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What do President Lyndon Baines Johnson and Marlene Dietrich have in common? Both were children who took on adult-size responsibilities and looked after their parents. A growing body of research is showing that what is called "parentification" is something that might actually help children grow into successful adults rather than thwarting their psychosocial development. The lesson here is to kick back and rely on your kids more. It's good for them and may help prepare them for success later in life!
Even when a child is relied upon to provide a parent with emotional support, children still do well if they know that their families really need their help. A family that has a parent who is ill, or under a huge amount of stress (think unemployed, or a refugee), needs their children to make a meaningful contribution to keeping the family going.
Odd, but parenting practices in affluent countries like the United States and Canada have in recent years been biased towards placing fewer and fewer demands on children. The trick, however, according to research by people like Patricia Kerig at the University of Utah, is to be sure that the child who is assuming adult-like roles (like cooking, cleaning, earning money, and caring for an ill parent's mental and physical needs) hears four messages about the contribution he is making.
First, the child must feel that what he's doing is fair given the circumstances. Burden a child with lots of parental duties in a well-resourced home with two lazy parents, and the child is more likely than not to become resentful and feel exploited.
Second, the child's relationship with his parents must be reciprocal. By that I mean when he does something mom or dad have to say "Thank you" and do what they can to show how much they value the child's contribution.
Third, the amount of burden placed on the child needs to be manageable. Mary Pipher, the author of Reviving Ophelia was herself a parentified child. But in her case, her poorly functioning parents had her cooking on the stove at age six not because they couldn't do it, but because they wouldn't. That's not a formula for a successful, emotionally healthy child.
Finally, parentification needs to make sense culturally. For example, we've seen in the west a tremendous number of new immigrants from war-torn countries where children were required to assume adult roles, especially the care of younger children. Coming from refugee camps where this became the norm, child protection workers may be upset to hear that eight-year-olds are looking after their three- and four-year-old siblings. But is it neglect if both parents are working minimum wage jobs and the child is recognized for the contribution she is making? How much risk is there really? And what damage do we do when we intervene and take away a child's source of self-esteem?
Even Salvador Minuchin, a guru of family system's theory, wrote in the early 1970s that while families in which parent-child hierarchies were inverted (child on top, parent on bottom) could be detrimental to a child's well-being, no family model in and of itself is inherently better than another. In fact, the research shows that childhood parentification may help children develop higher levels of empathy, responsibility, and altruism.
That's something to consider the next time we excuse our kids from doing the chores, or worry about keeping them home from school for a day to care for us after we've had a bad fall or day surgery. The evidence is clear. The kids will learn more from learning to care for us than they will spending another day studying reading, writing and arithmetic. I suggest they also need a fourth 'R', responsibility. And that leads to resilience.
