Parentification: What Is a Parentified Child?

What Is Parentification?

Parentification takes place when a child takes on the role of a parent within the family. This may come in the form of completing parental household tasks (instrumental parentification) or emotional tasks (emotional parentification). In short, parentification happens as a result of a child taking on tasks that are not age-appropriate, with the main benefactor of their completion being the parent(s).

Sometimes parentification occurs due to direct prompting by a parent, or a child might perform certain tasks without being asked in order to feel closer to the parent. Oftentimes parents inadvertently encourage this behavior by providing either positive rewards (praising the behavior, giving the child more one-on-one time in response, etc.) or by the absence of negative feedback when a child takes on adult responsibilities.

Possible Causes of Parentification

Household tasks and emotional skills are important to learn. However, the difference with parentification is that actions do not match the child’s developmental age and parents benefit from the tasks more than the child. This is usually because there is something preventing parents from routinely completing necessary tasks. Most of the time, parentification is not done intentionally or maliciously, and it often happens as a result of big life transitions or changes. However, it can also be caused by instances of neglect or abuse.

Causes of parentification may include:

• Divorce: While parents are readjusting to life without their partner, a child may step in and help balance the tasks that the solo parent can’t juggle. This could include household chores or providing emotional support to a parent who is struggling to process a divorce.
• Parental neglect: If a parent is unable to meet the physical and emotional needs of a child, the child will do their best to meet their needs on their own or learn to dismiss them. This may look like a child learning to cook/feed themselves or avoid bringing up emotional needs to minimize parental rejection.
• Financial stress: Sometimes financial stress can prevent a parent from physically providing for their child. The stress itself can demand so much attention from a parent that they don’t have the emotional battery left to care for the child. This could prompt a child to take on a job to help contribute financially, or use as little resources as possible to decrease the parent’s stress.
• Parental drug or alcohol abuse: If a parent is under the influence, they are less likely to attend to the emotional and physical needs of their child. If they attempt to, they may need the child’s physical help to complete tasks. Examples of this look similar to neglect.
• A physical or mental health condition in the family: If a parent has a mental health condition, the child may feel the need to physically or emotionally support the parent. This may become a problem if the parent begins relying on this. This can also include a child stepping in as a parental role to a sibling if the sibling has a physical or mental health condition.
• Immigrant parents struggling to integrate into society: Parents typically instruct and translate the rules of society for their child. However, these roles become reversed in this situation. This may include a child translating a school grade or the use of currency to a parent, or providing reassurance when the parent gets distressed over their adjustment struggles.
• Presence of abuse: When a child is lacking warmth and reassurance from a parent, they will attempt to fill these needs as safely as possible. A child may do so by fulfilling their own physical or emotional needs to avoid repercussions from the parent.

Types of Parentification

There are two main types of parentification–emotional and instrumental. Instrumental parentification focuses on tangible or physical tasks that need to be completed, while emotional parentification centers on managing the emotional equilibrium of the household.

The two types of parentification include:

Emotional Parentification

Emotional parentification focuses on the emotional work that needs to happen within the household, and particularly on helping other family members emotionally regulate. If a child is emotionally parentified, they will provide a high level of emotional support, typically without receiving the same in return. In these cases, a parent may vent about their partner, ask for reassurance, request help diffusing household arguments, or ask a child to offer support to a sibling.

Learning to listen and emotionally validate others are essential relational skills. However,  circumstances such as these can become harmful for a child when the emotional support levels they’re expected to provide exceed their own emotional understanding and developmental capacity. This is especially so if the child lacks adequate support themselves. Research shows that emotional parentification can lead to a child developing internalizing behaviors such as learning to ignore their emotions, not advocating for their needs, and failing to set healthy boundaries with others.¹

Instrumental Parentification

Instrumental parentification occurs when a child takes on adult-level responsibilities that are task-based to help the parent maintain household functionality. Examples of this include meeting basic physical needs for food, shelter, protection, and daily structure. A child may perform actions such as helping pay the bills, getting a younger sibling ready for school, cooking the meals in the household, among others. Sometimes a child may be directly asked to complete these tasks, and sometimes they will volunteer themselves.

