Implications of Parent-Child Boundary Dissolution for Developmental Psychopathology

"Who Is the Parent and Who Is the Child?"

Patricia K. Kerig

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780789030900
• eBook ISBN: 9781317824800
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Gain a better understanding of parent-child boundaries and the mechanisms for their dissolution

The breakdown of appropriate generational boundaries between parent and child can threaten the child's psychological development. Implications of Parent-Child Boundary Dissolution for Developmental Psychopathology: Who Is the Parent and Who Is the Child? explores this covert and oftentimes ignored form of emotional abuse, discussing in detail the various ways it can manifest. This revealing text comprehensively examines how the burden of meeting the emotional needs of the parent interferes with the child's healthy development. The boundary dissolution patterns of role reversal, enmeshment, psychological control, and triangulation are closely examined with an eye toward providing appropriate strategies for dealing with the problem.

Implications of Parent-Child Boundary Dissolution for Developmental Psychopathology is separated into four sections to focus extensively on every aspect of the problem. The first section discusses definitions, concepts, and methodological concerns of the phenomena, including a consideration of the child's developmental responses to boundary dissolution. The second section explores the empirical research concerning boundary dissolution within the family system, and includes intriguing information on the actual mechanism that passes the pattern of role reversal on to the following generation. The next section closely examines boundary violations within high-risk families, with a focus on those undergoing divorce. The final section concentrates on cultural contexts of boundary dissolution and includes a look at the perception of familial responsibility and its effects on Bosnian youths. This one-of-a-kind resource is extensively referenced, and provides a solid foundation to inspire a new generation of theory, research, and clinical work.

Implications of Parent-Child Boundary Dissolution for Developmental Psychopathology examines:

• a multidimensional model of boundary dissolutionwith supporting research
  
• a comprehensive review of published literature in the areas of attachment theory, developmental capacities of the infant, child-rearing practices, and parental beliefs
  
• the theoretical background supporting the construct of boundary dissolution
  
• the boundary disturbance patterns of enmeshment and control
  
• the relationships between interparental conflict, parental responses to children's emotions, and representations of role reversal and vulnerability in children's family drawings
  
• the 'spill over' effect of marital conflict
  
• role reversal in high-risk families
  
• children's rejection of one parent over another in custody disputes
  
• post-war adjustment of Bosnian adolescents
  
• psychological control in individualist and collectivist groups
  
• representations of parents and children in twentieth century American novels
  
  

Implications of Parent-Child Boundary Dissolution for Developmental Psychopathology is crucial reading for researchers and clinicians who deal with families and psychopathology and is of particular interest to graduate students in clinical child psychology, child and family studies, social work, and developmental psychology.

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BOUNDARY DISSOLUTION IN THE FAMILY SYSTEM

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The Developmental and Adaptational Implications of Generational Boundary Dissolution: Findings from a Prospective, Longitudinal Study

Anne Shaffer

L. Alan Sroufe

SUMMARY.Generational boundary dissolution is a form of parent-child relationship disturbance in which the typical parent and child roles become distorted or even reversed. While recognized as a pathological family process among clinicians, generational boundary dissolution has also become the subject of empirical study. The current paper presents the theoretical background supporting the construct of boundary dissolution, with particular emphasis on family systems theory and developmental psychopathology. We also review the empirical studies of the occurrence and developmental outcomes of boundary dissolution that have been conducted within the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, extending from early childhood through adolescence and into adulthood, with data related to multiple realms of social and emotional development, including questions of intergenerational continuity.[Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1–8GG-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <[email protected]> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS.Keywords: Boundary dissolution, parent-child relationships, longitudinal, prospective

