Lost Childhoods

The Plight Of The Parentified Child

Gregory J. Jurkovic

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317838845
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Parentification - the assumption of responsibility for the welfare of family members by children and adolescents - is increasing as a result of various forces both inside and outside of the family. Evidence suggests that pathological parentification of children has serious consequences for them, and for succeeding generations, as do other forms of maltreatment.; This work is an exploration of the forces at work in families with parentified children - and the treatment strategies that hold the promise of interrupting a cycle of destructive behaviour.; The author begins by guiding the reader from conceptualization to possible causes and manifestations of parentification, facilitating a clear understanding of how and why this scenario is common. The second part of the book builds on this foundation to introduce methods of assesment, treatment, and prevention. This part of the text includes insights into the professional, ethical and personal challenges faced by therapists who themselves have a history of pathological parentification.

Part I
Understanding

Chapter 1
Mapping the Territory

Although the term parentification has only recently secured a place in the argot of clinicians, many of the characteristics and dynamics it denotes have long been recognized by theorists, practitioners, and researchers of various orientations. This soon became apparent to us in our efforts to understand Jenny and her family from a traditional academic perspective. Our literature search uncovered a multiplicity of interrelated constructs (see Appendix A).

Yet, not unlike the proverbial blind men who each uniquely described the same elephant from diverse vantage points, investigators in this area have highlighted different processes and role behaviors. Are they referring to the same phenomenon? What are the parameters of parentification? How might this process be theoretically framed to capture its complex psychosocial and ethical nature? The answers to these questions are important at this juncture because they will provide benchmarks for discussion of theory, research, and practice in the rest of this book.

Parentification and Kindred Constructs

The spawning beds of various constructs that relate to parentification include individual and family psychodynamic approaches (e.g., false self, symbiotic therapist, symbiotic survival pattern, delegation), family systems theory (e.g., family healer, parental child, over- and underfunctioning relational patterns), sociological and anthropological observations (unfulfilled role functions, junior partner), addiction models (e.g., co-dependence, family hero), and perspectives from developmental psychology, including attachment theory (e.g., spousification, hurried child, compulsive caregiving).¹

Of note is that investigators from differing theoretical traditions, disciplines, and research settings have drawn attention to children who either directly or indirectly perform caregiving functions in the family and fulfill parental needs and fantasies, often at the expense of their own development and self-realization. Thus, descriptively, at least, there appears to be a high degree of face validity for the parentification construct.

Conceptually, complementary unconscious processes, role assignments, functional interdependencies, boundary issues, exploitation, caring and therapeutic tendencies, attachment patterns, and co-dependency refer to phenomena that are constituent parts of parentification. Indeed, parentification can be seen as a central organizing construct for individual psychodynamic, sociofamilial, and existential-ethical perspectives on parent-child relationships. It is an emphasis on the latter that distinguishes Boszormenyi-Nagy’s theorizing in this area. He assumes that deeper, covert, or “invisible” existential-ethical processes structure psychological adaptations and family functioning across the generations (Boszormenyi-Nagy & Krasner, 1986).

Specifically, the existential interdependence of family members raises questions about mutual concern, accountabilities, responsibilities, and loyalties. Are expectations and needs balanced in the family? How do children repay their parents for giving them nurturance, structure, and life itself? What can parents reasonably expect in light of the existential fact that their offspring depend initially on receiving more than they give? Is the power differential between the generations, even if marked by boundaries, qualified by responsible concern and fairness on the part of parental figures? Do socially legitimate arrangements in the home mask exploitation of family members? These queries are ethical in nature, the answers to which are evaluated within Boszormenyi-Nagy’s framework on an intergenerational scale of give-and-take (see Boszormenyi-Nagy & Krasner, 1986).

In ethical family relationships, parents are sensitive to asymmetries vis-à-vis their children. Although they enjoy their children’s loyalty, concern, and growth and increasingly alternate subject and object roles with them in developmentally appropriate ways, they accept the fact that their contributions outweigh those of their off-spring. They do not expect equal reciprocity in their relationships with their children, as they do in the spousal relationship. Yet, just as they reciprocated their own parents’ care giving by responsibly and lovingly caring for their own children, they expect the same of the next generation.

Giving to children also ethically earns parents “constructive entitlement,” according to Boszormenyi-Nagy and his colleagues (Boszormenyi-Nagy & Krasner, 1986). That is, they acquire merit and ethical self-worth as a result of their continuing contributions. In the event that such parents parentify their children at various times, they explicitly rather than manipulatively recruit them and acknowledge their availability. By crediting their children’s contributions to the family, responsibly responding to their needs, and caring about a fair distribution of relational benefits and burdens, they maintain their trustworthiness.