It’s helpful for kids to learn tasks of running a household, as they will hopefully one day be living without their parents’ assistance. The difference between whether or not these skills are beneficial ultimately comes down to who is profiting from the task’s completion. Is the parent teaching the child, encouraging and guiding them to better understand self-sufficiency and independence? If the answer is yes, there is probably room for mistakes and guidance, and it likely isn’t unhealthy parental behavior. If the child is taking on these tasks because the parent cannot or will not complete them themselves, then it is unhealthy for the child.

It’s important to note that it’s also possible for parentification to be mainly focused on taking care of a sibling rather than a parent.

Instrumental parentification includes:

• Parent-focused parentification: This is when tasks a parentified child is completing are aimed at benefiting the parent. Parent-focused parentification can include both instrumental and emotional parentification, and generally focuses on reducing tasks and stressors for a parent.
• Sibling-focused parentification: In these cases, a child’s tasks are aimed at caring for a sibling instead of a parent (although the parent also benefits from this). This can also include both emotional and instrumental-based tasks, possibly in the form of caring for siblings, providing emotional support to the sibling, or playing physical protector to the sibling.

Signs of a Parentified Child

The short-term impacts of parentification may show up differently in each child, but research shows that there are general signs of parentification a person can be aware of.² Additionally, the temperament of a child will impact how they display these effects to others.  The degree to which a child is parentified will also influence the severity of the parentification’s impact.

Signs of parentification in a child or teenager include:

• Avoiding age-appropriate activities: The child may be hesitant or uninterested in doing activities and interests that their peers engage in. They may act older than their age, and struggle to enjoy child-like pleasures, such as joking around and being silly.
• Inability to identify and connect to their own emotions: Because parentified children have had to put others’ needs first, they will often struggle to recognize their own emotions and needs. This also commonly leads to emotional dysregulation or difficulties setting boundaries.
• Depression: A parentified child may develop and show signs of childhood depression. This may be because a child is not receiving emotional validation from the parent, is carrying a burden that is bigger than they can successfully navigate, or feel responsible for their negative feelings.
• Anxiety: Parentified children may also develop and show symptoms associated with childhood anxiety. If a child believes that their actions are responsible for the physical and emotional equilibrium of the household, they may blame themselves and develop cognitive distortions–a central piece of anxiety disorders in children and adolescents.³
• Disruptive behavior: If parents fail to fulfill the needs of a child, children may externalize (act out) to express their frustration.⁴ For example, a child has a verbal outburst or acts aggressively toward a sibling.
• Guilt: Because they are filling an adult role, it’s likely a child will experience guilt for not being able to fulfill the adult-level responsibilities they feel compelled to complete. This can show up like withdrawal or self-deprecating remarks.
• Physical symptoms: When people repress their emotions, these emotions may be expressed through somatic symptoms, such as stomach aches or headaches that seemingly have no cause.⁵
• Poor academic performance: When children are more focused on taking care of their parents or siblings, school often takes a backseat. This can take the form of poor grades and high levels of absenteeism.⁶
• Substance use in adolescents: When children don’t get validation and soothing from their parents, they will seek to self-soothe in other ways. Sometimes they turn to substance use to self-medicate and repress their feelings.⁷

Long-Term Effects of Parentification

Parentification typically continues to impact a child into adulthood. Because parents often aren’t parentifying their children intentionally, it’s difficult for parents to recognize and change this pattern. These behaviors influence a child’s understanding of relationships and attachment, which in turn may impact their relationships in the future–regardless if they are still in relation with their parents during adulthood or not.

Potential for Substance Use Disorder

Parentified children may be at risk of developing SUD, largely because these children did not grow up with the understanding of how to self-soothe in healthy ways. If a child stepped into a parentified role because their parent struggled with a substance use disorder themselves, it’s also more likely they later develop a similar condition or disorder. This can be due to genetics, as well as social learning.

Relationship Difficulties

The relationship with a parent is the first and main example that a child holds for how relationships should look. If the relationship is one-sided with unreasonable expectations, it’s unlikely that the child will demand differently from future relationships. If the parentification was mild to moderate, the impact will often include “people-pleasing” behaviors in adulthood. Conversely, severe parentification could impact the child’s ability to form secure attachments with partners and friends. This may be displayed in anxious, disorganized, or avoidant attachment styles, or even in the form of an attachment disorder in adulthood.

