I once referred a female client to a psychiatrist for a consult. Her husband had just left her, and she said that she no longer saw the point in living. I was concerned. After seeing her, the psychiatrist was kind enough to call and tell me that he had stabilized her, but he wondered why I had initially told him that she was “childlike.” He found that she was parentified in her family of origin and thus saw her as parental. I answered that it is confusing but parentified adults have a trapped child lurking inside because much of their childhoods were suppressed or stolen from them via their parentification. He found that interesting.

Boszormenyi-Nagy (1965) coined the term parentification as part of his larger contextual theory of family therapy to indicate when someone is given age-inappropriate responsibilities. For example, when a child is enlisted to be the mediator between parents in a troubled marriage, or the child of a single-parent household is saddled with the tasks of raising younger siblings. Other examples may include children of immigrants who served as........

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