Kyle Bourassa

Parentification, a process where children take on parent-like roles in the child-parent relationship, has often been discussed in the context of family systems therapy, but rarely studied empirically. In the present study, 219 undergraduates in a romantic relationship and 39 of their romantic partners were given measures for parentification in childhood and a variety of outcome and attachment scales. A newly created self-report measure of caregiving behavior in a romantic relationship was also given and analyzed, showing adequate internal reliability, test-retest reliability, and construct validity. The data showed a significant association between emotional parentification of children with their mothers and fathers with parentification-style caregiving in a romantic relationship. Participants’ parentification in childhood was also significantly associated with insecure attachment to their romantic partners, as well as higher levels of depressive symptoms with mixed support for lowered levels of romantic relationship satisfaction. The findings suggest that behaviors learned from the child-parent relationship have an association with behaviors in later romantic relationships and that this can be conceptualized as a product of attachment transfer from parents to romantic partners in late adolescence. Parentification and Relationships -4 Compulsive Caregiving: Emotional Parentification in Childhood and Its Association With Romantic Relationships in Late Adolescence and Early Adulthood The development of children occurs over a long period of years and is fraught with possible hurdles to normative development. This is particularly true when children are forced to assume roles beyond their developmental level. This can affect the development of individuals in ways that profoundly impact their future behaviors, especially their interpersonal relationships. Interpersonal, and particularly romantic relationships, serve as a major factor contributing to successful adult life and possible impacts on adult relationships have long-term effects on a wide variety of adult behaviors. It is possible that developmental roles in childhood could form a model for later role-adoption, causing long-term effects on later behavior. Parentification and Its Types A long established process called parentification has been used in family-systems theory to describe a distinct pattern of behaviors when children younger than 18 (typically ages 8-14) assume parent-like roles in the parent-child relationship (Earley & Cushway, 2002). There exist two distinct types of this behavior, emotional parentification and instrumental parentification (Jurkovic, Jessee, & Goglia, 1991). Instrumental parentification occurs when a child cares for those in his or her family’s household tasks as if he or she was an adult. Common examples include behaviors such as washing the clothes of parents or younger siblings, cooking dinner for the family, or performing essential household chores such as cleaning. These behaviors are not simply a child taking responsibility, but being forced to take responsibility. Such parentification Parentification and Relationships -5 typically occurs when a child’s parent cannot perform such function, due to illness (mental or physical), marital strife, or drug abuse (Earley & Cushway, 2002). Emotional parentification involves a more subtle process in which a child begins to feel responsible for their parents’ emotional well-being. This typically occurs in divorced families, especially those in which parents treat their children as judges, deciding fault in the marriage’s failure (Barnett & Parker, 1998). Children involved in these behaviors begin to feel like referees in arguments between parents (divorced or not) and feel responsible for “choosing” one parent over another. Children will also sometimes feel they are responsible for their mother or father’s happiness or well-being, a responsibility few 8-14 year olds are developmentally equipped to handle (Jurovic et al., 2001). An example could be a child who tries to console their mother after a bad day at work, suppressing their own desire to talk about their own problems to keep their mother happier. Such behaviors create a situation where a child learns emotional regulation that could have long-term impacts on their interpersonal relationships later in life, such as hiding their own feelings in an attempt to protect their partner (Earley & Cushway, 2002). Instead of allowing their partner to support them emotionally, they have been taught through their childhood that they should hide their emotions in order to support those they love. In this way, their own suppressed emotions are only dealt with internally, without the support of those around them. Parentification’s Outcomes Research on these two processes has consistently found that emotional parentification causes more long-term interpersonal problems for parentified children Parentification and Relationships -6 than instrumental parentification (Jurkovic et al., 1991). Such research suggests that instrumental caregiving, while certainly not ideal, is not only a learning opportunity for the child and mainly gives children a feeling of responsibility. Emotional caregiving, however, creates a family dynamic where the child assumes an emotional role far beyond their developmental level to the point where they feel guilty for failures in family system. The traditional process where a child can gain emotional maturity through their parent’s support is lost, and instead a child is given the responsibility for a likely emotionally vulnerable mother or father. The protective nature of a good parent–child relationship instead becomes a relationship that is a constant source of stress and emotional distress to the child, because the demands placed on a child are beyond their developmental capabilities (Earley & Cushway, 2002). Unlike instrumental parentification, emotional parentification likely alters the child’s self-image and understanding of close relationships in a way that can cause long-term changes. As previously stated, both types of parentification typically occur in situations when a parent has stressors