Parentification: When a Child is Forced to Be Her Parent's Crutch







 We've all met someone like this. That odd, single guy whose mother texts him during his dates.  The wife who spends endless hours on the phone, giving her mother support and advice.
That child who seems overly mature and wise, but is a loner.

     These are the most common examples of a phenomenon called parentification, also known as emotional incest.  The offending parent does not engage in sexual relations with the child, but he/she invades basically every other aspect of the child's existence to such an extreme degree that the child has little to no life of his or her own.  So what is parentification exactly? What are the tell-tale signs?

Signs You Were Parentified as a Child

  1. Your parent used you as his support and confidant.
  2. Your parent monopolized your time and attention during childhood.
  3. Your parent was, and continues to be, jealous of your friendships and frequently tried to  sabotage them.
  4. Your parent encouraged and fostered financial and emotional dependence into adulthood.
  5. Your parent was indulging and supportive when you expressed self-doubt or unhappiness, but was sullen and even openly hostile when you expressed joy, happiness or success.
  6. Your parent frequently complains to you about their problems with your other parent.
  7. Your parent expected you to be loyal and in alliance with them against the other parent.
  8. Your parent made inappropriate and intimate disclosures to you about the other parent.
  9. Your parent discouraged you from becoming independent, often by undermining your self confidence and courage and by cultivating fearfulness.
  10. Your parent referred to you as "the man of the house" or "daddy's little girl".
  11. Your parent treated you like her spouse and expected you to adopt the responsibilities of a spouse. 
  12. Your parent violated your privacy and sexual boundaries through inappropriate touching and/or inappropriate comments about your body. 
  13. Your parent demanded demonstrations of affection from you, which may have included demanding you cuddle with them, help them bathe or dress or other similarly intimate acts.
  14. Your parent demanded you disclose details about your budding sexuality.

The Impact of Parentification in Childhood

     Parentification robs the child of a childhood, first and foremost. The narcissistic parent demands that the child abandon her own needs and worse, ignore the fact that the parent refuses to meet the child's needs. Instead, the child must become the parent's "need-meeter".  The child resides in an insane world where everything is upside down and backwards. Parent is child, child is parent, spouse, and confidant.

     In cases of severe parentification parental alienation occurs.  This happens when the narcissistic parent demands that the child adopt an alliance with her against the other parent.  This is common in severely broken parental relationships where the parents are usually separated and/or divorced. The parent procures the child's alliance by convincing the child that the other parent is "bad". In this way the parent gets their needs for support and love met, while turning the child against the other parent and denying the child her natural right to love her other parent.

The Impact of Parentification in Adulthood

     Children who have been parentified grow up to be adults who have disordered boundaries.  They tend towards one of two extremes - either they are utterly boundary-less and codependent, or they create such rigid and inflexible boundaries that they let no one in at all.   They have no sense of self and feel like an alien in most social situations. They usually suffer from severe depression.  And they feel lost and lonely most of the time. They long to connect with others but at the same time, they fear connection because in their childhood, connection meant invasion.  Women who were parentified by their mothers often struggle with owning their feminine identity and often have disordered eating.

     The parentified child was expected to do a super-human act - meet the needs of the all-powerful parent. They were treated as the solution to the parent's problems. This made the child feel special and powerful and caused the child to start identifying with adults rather than other children. As a result, the parentififed  child becomes alienated from her peers.   Parentified children feel super-human and even grandiose.  These feelings often follow them into adulthood, and as a result they are sometimes misdiagnosed as narcissistic.  They are not narcissists.

    Adults who were parentified as children suffer deeply.  But the situation is not hopeless.  If you were a parentified child, you can rebuild your sense of self and you can THRIVE.  I encourage you to seek treatment to help you rebuild the life that was stolen from you.

There is hope!

Stephanie Shipp

www.thrivetraumarecoverycoaching.com

Recommended readings:


Covert Incest Syndrome by Patricia Love Ed.D. and Jo Robinson - the definitive text on emotional incest/parentification.
Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners by Kenneth M. Adams 
The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller

Movies & Other Media that Demonstrate Parentified Relationships & Covert  Incest: 

Recommended Podcast:  The Mental Illness Happy Hour with Paul Gilmartin
Website homepage:  https://mentalpod.com/
Covert Incest with Tony M. :  https://mentalpod.com/archives/5499
Julie L. : Covert Incest Survivor:  https://mentalpod.com/archives/4071

Movies: 
Black Swan
The Piano Teacher (trigger warning: deals with suicide and masochism) 
Night, Mother (trigger warning: deals with suicide) 
The Dead Girl
The TLC series "S'mothered"





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