Understanding Parentification: Signs in Adults and Its Impact on Mental Health

Parentification is a term we use to describe a situation where a child is forced into a role of providing emotional or physical care for their parent or siblings, instead of receiving appropriate care and nurturing themselves. While it can impact everyone differently, being parentified as a child can have pretty profound effects as you move into adulthood, especially in terms of your relationships, emotional development, and mental health. In this week’s blog, we'll explore what parentification is, what some typical signs of parentification in adults, and overall how it can impact your mental health.

What is Parentification?

Parentification happens when a child is expected to take on responsibilities that are typically beyond their developmental level. This can look different in a couple of ways.

1. Emotional Parentification: The child is relied upon to provide emotional support, empathy, and reassurance to the parent or other family members. They may feel responsible for keeping the peace or managing their parent's emotional well-being. They may be the mediator between other family members. This can sometimes look like the child being the parent’s “friend” or confidante instead of their child.

2. Instrumental Parentification: The child is tasked with practical duties such as cooking, cleaning, or taking care of younger siblings. They may also become a mediator in family conflicts or act as a caregiver to a parent. They are performing adult tasks and responsibilities for the household.

This role reversal of the child taking on parental responsibilities, whether they be task-oriented or emotional and psychological, can happen when the caregivers struggle to take care of themselves. For example, a caregiver may have a mental health and/or substance use problem; they may be overworked and burned out; they may be caught up in their own life stressors (like issues with finances, housing, health issues, divorce, etc.); or they may just not know how to parent and have very intrusive or neglectful parenting styles.

And the parent may not be asking the child to take on these extra roles. Sensitive children may pick up on all the stress in the household and take it upon themselves to try to mitigate the stress levels by playing peacemaker, trying not to “be a burden,” or by trying to be perfect.

Other times, larger factors may demand the child start working at a young age to help support the family, adminster medication to their ill parent, or help with childcare for their younger siblings.
I point this out to try to get us out of the mindset of it being anyone’s “fault.” Realizing you were parentified as a child does not necessarily mean you had “bad” parents or caregivers. They could have been doing the best they could with what they had, and maybe it still just wasn’t enough. It doesn’t lessen their love.

… And sometimes you just have parents who really don’t know how to parent.

Whatever your situation was, the results can be similar. A child’s emotional and social development is being interrupted. The child is trying to operate at a level well beyond their developmental capacity (you know, the capacity that the adult is “supposed to” have). Maybe this means they can’t focus as much at school… or they over focus on being the best at school to trying to not add any additional stress at home. Maybe they don’t develop healthy coping skills because they are too busy trying to manage their family’s emotions.
The emotional and psychological impact of parentification can last well into adulthood. Let’s look at some of the symptoms and signs that I typically see in adults who were parentified as children.

Signs of Parentification in Adults

As mentioned, the effects of parentification cast a long shadow, especially for children who were emotionally parentified.

Here are just a few of the common signs of parentification in adults:

1. Overdeveloped Sense of Responsibility: Adults who were parentified as children often exhibit an exaggerated sense of responsibility for others, sometimes neglecting their own needs. They may feel neglected or disappointed in their relationships since they are always the one doing everything. They may even unintentionally keep the other person from stepping up because they fear losing control and can’t trust others to get the job done.

2. Difficulty with Boundaries: They may struggle with setting healthy boundaries in relationships, often putting others' needs ahead of their own. It’s hard to say no or to make requests of others, usually because that wasn’t a safe or realistic option in their childhood. Again, they often feel like they will be a burden if they ask for more.

3. Seeking Approval and Validation: Adult children of parentification may seek validation from others excessively, as they were often praised for being caretakers in childhood. The way they got praise and attention as children depended on how well they were “helping” and being “good.”

4. Chronic Stress and Anxiety: The burden of taking on adult responsibilities at a young age can lead to chronic stress and anxiety in adulthood. As I mentioned, these children usually do not have a chance to naturally learn and develop healthy coping skills for stress or how to manage their emotions. Those skills likely were not being modeled for them by their caregivers, and they were so busy caring for everyone else’s emotions, they did not have space to tend to their own.

5. Role Reversal in Relationships: They might unconsciously seek out relationships where they can fulfill a caregiving role, recreating the dynamic from their childhood. This usually leads to unfulfilling relationships, and they may not realize that they are recreating this unhealthy dynamic (until they figure it out in therapy).

Impact of Parentification on Mental Health

Here are some of the common mental health issues associated with parentification:

1. Low Self-Esteem: Adults who were parentified may struggle with low self-esteem, feeling they are only valuable when they are helping others.

2. Depression: The constant pressure of caring for others without receiving support in return can lead to feelings of hopelessness and depression. Things may feel very out of your control, even though you so desperately cling to any sense of control.

3. Relationship Difficulties: Parentification can hinder the ability to form healthy relationships, as individuals may struggle to assert their own needs or feel unworthy of receiving care themselves. Some people may become overly independent and keep other’s at arms’ length, or they become enmeshed with another person and have difficulty separating their emotions from the other person’s.

4. Difficulty Expressing Emotions: Suppressing emotions in childhood to fulfill caregiving roles can result in difficulty identifying and expressing emotions later in life. Parentified children don’t have the language to map out their intricate inner worlds, and they usually haven’t been given the chance to try. It may not feel safe to be so vulnerable and open. This makes knowing oneself difficult, as well as making it hard to feel connected to other people as your authentic self.

5. Anxiety: It’s common to feel like everything could fall apart if you grew up in a parentified role. Usually things didn’t feel safe and secure for you in childhood, so why should they feel better now? You may be particularly sensitive to feelings of rejection or have a deep fear of being abandoned, so you try to avoid that at all costs, just as you did in childhood.

Healing from Parentification

If you identify with these signs or suspect that you were parentified as a child, it’s important to remember that you can heal from it! You don’t need to condemn yourself to repeating the same patterns over and over again. Therapy can be highly beneficial in addressing and healing from the effects of parentification. A therapist can help you explore your experiences, start to name and express your emotions, develop healthy coping mechanisms, and establish boundaries in relationships.

Therapy for parentification may include expanding your emotional awareness, learning to open up and surrender some control, getting in touch with your “inner child,” who is still trying so hard to protect you and your loved ones, process residual anger, grief, and resentment, learning to be silly and playful, and developing a stronger sense of who you are outside of being a caregiver.

Remember, healing from parentification is a journey. It helps to know you are not alone on the journey. Therapy, supportive friends, support groups, and education can help you on the way.

If you resonate with the signs of parentification described here and would like to begin to further explore them in therapy, please reach out.

Click here to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation with me.