independent from the parent-child dynamic. Common examples include parents that are divorced, drug-dependent, depressed (especially mothers), and of low socio-economic means (Earley & Cushway, 2002). In each of these examples, there exists a major stressor on the parent that prevents them from fulfilling their role in the child-parent dyad. As a result, the child either chooses to, or is forced out of necessity to assume the responsibilities of a parent. The family system they are a part of is stressed, and the child is forced to deal with the stressor instead of the parent, likely feeling guilty if unsuccessful. Attachment Theory’s Possible Pathway for Parentification Induced Behaviors Parentification and Relationships -7 In the context of the process of parentification, traditional attachment theory presents a possible avenue for the modeling of caregiving behaviors present in parentification for caregiving in late adolescence and early adulthood. In this period, the learned model for attachment transfers from the traditional attachment figures of childhood, the parents, to romantic partners (Carnelly, Pietromonaco, & Jaffe, 1996). The theory broadly encompasses relationships that show behaviors such as caregiving, and relates to the way partners and parents care for those in their lives. A romantic partner assumes a role that, while different from the child-parent attachment, becomes the primary source of emotional support similar to the parent-child relationship. Partners in a traditional romantic attachment care for each other equally, taking turns providing emotional support their partner (Allen & Land, 1999). Studies have shown that this transfer of attachment also contains elements of the previous relationships. Carnelly et al. (1996) found that attachment styles from childhood transfer into later life. It seems possible that attachment style would not be the only type of behavior that would transfer between attachments. Parentification and its effects on behavior could be one example of negative learned behavioral style that could remain present from relationships in childhood to adulthood. In this way, the effects of parentification can be conceptualized from an attachment perspective. The disruption of the attachment system in childhood could affect later romantic relationships. Another powerful way parentification in childhood could impact future behavior is in the way emotionally parentified children are forced to assume the role of caregiver to their parents (Earley & Cushway, 2002). The need to care for parent-figures has been shown to make parentified children expect that those they care for need them to act in this Parentification and Relationships -8 caregiver role (Valleau, Bergner, & Horton, 1995). In this way, parentified children who become attached to their romantic partner in late adolescence could believe that they are expected to assume this same caretaker role they took on in childhood. Little research has been undertaken focusing specifically on the behaviors of parentification directly relating to outcomes in later life. This information is key to the creation and testing of new intervention techniques, as well as methods of therapy and confirming that the conceptualization of the theory can be examined empirically. It is likely that not all types of parentification have negative outcomes on relationships overall. Instrumental parentification does not have comparatively as detrimental effects on children likely because instrumental caregiving presents children with a type of caregiving that is explicit and important in later life. Emotional parentification, however, is less explicit and forces a child into a role that is almost impossible for a child to succeed in. Jurkovic, Jessee, and Goglia (1991) suggested that the age an individual takes on caretaking roles as well as the difficulty of what he or she is asked to do affects the impact of the parentification on his or her behavior. Instrumental parentification could be more age appropriate than emotional parentification, as it is not necessarily difficult for a 12-year-old child to wash clothes, but how could a 12-year-old child make a depressed thirty-year-old mother happy? This type of responsibility is difficult even for fully developed individuals to deal with, whereas washing clothes can be done by an individual 12 years old or 40 years old. While the ways a partner needs to care for their romantic partner are not necessarily the same as what a divorced mother needs, it teaches the child to feel responsible for others’ happiness, especially their parents and possibly their romantic partners. Parentification and Relationships -9 Based on these processes, my hypothesis surrounding the connection between parentification and caregiving behaviors is that those who are parentified in childhood are more likely to assume caregiver responsibilities in their later romantic relationships. The roles they assumed as children would reassert themselves later in life as learned appropriate behavior towards those they love. Also, those who were parentified in childhood will be more likely to form insecure romantic attachments to their partners. The pattern of parentification behavior with their parents would outline a style of attachment that would deviate from the norm in the responsibility the child takes on and create a situation where the individual would later react to their partner in a less secure way. Those who were parentified in childhood are also more likely to have higher levels of depression and lower levels of relationship satisfaction. These hypotheses were studied using a survey design in order to determine the possible correlation between emotional parentification and later caregiving in romantic relationships. This was combined with other measures in order to test a large amount of variables, giving the researcher the ability to determine the possible relationships between childhood behaviors and later outcomes, such as attachment styles in later romantic relationships. Outcome variables including depressive symptoms and relationship satisfaction were included to correlate parentification’s relationship with these results.