Fear of Abandonment

A child often takes on tasks without being asked in order to minimize the hurt from rejection and protect themselves from the possibility of abandonment. When we avoid something and experience short-term relief, our brain sees that original threat as even scarier than before we avoided it. Because of this, parentified children can grow up to be adults that are terrified of abandonment within their relationships.

Eating Disorders

Eating disorders may offer a method of self-soothing through control. Oftentimes this is also at the root of why a child adopts parentification behaviors. Since the two look similar in this way, it isn’t uncommon for a parentified child to develop an eating disorder at some point in their life.

Mental & Physical Health Issues

It’s not rare for a child to experience somatic symptoms (headaches, stomachaches) when they are parentified. It’s also more likely to cause physical and mental health issues later in life, including anxiety, depression, somatic issues, and overall psychological distress.⁸

Emotional Regulation Issues

When a child learns to dismiss and minimize their own emotions, it may become a pattern that they unintentionally carry throughout their life. When a person struggles to identify and allow space for their emotions, it can feel virtually impossible to regulate them. Not being able to regulate emotions can lead to unhealthy relationship dynamics, anger issues, depression, anxiety, panic, and general struggles with functioning.

How to Prevent Parentification

The first step in preventing or changing parentification patterns is to draw awareness to one’s behaviors and their impact. It’s also important to remember to be gentle and patient with yourself–patterns don’t change immediately, and can be a product of intergenerational trauma that started long before you. Changing patterns and being a cycle breaker is hard, so be kind to yourself and keep at it. Beside addressing the root causes of these patterns, there are also some tangible things to keep in mind to help you along the way.

A parent can prevent parentification by:

• Make sure responsibilities are age-appropriate: When kids are tasked with responsibilities they are able to perform, it builds their confidence and self-efficacy. A child may need reminding or some assistance to complete the task, but should be able to do a majority of it on their own.
• Keep parental duties off the table: This would include “big picture” tasks for running the household, such as doing the grocery shopping or paying the bills. There’s no developmental age before adulthood in which these actions are appropriate, so those are off-the-table.
• Set and maintain boundaries: It’s alright for your child to see you upset, but it’s not okay to expect your child to emotionally soothe you or act as your confidant for adult matters. Keeping those boundaries can be tricky at times, but they’re important for your child’s emotional well-being.
• Regularly check-in on your child’s functioning: While tasks can help promote responsibility, they should never cause a child to feel overwhelmed. They should not restrict them from taking care of themselves or focusing on their schooling. Regularly checking in on your child can help you recognize if a child needs their responsibilities adjusted.
• Do your own work: If current patterns are a result of intergenerational trauma or family stressors, it may be time to do more of your own emotional work. It’s important to remember that you’re the adult, and it’s your job to set the boundaries and tone for your children and their responsibilities at home.

Are There Any Benefits of Parentification?

While parentification is generally hurtful and unhealthy for a child, there are silver linings to this. Children who are parentified tend to be more independent, self-sufficient, and confident in task-performance, as they are aware of their strengths. If you perceive the parentification as somewhat positive, then you likely have a close relationship with your parent or the sibling(s) you cared for. While there are benefits that can be helpful to acknowledge, it’s also important to not use these benefits to justify behaviors.

When to Seek Professional Help

If you have noticed any signs of parentification in your child, or think that you may have experienced parentification as a child/adolescent yourself, you may benefit from having a professional to talk to. There are many online therapist directories with which you can begin your search to find the right therapist. First and foremost, look for a professional who you feel “gets you”– ensuring they have a good understanding of relational dynamics, intergenerational patterns and trauma, and people-pleasing is always helpful as well.

Therapy can be beneficial for both the children and parents involved. Helping you to understand your behaviors and beliefs can improve your relationships, build your sense of self, and be relieving and empowering. It can also allow you to reimagine and structure your relationship with your parent(s) to be more equitable and healthy, which is better for both parties.

Final Thoughts

Parentification is a heavy and inappropriate burden that many kids experience. While there can be positives associated with this, they are usually outweighed by the downsides. If you or someone you love has experienced parentification, it’s important to remember that all learned behaviors can be unlearned through self-work and therapy. You’re not alone, and there are many therapists out there who would love to help you reimagine your emotional landscape and move forward with confidence and clarity.