Generational boundary dissolution in parent-child relationships is a construct that has been variously defined; descriptors include parentification, spousification, filial responsibility, role reversal, and role equalization (see also Kerig, this volume). These terms are not all interchangeable, but what they have in common is their shared characterization of a type of relationship disturbance in which the typical parent and child roles become distorted or even reversed. For example, generational boundary dissolution in the form of parentification can characterize families in which the parent assumes a child-like role and/or the child is drafted into an adult-like role, becoming the parent’s partner or caregiver. Long recognized by clinicians as a potentially pathological family process, these forms of relationship disturbance have also become the focus of empirical attention, and studies have shown links between boundary dissolution and psychosocial maladaptation (e.g., Carlson, Jacobvitz, & Sroufe, 1995; Fullinwider-Bush & Jacobvitz, 1993). For example, boundary dissolution is often related to other risks to child psychosocial development, including maltreatment (particularly sexual abuse) and inconsistent care, parental substance abuse, illness, and divorce. It is generally understood that the premature assumption of adult responsibilities by a child that often characterizes boundary dissolution is a stressor which taxes developing competencies and may compromise meeting the child’s own developmental needs. Furthermore, growing evidence of the intergenerational transmission of boundary dissolution (e.g., Fullinwider-Bush & Jacobvitz, 1993) points to potentially pervasive and long-lasting effects of parent-child relationship disturbance, contributing to the motivation for continued study in this area.

In addition, research on generational boundary dissolution within families is an exemplar of a shift in developmental psychology from a focus on the individual toward the study of relationships as units of analysis (Hartup & Laursen, 1999; Reis, Collins, & Berscheid, 2000). Such research has the potential to yield powerful predictors of later development, likely over and above the exclusive reliance on individual measures (Sroufe, 1989). While generational boundary dissolution is challenging to operationalize and identify (in the “real world”), the literature that is available suggests that boundary dissolution is a viable, albeit multi-faceted, construct that is predictive of later functioning. The purpose of this review, therefore, is to present the theoretical origins of the study of boundary dissolution, and in particular to emphasize how the construct has been studied within the context of a prospective, longitudinal study of development and adaptation from infancy to adulthood.

The study of generational boundary dissolution has been particularly informed and supported by family systems theory and developmental psychopathology. Family systems theory provides a framework for defining and understanding relationships and the boundaries among them, and through its systemic emphasis gives consideration to families as holistic units of study. Developmental psychopathology complements family systems theory by providing a perspective on how disturbances in these boundaries and relationships can compromise negotiation of salient developmental issues, thereby contributing to particular kinds of later problems. Both of these perspectives, and their implications for the study of boundary dissolution, are described in greater detail below.

Three principles of family systems theory are especially relevant to the construct of generational boundary dissolution: that families are wholes, that they are divided into subsystems according to specific boundaries, and that they are organized hierarchically (e.g., Boszormenyi-Nagy & Spark, 1973; Minuchin, 1974). First, the holistic view of family systems allows for all parts, or subsystems, to affect each other. Furthermore, it emphasizes that some pathology occurs (i.e., originates or is maintained, and is most clearly manifest) at the level of the family, rather than the individual, and thus supports the need to investigate disturbances such as boundary dissolution at the relationship level (Sroufe, 1989). Second, models of family systems include subsystems (i.e., parental, sibling), and the generational and relational boundaries among the subsystems define the organizational structure of families. Thus, boundaries specify the relationships among members of the family and may be conceived as the operating rules by which a family functions, which either permit or prohibit certain interactions among the subsystems (Minuchin, 1974). For example, in families where generational boundaries are maintained, physical or sexual intimacy is permitted within the spousal subsystem, but not between parents and children. Third, clear generational boundaries are characterized by a hierarchy in which parents nurture their children and assume executive roles within the family. In families with dissolved generational boundaries, the hierarchical relation between the parent and child subsystems is lost: the child may either assume an equalized and peer-like or spousal relation to the parent, or take on a leadership or caregiving role with respect to the parent.

It is important to note that families are “open systems” (Fogel, 1993) and thus mutable in the context of changing circumstances. Specifically, generational boundaries are not static divisions among subsystems but may change in response to internal or external changes. For example, a child may be temporarily drafted into a caregiving role if a parent becomes ill. There are also likely to be more normative changes in hierarchical relationships across the child’s development; the increasing autonomy of adolescence and early adulthood is an example of a time during which the parent and child subsystems become more equalized. Thus, it is clear that consequences of boundary dissolution are virtually guaranteed to be context-dependent, and in particular to depend on developmental factors such as timing, duration, and interference with salient developmental tasks. This conceptualization of the development of boundary-dissolved relationships also argues against a stricter social-learning perspective through which boundary-dissolved behaviors are modeled by children. As discussed later via empirical examples, the occurrence and preservation of parent-child boundary dissolution is more often specific to the relationship and relational history involved and is therefore influenced by the multifactorial and multilay-ered family system.