Unethical parenting, on the other hand, involves a breakdown in the dialogic relation between parents and their offspring, a process that often has its roots in the miscarriage of just and trustworthy relating in the parent’s family of origin. The end result is the misapplication of parental authority. Boszormenyi-Nagy observes that deprivation and abuses in the parents’ past leave them “destructively entitled.” That is, the parent-to-be derives a just but unsettled claim for caring and protection to which he or she expects innocent third parties to respond. In pathological forms of parentification, children are often expected to meet these claims. They are induced to accept assignments that exploitatively fashion their loyalty and concern into a personally meaningful, albeit an often highly captivating, obligation to serve parental and familial interests. Children’s distrust of their interpersonal world is one of the most destructive consequences of such a process (Boszormenyi-Nagy, 1965; Boszormenyi-Nagy & Spark, 1973; Boszormenyi-Nagy & Krasner, 1986).

Issues of an ethical genre (e.g., reciprocity and responsibility) are acknowledged by functionally oriented structural and strategic theorists, such as Minuchin and Madanes, just as power and function are included in Boszormenyi-Nagy’s framework, especially in his recent multidimensional characterization of relational reality (Boszormenyi-Nagy & Krasner, 1986). The former, however, have not fully explored the significance of the ethical dimension as a primary determinant of family functioning. Nor have other theorists who describe parent-child relationships in terms of filial devotion (Searles, 1975), loyalty (Stierlin, 1974, 1977), and exploitation (Elkind, 1981), although they have paid greater attention to the existential-ethical substrate of individual and family process.

Delimiting the Construct

Destructive parentification is broadly characterized within Boszormenyi-Nagy’s approach as involving the unilateral and self-serving use of children by parental figures to satisfy possessive, dependent, aggressive, and sexual needs. This type of parentification is not confined to manifest caretaking roles and executive functioning à la Minuchin’s “parental child.” Rather, it may include a variety of (1) roles (e.g., sacrificial, bad, scapegoat, well sibling), (2) behavior patterns (e.g., delinquency, psychosis, addiction, infantilization, idealization), and (3) interactional processes (e.g., go-between, split loyalty, triangulation) that overtly or covertly serve to protect or gratify the needs of family members and to stabilize the family as a whole.

Both the depth and scope of Boszormenyi-Nagy’s account of parentification challenge practitioners and investigators alike to translate his usage of this construct into clinically and empirically relevant terms (cf. Karpel, 1976). It is clear, for example, that youngsters like Jenny, who assume direct responsibility for their family’s needs, are parentified. But what about a preadolescent who has consistently underachieved in school over the years? He knows his parents will eventually rescue him by striking bargains with teachers, reading his assignments aloud to him, and, if all else fails, actually doing his homework. In light of the fact that the parents’ marriage is stagnant, it could be inferred that their son is self-destructively but loyally colluding with them to gratify their unfulfilled needs for relatedness. If so, then from Boszormenyi-Nagy’s perspective, this adolescent’s behavior is symptomatic of parentification.

The level of inference required to subsume the variety of children, such as the infantilized one just described or others whose role behavior ranges from rebel to scapegoat, under the rubric of parentification is problematic. Sacrificed in the process are both the specificity and measurability of the construct. Like co-dependence, parentification will remain a tantalizing and protean conception unless better delineated and objectified.

Toward this end, the following parameters of parentification are proffered: (1) overtness, (2) type of role assignments, (3) extent of responsibility, (4) object of caretaking, (5) age appropriateness, (6) internalization, (7) family boundaries, (8) social legitimacy, and (9) ethicality. The first four refer to properties of the parentified role per se, whereas the rest characterize important dimensions of its developmental, psychological, sociofamilial, and existential-ethical context.

Overtness

One of the most important distinctions to make in defining parentification is whether or not the child’s object role entails overtly protective, caretaking, and responsible behaviors. In his descriptive and theoretical study of this role pattern, Karpel (1976) used the term “loyal object” to differentiate destructively parentified children from those who are excessively loyal in the face of various privations, abuses, and injustices but do not engage in overt caretaking.

Pathologically parentified children are a member of the class of loyal objects, in that they are bound out of loyalty and concern to importunate parental figures who unilaterally exploit them. These children differ at an observable, functional level. Although children as loyal objects may caretake indirectly (e.g., by detouring conflicts between parents through their misbehavior), in the absence of direct evidence of overresponsible and adultlike behavior on their part, they are not seen to be parentified.

