The signicance of children fullling parental roles:

implications for family therapy

John Byng-Hall
a
This article describes how family therapists can routinely address the
important, but often overlooked, issue of how some children may play
parental roles in families. In some situations such as inadequate or absent
parenting, a child is drawn into the parental subsystem and becomes
identied as a little parent in a process known as parentication. As well
as gaining competence in caring, this experience may also become
destructive to children in a number of ways. This includes loss of
childhood and, as children are unable to full the parental role ade-
quately, low self-esteem, depression and other symptoms. The concept of
family attachment scripts is used to understand the implications of a child
crossing adult/child boundaries which can lead to looking after parents
and siblings. Family therapy techniques help to redress the role reversal
and enable the parents to take appropriate responsibility in the family.
Work also focuses on how to prevent transmission of parentication down
the generations. Therapists have often been parental children. How this
can inuence their work is illustrated by a specic case.
Introduction
Children taking on parental roles is an important issue which often
goes unnoticed. There has been an almost exclusive focus by thera-
pists on the damage done to children through deprivation of ade-
quate care by parents. This can indeed be a very damaging feature.
This focus however often obscures the parental roles that children
take up when attempting to ll the vacuumof care within the family. It
can be missed by family therapists in family meetings unless routinely
looked for, and asked about.
Boszormenyi-Nagy and Spark (1973) described the expectation
that one or more children will full a parental role in the family and
called it parentication. Jurkovic (1997) discusses the concept of
rThe Association for Family Therapy 2008. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington
Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Journal of Family Therapy (2008) 30: 147162
0163-4445 (print); 1467-6427 (online)
a
Consultant Child and Family Psychiatrist, Institute of Family Therapy. Address for
correspondence: 27 Estelle Road, London NW3 2JX, UK. E-mail: john.byng-hall@
blueyonder.co.uk.
r2008 The Author. Journal compilation r2008 The Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice
parentication and the problems that parentied children face; how
to intervene and the role of prevention. Chase (1999) provides an
overview of parentication and discusses theoretical, research and
societal issues. Minuchin (1974) discusses the role of the parental child
who crosses the boundary to the parental subsystem to care for
siblings that he described as a natural and helpful arrangement in
large families, single-parent families or in families in which both
parents work. But crossing the boundary may also be part of wider
family problems. Winton (2003) discusses the roles of children who
are parental from a sociological perspective.
Parenting roles can become part of the childs identity within the
family (Byng-Hall, 2002), and if the child also identies herself as a little
parent she may take on an identity that is likely to prevail for a long
period, often a lifetime, as I look after others. The child may then be
described as parentied as she has permanently joined the parental
subsystem. During childhood, taking on some roles in caring for other
family members when they need it is an important step in the
development of caring skills. Onerous and extended looking-after
roles, however, can restrict childhood, limit the development of other
abilities and be harmful (Jurkovic, 1997). Both adaptive and destructive
processes need to be routinely considered by family therapists, who also
have a unique opportunity to observe and address the phenomenon.
Most therapists have played parental roles in their families of origin
(Goldklank, 1986). It is important for them to be aware of how this
inuences their work with families. It gives them an insight into the
competence as well as the problems for parental children. This
awareness is particularly important when they experience being
drawn into parental rather than therapeutic roles in their client
families.
Situations arising that draw a child into the parental subsystem
Families seen by family therapists frequently have some problems in
parenting which makes them more likely to draw one or more
children into parenting roles. In addition, specic situations include:
1 Absence of a parent or parents through death or divorce (Jurkovic
et al., 2001) or parents at work.
2 Dysfunction of a parent through mental illness (Aldridge and
Becker, 2003; Gopfert et al., 2004), substance abuse (Burnett
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et al., 2006), disability, or other reasons leading to the inability of a
parent to provide care.
3 Parents with insecure attachments, such as insecure ambivalent and
insecure disorganized/disorientated, turn to children for care
(Byng-Hall, 2002, 2008).
4 Parental conict or divorce may draw children into particular roles
within the conict, or they may become substitute partners. If this
is sexual however it may not include the parenting aspect.
5 Drawn into a trans-generational family script (Byng-Hall, 1995a).
Parents who had been a parental child would have expectation of
care from their own children because that is what had been
expected of themselves as children.
Parenting is culture-bound, characterized in many cultures by
parental rights and child duties, as opposed to parental responsibility
and childrens rights (Gopfert et al., 2004). Similarly there are gender
differences (Jurkovic, 1997), with girls being much more likely to
develop patterns of parentication than boys.
Instrumental tasks are often easier for a child to take on such as
cooking, dressing and undressing a disabled parent. Emotional caring
roles are more difcult; for instance, acting as an attachment gure to
whom the parent turns to in distress, or acting as a condante. In
parental conict the child may take on emotionally distressing roles
such as a go-between, mediator, peacekeeper or policeman as well as
other adult roles.
