Parentification Trauma: Why it Develops and How to Treat it

Parentification often goes unnoticed because it wears the mask of maturity, responsibility, and strength. When a child takes care of household needs or their siblings, it’s often considered cute.

The truth is, when children take on roles and responsibilities that are supposed to be shouldered by adults, they end up being harmed. 

In this article, we’ll cover everything about parentification, including:

• Why it’s traumatizing
• How it manifests in adulthood
• How it’s resolved

Introduction to Parentification

Children are sometimes naturally interested in helping out. They want to mimic their parents’ behaviors. However, it can become an issue when the child is more than a helper.

Parentification is a role reversal that can occur in any kind of family. It happens when a child takes on the role of a parent. This includes situations like:

• Consistently making dinner for the family
• Often getting siblings ready for school
• Taking care of rent
• Regulating the emotions of a parent
• Acting as a therapist for a parent

Regardless of the intention behind a child taking on these duties, they can be damaging to their development. 

Two Kinds of Parentification

There are two categories of parentification. Both of them are categories that describe what kind of responsibilities the child is taking on.

Emotional Parentification

This form of parentification involves taking on emotional roles of a parent, such as:

• Being a confidante for a parent or adult family member
• Acting as a mediator between parents 
• Taking care of parents’ well-being

Children should not take on emotional responsibilities for any adult. When this happens, they don’t have the proper space to develop their emotional skills. This leads to issues as a child and throughout adulthood.

Instrumental

Parents take care of a lot. Cooking food, running errands, getting the kids ready for the day, and 100 other things. It can be overwhelming at times, but they are far more equipped to handle these responsibilities than a child is.

Instrumental parentification occurs when a child fills the role of a parent by taking care of the physical needs of their family. That includes:

• Cooking dinner
• Changing diapers
• Paying bills
• Picking up a drunk parent

The difference between parentification and helping out around the house is a feeling of obligation. People who went through parentification often feel love needs to be earned and maintained by taking care of others, despite not being cared for themself. 

Why is Parentification Traumatizing?

During childhood, it’s important that a child’s needs are met. This creates a safe environment to develop attachment styles, coping skills, personality traits, interests, and everything a person carries into the rest of their life.

Childhood trauma disrupts someone’s development and leads to complications throughout their life. Parents should be the stewards of safety for their children, making sure they’re eating well, getting to bed on time, learning the skills they need for emotional regulation, and giving them an environment they can thrive in.

Parentification is traumatizing because the child doesn’t have the safety of their parents. Instead, they’re responsible for creating a safe environment for their parents and siblings.

Unintentional Causes of Parentification

Parentification often comes from a place of neglect:

• Physical Ailment: Parents who have chronic health conditions may unintentionally parentify their child due to their inability to fulfill certain roles.
• Mental Health Issues: Parents who are dealing with their own mental health struggles, like substance use disorder, are at a high risk of parentifying their children.
• Absent Parenting: Not showing up after work and leaving without warning makes children feel insecure. Children who are left by their parents will often take on the role of parent in their stead.

Neglect often leads to parentification because children will fill their needs however they can. However, children don’t have the proper skills to handle life. This leads to developing negative coping skills that will be detrimental later in life.

Intentional Causes of Parentification

Sometimes parentification happens intentionally. The parent may place burdens on their child as an act of punishment, forcing them to take on tasks outside of their role. This is detrimental to the child’s sense of security and will distort their view of responsibility in the future.

Another intentional way parentification occurs is through social or familial norms. In some families, it may be considered normal for children to take on the responsibilities of a parent at a young age. It may be considered normal, but in reality is connected to generational trauma.

Related Resources: What is Generational Trauma?

Parentification Trauma in Adults: How it Manifests

While growing up, children should be reaching certain milestones. For example, a child should be able to follow rules and take turns while playing at around 5 years old. 

These milestones aren’t concrete, and there are many reasons why a child would skip, be early, or be late to reach a developmental milestone. However, parentification puts a lot of pressure on a child, and they skip milestones out of necessity.

