino, 1981; Greenleaf, 1978; Harkness & Super, 1983; Harrison, Wilson, Pine, Chan, & Buriel, 1990; Schneider, 1995). Many believe that greater prevalence of certain social conditions such as one-parent families, financial stress, social isolation, and disintegration of community result in greater demands on children to raise themselves, to become parentified in response to overtaxed adults who are unavailable, or at best are “doing the best they can” in a depleting and confusing postmodern society. Questions about the short- and long-term effects of childhood parentification are poignant when social and cultural circumstances make it increasingly difficult for adults to receive the logistical and emotional supports they need to parent children (Bronfenbrenner, 1977; Edelman, 1987; Pipher, 1994).

Finally, the theoretical and empirical literature on parentification addresses many questions. How is parentification defined? What are its patterns? Is parentification simply parent-child role reversal in the performance of instrumental tasks? Or, more broadly, is parentification characterized as a transgression or breakdown of generational boundaries in emotional as well as functional areas? Is there “normal” or nonpathological parentification, and if so, what distinguishes it from unhealthy parentification? When, and according to what conditions, do parentification patterns become problematic or dysfunctional? What are immediate and long-term effects of childhood parentification? Are descriptions of parentification limited to relationship dynamics between adults (parental figures) and children, or do such descriptions also include adult-to-adult relationships? What interventions are useful in working with parentified children and their families, or with adults who continue to struggle unhappily with the residual patterns of their parentified status from childhood or adolescence? In one of the most recent examinations of parentification, its etiology, and its treatment, Jurkovic (1997) integrates existential, ontological considerations and an ecological framework for understanding human development. Jurkovic, from this perspective, broadens the questions regarding the theoretical construct to include those of an ethical nature about what human beings “owe” each other in a variety of human arrangements—adult to adult, adult to child, child to parent—and involving issues of power, loyalty, responsibility, entitlement, and posterity. “Co-being,” he writes, “has ethical implications” (p. 15). To understand most fully a relational dynamic such as parentification, one must contemplate essential qualities of human relating and the functioning of society. Jurkovic continues by saying, “the livelihood of the newborn and ultimately the viability of the human community depend on responsible and ethical inter-generational relating” (p. 15), and by making this assertion he places the study of parentification in a context encompassing, but not limited to, individual developmental issues or isolated family dynamics. Furthermore, Jurkovic makes a substantive argument for analyzing the development and symptomatology of “destructive parentification” as a form of child maltreatment with a mandate of establishing criteria comparable to frameworks used for defining neglect and physical abuse.

Given these factors, it is understandable that a comprehensive review of parentification studies has not been undertaken. On the other hand, these challenges also make this topic compelling simply by virtue of its pervasiveness. The concept of parentification becomes a meeting point for so many varied perspectives and issues (intrapsychic, interpersonal, historical, societal) that, at the risk of becoming diluted because of breadth, it offers rich possibilities for applications to clinical practice, research, and scholarship. The purpose of this chapter is to give readers a sufficiently comprehensive overview of varied theoretical, empirical, sociocultural, and historical approaches to the concept of parentification and to illustrate the breadth and depth of its relevance to clinical practice and ongoing research.

THEORETICAL CONSTRUCTS FOR
UNDERSTANDING PARENTIFICATION

Despite numerous descriptions of theories, concepts, and definitions, it is generally believed that parentification in the family entails a functional and/or emotional role reversal in which the child sacrifices his or her own needs for attention, comfort, and guidance in order to accommodate and care for logistical or emotional needs of the parent. Because children need their parents, children learn readily to respond to what their parents need. Responsiveness to parental need is not inherently problematic, and in fact, in a healthy sense, it helps the child develop sensitivities and reciprocity with others. In its worst sense, however, exacting such “responsiveness” from one’s children may be gravely exploitive of them. In extreme cases when a parent’s dependency is too great and when the parent abdicates parental responsibility for structuring and protecting the child from “doing too much” or “carrying the load,” the parentified child may learn in this process that her needs are of less importance than those of others, or may actually become depleted of energy and time for pursuing school, friendships, childhood activities, and, at later stages, exploration of career and relationship possibilities. These pursuits may be postponed or abandoned because of overriding and persistent priorities of parental expectations and demands communicated overtly or covertly in the family. Because the child often complies in meeting the parent’s requests, such dynamics in families are confusing and sometimes quite subtle. When adults abdicate parental responsibility, children face abdication, by default, of their childhood status and the range of developmental needs, pleasures, struggles, and opportunities childhood rightly entails. Children thus learn first to give up their childhood, and then, with a cycle of abdicating needs and responsibilities well grooved, they become candidates for later abdicating adult responsibilities, including those involved in raising children.