Consequences of becoming parental children
One useful way of understanding when the parental role may create
long-term problems is when the parental child permanently crosses
the adult/child boundary and is seen in the family as having adult-like
abilities and is treated accordingly. This can lead to the parental child
seeing herself as a carer who should be able to manage the role and
has a duty to do so. She takes on a parentied identity.
Adaptive abilities
The experience of a child taking on certain parental roles is empow-
ering of caring ability, which is more likely to follow if the tasks
allocated are appropriate for age and culture and the child is treated
fairly. It is important that the parental role is openly delegated by
parents in the presence of siblings, which means that it is easier for
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siblings to accept something they might otherwise resent a bossy
sibling. The childs caring activities need to be supported, validated,
and gratitude shown by parents. These actions taken by a parent help
to maintain the boundary for the child between being a little parent
and being a child who takes on temporary caring roles. The caring
may then be seen as a promising part of a childs repertoire of abilities,
and the identity of being a child is maintained. She can be proud of
what she learns to do. Skills of caring are encouraged, and can be
enjoyed by all. Self-esteem can grow in the glow of family apprecia-
tion. However, while children who are drawn into permanent par-
ental roles as little adults can still gain considerable caregiving
abilities they are more likely to experience adverse effects.
Potentially destructive consequences
Many of the unfortunate effects of being a parental child on emotional
development arise from excessive burdens or those tasks that are
inappropriate for their age. The loss of childhood and social isolation
can in some cases limit their range of capabilities; for instance, the
capacity for play and socialization. Children cannot fully take on a
parental role in all its aspects. Thus despite outside appearances of
high competence they can feel inadequate, guilty and self-blaming,
leading to low self-esteem. Symptoms can include: depression which
can become suicidal, shame, unrelenting worry, and other internaliz-
ing signs such as psychosomatic symptoms, or externalizing symptoms
of conduct disorder, as well as personality disorder (Jones and Wells,
1996; Jurkovic, 1997; Gopfert, 2006).
The child does not feel that she is the capable person that others see.
Her personal identity can be a sense of being nothing or feeling empty.
At the more extreme end there is a very explicit pattern of being
expected to be a full-time carer, often associated with a strong sense of
deprivation. She may feel like someone always wanting to be doing
something else and sometimes feel an imposter in the parenting role
(Castro et al., 2004). In other words, some children do not feel part of
the parenting script that the family has for them. This lack of self-image
may endure and become part of their personalities. It is also very
muddling to be switching from being their own grandparents when
looking after a parent, to being treated as a child the next moment.
Many parentied children are found in emotionally troubled
families, and have experienced many traumas. They may develop
ways of being many different people in order to comply with many
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conicting demands and having to undertake many different tasks.
This can lead to a degree of dissociation and splitting (Jones and
Wells, 1998). Lackie (1999) illustrates this by describing two identities.
There is the self-sacricing, pathological empathy, available to all
without limits the angelic spirit. Resentful, but bound by loyalty,
there is the angry, exploited, overburdened part (p. 144). A split in
identity may emerge between that of a parental child and a child in
need of care who attempts to elicit at least some care by seeking
attention or developing symptoms. This can divert the therapists
attention from the childs parenting role, which makes it more
difcult to spot parentication. There can be a wide range of parental
tasks for the child, either to meet the immediate necessity of various
situations or to comply with family expectations. This does not
provide children with a self-identity that is coherent, or that they
can feel is their own, and which they can be proud of.
Some children have been coerced to give care through family guilt-
arousing techniques. These may include blaming them for a situation
because they do not try hard enough, or even in some cases being
accused of having killed a parent whom they were supposed to have
looked after. They then constantly need to make amends. This can lead
to their becoming compulsive caregivers, dutifully helping everyone,
even those who do not want or need it (Bowlby, 1980; Crittenden,
2006). This continual dutiful care is not guided by sensitive empathy
with the recipients current feelings. These children are often not good
at nding space for looking after themselves. They have also been
deprived of the experience of having been adequately cared for which
could have enabled them to care better for themselves.
Patterns of family care
Families have their own patterns of caregiving and care-seeking roles.
Some aspects of these patterns arise from family circumstances
discussed above; others are inuenced by the various attachment
strategies of each member of the family. Systemically there is mutual
inuence between all these aspects of caregiving within the ecology of
the family (Hill et al., 2003; Byng-Hall, 2008).
Family attachment scripts
The roles in the family may be understood in terms of family scripts
which can be dened as the familys shared expectations of how family
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roles are to be performed within various contexts (Byng-Hall, 1995a).
In this case the context of caregiving and care-seeking becomes the
family attachment script. This means that if a child is often looking
after, for instance, her father, this becomes expected by the family.
