Parentification
[2] Instrumental parentification involves the child completing physical tasks for the family, such as cooking meals or cleaning the house.
"[5] Spousification and parental child (Minuchin) offered alternative concepts exploring the same phenomenon, while the theme of intergenerational continuity in such violations of personal boundaries was further examined.
[6] Furthermore, Eric Berne highlighted the dangers of parents and children having a symmetrical, rather than asymmetrical relationship, as when an absent spouse is replaced by the eldest child in the family dynamic;[7] and Virginia Satir wrote of "the role–function discrepancy...where the son gets into a head-of-the-family role, commonly that of the father".
[8] Object relations theory suggest that a child's false self is called into being when it is forced prematurely to take excessive care of the parental object;[9] and John Bowlby looked at what he called "compulsive caregiving" among the anxiously attached, as a result of a parent inverting the normal relationship and pressuring the child to be an attachment figure for them.
Girls, especially those living in a large family, are more likely than boys to be pushed into developmentally inappropriate amounts and types of caregiving.
[20] In a mother–daughter relationship, the mother might oblige her daughter to take on the caregiving role, in a betrayal of the child's normal expectation of love and care.
[14] In destructive parentification, the child in question takes on excessive responsibility in the family, without their caretaking being supported adequately by others.
[29] In later life, parentified children often experience anxiety over abandonment and loss, and demonstrate difficulty handling rejection and disappointment within interpersonal relationships.
[21] Researchers of this view say that children may benefit from being treated as capable individuals and taking on the role of supporting and caring for their family.
[3][31] Adaptive parentification may not be role reversal when it is instrumental rather than emotional caretaking, temporary and without heavy burden, and when the child is treated fairly by their parents and has their support.
[36] Agnes is forced to be the parent of her alcoholic father and seems to strive for perfection as a means of reaching the "ego ideal" of her deceased mother (who died upon child-birth).