When a child outright misses milestones due to pressure to act as a parent, they develop unhealthy coping skills, experience poor emotional regulation, and potentially develop developmental disabilities.

These issues carry into adulthood and can manifest in several ways.

PTSD and C-PTSD

The experience of parentification is traumatic. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) are common experiences for people who experienced parentification. 

These disorders occur when traumatic memories have not been processed. This leads to flashbacks and memories that are too hard to remember.

Learn more about the signs and causes of PTSD and CPTSD and how Sequoia can help treat them.

Cognitive Distortion of Love

When a child goes through parentification, they develop a distorted view of love. Instead of feeling their parents’ love is secure, they’ll likely feel the only way to be loved is to be useful.

As an adult, this will interfere with relationships, both romantic and non-romantic. Adults who grew up being parentified may be drawn to one-sided relationships and feel uncomfortable when receiving support or care. This makes them vulnerable for an abusive relationship. 

Insecure Attachment Style

Attachment styles develop during childhood, so naturally, parentification affects a person’s attachment style. 

When someone grows up in a secure home where they’re able to be a child and learn in a safe environment, they grow up to have a secure attachment style. Children who’ve experienced parentification develop an insecure attachment style because they don’t have a safe space to develop properly.

An insecure attachment style will affect a person’s relationships and how they view themselves and others. People with an insecure attachment style will either avoid emotional intimacy while wanting to be vulnerable or experience high levels of anxiety when being vulnerable.

Learn more about insecure attachment styles in our resource about disorganized attachment. We also offer attachment style therapy so Sequoia clients can learn how to create secure attachments.

Related Resources: The Connection Between Trauma and Emotional Dysregulation

Poor Boundary Setting

Because adults who were parentified feel they need to be helpful to secure love, they won’t be good at setting healthy boundaries. 

They’ve grown used to taking on responsibilities that are detrimental to their well-being, and that extends into adulthood. It’s common for parentified adults to be hyper-independent, yet unable to take care of themselves well.

Anxiety and Depression

All of the above manifestations of parentification trauma create an unstable living experience. Because of this, anxiety and depression are typical symptoms of parentification.

How to Resolve Parentification Trauma

Childhood is very important for gaining important skills and developing personality traits. What happens during those formative years will be taken into the rest of someone’s life, but that’s not the end of it.

The scars of parentification may cause long-term damage, but they can be healed with professional help.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

EMDR is considered the gold standard of trauma treatment. It uses the same bilateral stimulation used during REM sleep—the time in the sleep cycle when memories are stored.

During EMDR, people will relive distressing memories in a safe and controlled manner. It will take many sessions to work through this process. However, many people report high levels of symptom reduction after 3-8 sessions.

Trauma Therapy

Trauma therapy ranges in modalities and approaches. EMDR is within this category, but there are many other options.

All trauma therapy options are trying to create a safe place that people can stabilize, process and remember, and connect and integrate their traumatic memories. During these sessions, you’ll learning healthy coping skills, identify triggers, and improve affect regulation.

Family Therapy

Parentification can be intentional or unintentional. Depending on a person’s relationship with their parents, family therapy can be an option

During sessions with your family, you’ll work with a professional to mend relationships and create stronger bonds. You’ll also deal with the family dynamics that you grew up in.

For people who don’t have a safe relationship with their parents, family therapy can still be an option. Family can be born family or your found family. For found families, you’ll still work through the dynamics you grew up in and learn how to create strong and healthy bonds.

Related Resource: Navigating Toxic Relationships During and After Recovery

Healing at Sequoia Behavioral Health

At Sequoia Behavioral Health, we treat a variety of mental health struggles. We take a holistic approach, which means we treat symptoms while also digging for the root problem.

While we don’t treat parentification trauma on its own, we do treat it as a part of a holistic treatment program.

If you were parentified and are experiencing comorbid conditions like:

• Substance use disorder
• Obsessive compulsive-disorder
• Behavioral addiction

Sequoia Behavioral Health could be a great fit for you. If you have questions or are interested in attending our programs, contact us today.