When she does not look after her father there may be family pressure
to return to parenting her father. If she does resume she may
eventually identify herself with the overall role of carer, I look after
others, which may involve her looking after other members of the
family as well. Families with a secure enough family base can ensure
overall care for children despite the fact that some adult family
members cannot give care adequately. These families are more likely
to nurture their childrens caring abilities appropriate to their age; in
other words, they are identied as caring children rather than
expected to full the role of a parent: I can do some of this looking
after others when needed. The parents relationship can model
mutual care in which each looks after the other when they need it.
Children in secure families who respond to the needs of other family
members when they arise remain condent that they will, in turn, be
cared for whenever they need it.
Insecure members of a family are likely to nd roles that accom-
modate their various attachment strategies within the familys script.
For instance, parents with insecure attachments vary in the way they
rely on a child for their care. Anxious/preoccupied parents are likely
to have enmeshed relationships, with diffuse adult/child boundaries,
and readily seek care from a child (Marvin and Stewart, 1990),
whereas a dismissive parent is less likely to seek care from anyone
even when he or she does need it. Insecure/disorganized attachments
often lead to a controlling form of parenting from a child (Byng-Hall,
2002), as can happen in any family that is uncoordinated or chaotic.
Children may be drawn into the parents conicts over the distance
from each other within couples. Their relationship can feel too far
for one but too close for the other (Byng-Hall, 1995a, 1995b).
Typically this relationship consists of an insecure ambivalent parent
whose attachment strategy is to cling to the partner to stop them
leaving, whereas the partner who is insecure dismissive has an
opposing strategy of backing away in order to avoid being hurt by
rejection. This may lead the clinging partner to turn to a child instead,
thus elevating the child into the parental subsystem. In continuing
parental conict there is also a risk of the child being drawn into a
coalition against the other parent. In these situations care for the child
is put at risk.
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Sibling groups parenting their parents
The various parental roles may be shared out between siblings. In one
family, parental roles were shared between a boy who was emotionally
available because he was anxious and clinging to his mother who had
multiple sclerosis. An insecure avoidant sister was able to do the
physical looking after her. Other features, such as age, inuence who
is to be drawn into which role. Over time the roles may be handed
over to other siblings. In large families the oldest sibling or the eldest
girl is more likely to be recruited into parental roles. A younger child
may take over as the other siblings leave home. A parentied child
may however maintain the role throughout, even after leaving home.
Sometimes a parentied child takes over all the caring and so deprives
other siblings of the experience of looking after others.
Future spouse relationships
Parental children not infrequently grow up and marry partners who
want to be looked after and thus join the childrens subsystem. This
can work until the parentied partner wants and needs some care.
The dependent partner may then grow angry and try to pull their
parental partner back into role. This might work if the parentied
partner herself remains so insecure that she still needs to be needed.
Sometimes however relationships can break up, but may survive if a
child is recruited into a parental role instead.
Trans-generational family scripts
A parent who had been a parental child may automatically expect that
their children will, in turn, be there for them, in what is called a
replicative family script. This can also be driven by a parent feeling
owed the parenting that they were deprived of in childhood, so turn
to their child for care to redress the balance (Boszormenyi-Nagy and
Spark, 1973). Some parental children however nd their experience
in childhood so painful that they vow to do the opposite by being very
parental to their own children, thus following what is called a
corrective script. They thus try to take on what may be called a
counter-identity (Byng-Hall, 1995a) to that of their parent. However,
they may also have to face the discovery, perhaps during family
therapy, that in practice their children are trying to look after them,
and that they themselves had been unwittingly inviting them to do so.
This hidden replication had been based on their identication outside
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their awareness with their own parents behaviour. Commonly there
are aspects of both replicative and corrective scripts in trans-genera-
tional patterns. Some parentied children when adult cannot give up
the parenting role; thus they parent their own children relentlessly so
that role reversal is not passed to the next generation. But the risk is
that those children do not learn the necessary competence for adult
caring and later demand care from their own children. Parentication
thus continues but skips a generation. Preventing role reversal being
repeated down the generations involves addressing patterns in past
and present generations.
Therapeutic implications
Interventions described below may all be applied within the normal
processes of family and couple therapy that is appropriate to the
presenting problem. The presence of children doing some parenting
may not be acknowledged within the family and may be hidden from
the therapist by all the other more prominent processes going on in the
foreground. Family therapists who choose to leave it to the family to
decide who comes to the sessions may never see the good parental
child who is left at home because she is not thought of as in need of help.
Work can be done in family sessions on how parents can collaborate
to look after their children. When children see that their parents are
being looked after by the therapist they are more likely to relax and be
children. Seeing parents together without the children may also help
them to look after each other rather than relying on a child. Three
generational meetings can help grandparents to support the parent to
do the parenting, rather than take over the parents role, which keeps
the parents in the child subsystem. Towards the end of therapy
parents who have had a parental role as a child may want to work
on their own on how to step out of long-standing parental roles in
their family of origin.
