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When siblings act as parents, the impacts are long lasting
“Parentification” of children can be destructive to the entire family.
Talk to any oldest child and they’ll tell you stories of taking care of their siblings. From babysitting to changing diapers to walking kids to school, it’s naturally assumed that as the oldest, the sibling will look out for those who come behind.
But in some families caring for siblings goes beyond merely “helping out”. Siblings may take on a larger role, doing everything from being a primary caregiver to cooking for them to protecting them from abusive parents. When siblings become parents, there are long-term consequences not only for the sibling doing the parenting, but also those they care for.
Psychologists call this “destructive parentification”. An article from The Awareness Centre describes it like this:
Parentification was defined by Boszormenyi-Nagy & Spark in 1973 as being the distortion or lack of boundaries between and among family subsystems, such that children take on the roles and responsibilities usually reserved for adults…a parentified child becomes the parent to their siblings or even their parents. They grow up too quickly as a result of their parent’s inability or unwillingness to fulfil responsibilities in the home. Their…