Generational divisions and boundaries exist in families and societies cross-culturally and serve multiple functions for protecting spousal bonds and ensuring developmentally appropriate separation-individuation of children from their parents (Frances & Frances, 1976; Parsons, 1954). When generational boundaries are altered or confused, parentification may manifest in at least one (or a combination) of three possible forms: child-as-parent, child-as-mate, and spouse-as-parent (Boszormenyi-Nagy & Spark, 1973; Minuchin, 1974; Sroufe & Ward, 1980; Walsh, 1979). Roles of the parentified child as parent and/or surrogate mate to the parent may be further delineated as roles designed to fulfill (a) logistical, instrumental parenting tasks, such as preparing meals, caring for younger children, performing household chores, earning money, or managing the family budget, and (b) emotional, expressive parenting tasks such as providing for or responding to the emotional needs of the parent or family, and serving as parental confidant, peacemaker, or mediator (Jurkovic, Jessee, & Goglia, 1991). Expressive types of parentification are considered to be a greater threat to a child’s well-being than parentification through assignment to the more clearly defined and acknowledged instrumental roles (Jurkovic et al., 1991; Minuchin, 1974; Parsons & Bales, 1955). Because all families communicate parentifying messages to some degree to their children, discussions of parentification must distinguish carefully between benign and detrimental types and duration of parentified roles. Clinicians agree that assuming some adult-like responsibilities may actually be beneficial to the child’s growth and healthy sense of belonging and usefulness. Similarly, all children to some degree carry their parents’ dreams and unfinished struggles forward to a new generation, and certainly as mature adults they contribute to the care of aging parents. Parentification becomes problematic, however, when there is a lack of acknowledgment and reciprocity between adults and children in terms of the nurturance exchanged, or when expectations, emotional or logistical, exceed the child’s abilities, damage well-being, and ignore the child’s developmentally appropriate needs, thus setting in motion detrimental and interrelated eycles of abdication in both parent and child (Boszormenyi-Nagy & Spark, 1973; Jurkovic, 1997; Minuchin, 1974).

Jurkovic (1997) delineates four categories of roles on a continuum of responsibility according to duration and extensiveness of caretaking. Extreme overfunctioning is labeled “destructive parentification,” and extreme under-functioning is “infantilization.” In the middle range of this hypothetical continuum are “healthy nonparentification” and “adaptive parentification.” These two categories entail some appropriate responsibility for the child. In the “adaptive” category, caretaking responsibility may increase or intensify because of crisis or acute stress, but such contribution by the child is recognized and expected for a limited time only. Jurkovic also lists nine criteria used in assessing destructive parentification in families. The varied qualities and pervasiveness of parentification are so great that clearly defined terminology and criteria are necessary to facilitate this concept’s usefulness in research and clinical practice (Jurkovic, 1997).

Clinical documentation of parent-child role reversal appeared long before the descriptive labels of “parental child” or “parentification” were assigned to such phenomena. One of the earliest references to the notion of parental role reversal was Schmideberg’s (1948) statement that “an infantile level of development persists actively in all adults” (p. 207) but persists to such an extent in some adults that these adult individuals may unconsciously look to their own children for parental care and nurturance. In the early 1950s, Bateson’s studies of paradoxical communication patterns between schizophrenic children and their mothers revealed antecedents to more recent, and less pathological, notions about parentification. Bateson, Jackson, Haley, and Weakland’s publication of “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia” (1956) described the concept of “double-bind” in which the child, who lacks the cognitive capacity and language skill of the parent, is “caught” in a paradoxical interaction with a mother who “is driven not only to punish the children’s demand for love, but also to punish any indieation which the child may give that he knows that he is not loved” (Haley, 1976, p. 67). In this reactive bind, predicated on the parent’s need and power, the child is never allowed an experience of his or her own feelings or self-experience, a situation that may culminate in the extreme expression of schizophrenic psychosis (Bateson et al., 1956). In the same year, Mahler and Rabinovitch (1956) wrote about “various unnatural roles” assumed by children in families where marital conflict or tension existed, and stated that such “unnatural roles” could have deleterious effects on the child’s social and emotional development if not mitigated by an adult’s capacity to show “empathy for the child as a child” (p. 53).

The decade of the 1960s brought the publication of numerous articles with references, direct and indirect, to what later would be termed parentification. Rosenbaum (1963) presented case studies of preadoleacent children “overburdened” with care of younger siblings, and concluded that, because of “aggressive and murderous impulses [characteristic of sibling rivalries] . . . not tempered by maternal drives,” older children, even adolescents, were ill-equipped developmentally to care for younger siblings (p. 517). Morris and Gould (1963) connected parental physical abuse of children to role reversal, and they appealed to social service agencies, courts, mental health workers, and physicians to view role reversal as an antecedent to child abuse a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Theory and Research Perspectives
• Part II: Clinical and Contextual Perspectives
• Index
• About the Authors