In the event that indirect caretaking in children occurs sans overt parentification, it is likely that the dynamics of this general loyal-object process differ from those of direct caretaking. Empirical verification of this hunch would further underscore the import of the distinctions drawn here. We have found that restricting usage of the term parentified to behavioral patterns that overtly reflect overresponsibility and caretaking has greatly reduced ambiguity in this area, facilitating research and the development of evaluation and intervention strategies.

Type of Role Assignments

A variety of situations and stressors that impinge on the care-giving system in families may either reverse or level parent-child roles. These impingements range from primarily physicalistic claims to emotionally or psychologically oriented demands. In contrast to the former, which may relate, for example, to a parent’s health status, financial stress, or family size, the latter pertain to emotional, homeostatic, and intergenerational processes in the family, including such variables as parental neediness and marital conflict.

Drawing on the early work of Parsons and Bales (1955), we have labeled these different demands and the role behaviors they occasion in children as “instrumental” and “expressive” (Jurkovic, Jessee, & Goglia, 1991).² Instrumental role assignments require children to assume responsibility for concrete functional tasks that are necessary for the physical maintenance and support of the family, such as child care, grocery shopping, cooking, nursing an ill or disabled parent, and earning income. These assignments are at the core of Minuchin’s (1974) concept of the “parental child.”

In the performance of expressive tasks, youngsters minister to the family’s socioemotional needs through such activities as protecting family members, serving as a confidant, companion, or matelike figure, mediating family conflicts, and providing support, nurturance, and comfort (cf. Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985; Main & Goldwyn, 1984). Although perhaps not as apparent as instrumental functioning, expressive parentification also involves overt behavioral displays of caretaking.

The line demarcating different classes of parentified behavior is not always clear. Instrumental behaviors are not without a psychological-expressive component, just as expressive caretaking activities may have instrumental properties. Moreover, children such as Jenny often perform both instrumental and expressive tasks in the family.

It should be noted as well that demands to ensure the emotional well being of parental figures or the family as a whole are often subtly imposed and accompanied by guilt inducement; thus, on balance, expressive tasks are probably more stressful and stultifying than instrumental ones (Boszormenyi-Nagy & Spark, 1973; Boszormenyi-Nagy & Krasner, 1986). Yet, depending on other characteristics, as discussed later (e.g., their chronicity and relational significance within the family), instrumental demands may also deleteriously affect the child.

Extent of Responsibility

Both the degree and duration of a child’s expressive and instrumental role responsibilities must be considered as well. Excessive caretaking that extends beyond a situational adaptation to become a chronic process depletes children both emotionally and physically. On the other hand, too little parental expectation of responsible role behavior is also unhealthy.

Object of Caretaking

Another distinguishing property of the role of parentified children is the object of their caretaking. They may overfunction primarily in relation to their mother, father, or one or more of their siblings. Many parentified children, of course, assume responsibility for several family members, the marital subsystem, and/or the family as a whole (Karpel, 1976). As discussed in Chapter 3, the effects of destructive parentification possibly vary as a function of the primary object of concern and the child’s gender. For example, same-gender parentification between parent and child (mother-daughter, father-son) may differ from cross-gender parentification (mother-son, father-daughter).

Age Appropriateness

A defining contextual feature of parentification is the child’s developmental stage. The earlier and the more age inappropriate the caretaking charge (e.g., assigning unsupervised sibling caretaking responsibilities to a 6-year-old), the more destructive the consequences for the child. Young children simply do not have as many internal or external resources to cope with caretaking assignments as do their older counterparts, especially those in adolescence. Moreover, disruptions in their negotiation of early stage-salient tasks (e.g., formation of a secure attachment to a primary caregiver, exploration of the environment) because of excessive demands to accommodate to parental figures affect their mastery of subsequent tasks.

Internalization

A less obvious but nonetheless important parameter of the parentified role is the degree to which it has been internalized as an organizing part of the child’s identity and interpersonal style. At one extreme, he or she identifies fully with the role, assuming a compulsive caregiving stance (Bowlby, 1979). At the other extreme, the child experiences the various demands as external expectations that are to be fulfilled for functional or pragmatic reasons.

Family Boundaries

At a family level, parentification is defined not only by overt role characteristics but also by underlying transactional processes, par...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Part I Understanding
• Part II Treatment and Prevention
• Appendix A Constructs Related to the Parentification of Children
• Appendix B Parentification Questionnaire
• References
• Name Index
• Subject Index