While the family systems theory explains how boundary-dissolved parent-child relationships can arise within a family, developmental psycho-pathology is called upon to explain how these relationship patterns can affect current and subsequent functioning by examining how the relationship disturbance interacts with, and potentially compromises, the negotiation of salient developmental issues (for example, the capacity to coordinate peer group and friendship functioning in middle childhood). Adopting a developmental perspective on the study of boundary dissolution also emphasizes that the developmental phase may be relevant to the form that the relationship disturbance takes, as well as the adaptational consequences (e.g., Jacobvitz & Sroufe, 1987; Sroufe, Jacobvitz, Mangelsdorf, DeAngelo, & Ward, 1985; Sroufe & Ward, 1980). Developmental psychopathology utilizes concepts of pathways and multi-and equifinality to describe a non-linear process of emerging disturbance. Conditions (such as boundary dissolution) may initiate a pathway that over time is probabilistically related to a pathological outcome. Thus, child issues which may derive from such parenting, such as difficulties with arousal modulation or compromised peer relationships, are not necessarily viewed as frankly pathological in themselves but as foundations for a variety of related disturbances that may evolve over time.

Perhaps the clearest example of the contribution of a developmental perspective involves relationship disturbances in which the parent depends upon the child for caregiving and support, which represents a reversal of the more normative caregiving roles within a family. From a developmental perspective, boundary dissolution is associated with at least two problems: first, providing emotional or instrumental caregiving represents an energy-draining challenge to a child and second, concurrent abdication of the parental role may deprive the child of the necessary scaffolding and support to cope with these challenges. In optimal development, children learn nurturance by being nurtured, and to call upon children to provide such caregiving for adults is beyond their developmental capacity, both cognitively and emotionally (Sroufe & Fleeson, 1988). This taxation of a child’s abilities is exacerbated if it occurs at the expense of his or her own care. In these instances, the likelihood increases that the child’s social development and eventual capacity for adult intimacy and the ability to nurture his or her own children will be compromised, thus carrying forward the legacy of early experience into later development, possibly even into subsequent generations.

Also from a developmental perspective, attachment theory stands as one of the most well articulated theories regarding the legacy of early experience and has also included descriptions of patterns of parent-child role reversal (see also Bellow, Boris, Larrieu, Lewis, & Elliot, this volume). For example, early observations by Bowlby (1973) included descriptions of mothers with unmet nurturance needs, such as anxious and ambivalent relationships with their own caregivers in childhood, who encourage their own children to provide them with emotional care. While purely descriptive at the time, later empirical work (e.g., Fullinwider-Bush & Jacobvitz, 1993) has supported this explanation of how parent-child role reversals may be transmitted across generations.

The traditional A/B/C attachment classifications, which distinguish among infants with secure and insecure (either anxious-avoidant or anxious-resistant) attachment relationships, have not been differentially related to patterns of role reversal or boundary dissolutions among mothers and children. However, aspects of role reversal have been noted among children with disorganized/disoriented (D) attachment histories (Main & Cassidy, 1988). Current theories posit that disorganized attachment develops in response to frightened or frightening caregiving, either of which is incomprehensible to an infant (Main & Hesse, 1990). Frightened caregiving includes parents who are tim...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Monographic Separates from the Journal of Emotional Abuse
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Indexing, Abstracting & Website/Internet Coverage
• About the Editor
• Table of Contents
• About the Contributors
• Introduction: Contributions of the Investigation of Boundary Dissolution to the Understanding of Developmental Psychopathology and Family Process
• Conceptual and Methological Issues
• Boundary Dissolution in the Family System
• Boundary Dissolution in High Risk Families
• Cultural Perspectives on Boundary Dissolution
• Index