Identifying and addressing parentifying processes
In a family session a parental child may sometimes appear to be like a
little old woman, with parents talking to the child as if she were an
adult, though it is rarely as clear as that. Signs of a parental role might
include a child watching the parents interaction intently; taking part
in the adult discussion, or advising them or sometimes controlling the
parents. Signs of recruitment might be when the parents are at a loss
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and look towards a particular child for guidance or support, or ask
that child for an opinion. Over time it will become clearer to the
therapist whether the child is a parental one or a child who looks after
others only when needed.
Talking to children about their experiences of looking after others
can be very valuable. This may emerge naturally in discussions about
who looks after whom including the children. If this can be done in
the presence of the parent or parents it is particularly useful, as it can
lead to a discussion between parents and child that can continue at
home. It may be the rst time that the parent is aware of how the child
feels about the situation. Parents can start to become more empathic
as they become aware of the childs distress and anxiety. It may also be
the rst time a child has told anybody about her anxiety about her
parents. Sometimes children cannot talk about it out of loyalty to the
parent, or fear of the parents anger. Separate meetings with the
children may be useful and can prepare the child for a discussion with
the whole family. When parents have mental health problems children
need help to deal with the situation (Gopfert et al., 2004). This
requires collaboration with adult mental health services. For instance,
a mental health worker can explain the nature of the parents illness
and the symptoms to the children. This can, among other things,
reassure them that they have not caused the illness (Cooklin and
Gorell Barnes, 2004). Family therapy in the mental health eld is very
important and needs particular expertise.
When the family is describing disturbing events, it maybe useful to
ask, Who looked after whom at that moment? and include direct
questions about the childs role. The use of the family tree should
routinely ask this question whenever a traumatic event or a period of
absence of parenting is identied. It is particularly useful for those
adults who had been drawn into parenting roles at some point in their
own childhood but had not realized the signicance.
Working with three generations: breaking the trans-generational cycle
The C family. The C family came for some family therapy. This
account will focus on the mother, Rebecca, who was part of at least
three generations of role reversal and on the work that was done to
prevent transmission down further generations. Many other issues
were, of course, also addressed in the therapy. One of the difculties
in the current family was created by Rebecca spending much of
her life looking after and worrying about her own mother, who, now
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in her eighties, was in a nursing home with heart problems. Rebeccas
husband, teenage daughter and son felt angry and neglected
by Rebecca.
In the previous generation Rebeccas mother had looked after her
own father who was brain-damaged following an accident. Rebecca
had been 6 years old when her father had a stroke, thus repeating her
mothers family situation of parental illness. Rebeccas mother started
to look after her husband full time as she had done for her own father.
Rebecca was left to look after her baby brother and support her
mother, and she began to run the household. She became very
controlling but surprisingly competent, which, however, was not
noticed by her mother, who made her feel responsible for her fathers
illness. Rebecca grew up feeling guilty and that she was not good
enough. Her mother treated her as an adult who would not need any
validation for her expected looking-after role. Rebecca developed a
secret idea that her thoughts could keep her father alive whereas her
anger would kill him. When he did nally die when she was 12 her
mother blamed Rebecca for his death. From then on Rebecca
compulsively looked after everyone except herself.
After some therapeutic work on her low self-esteem Rebecca went
to see her mother and talked to her about her experience of her own
childhood. Her mother started to say how much she admired Rebecca
for how she had managed to be so helpful, kind and also so successful.
This belated validation made a big difference. It took some time,
however, before Rebecca could step out of the role of looking after her
mother with almost daily visits and be a daughter coming to talk when
she wanted. She started to spend more time with her own family.
She talked to her own children about her struggle not to demand
help from them as her mother had from her. I asked about whether
the children did in practice look after her. Rather sheepishly she
admitted that she had turned to her eldest daughter for help. She
discussed it again with the children who responded by telling her how
much they worried about her and tried to help her surreptitiously.
This was a shock to her and she came to see me with some shame. I
pointed out that it was inevitable that there would be some mix of
repeating the past and the struggle not to repeat. Now that the topic
had been discussed it became easier for the children to tell her when
they felt they should, or should not, do something. They also
explained what it was that their mother did to make them feel they
should look after her. They teased her about this. Relationships
relaxed after that.
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Helping parents who had parental roles when children
The B family. The Bs originally came for family therapy but later chose
to continue working on their marriage because the husband, Bruce,
was depressed and the marriage was no longer functioning properly.
In the early sessions it was noticeable that his wife, June, would sit
leaning towards him, attentively listening to his meandering descrip-
tions of his woes, and making suggestions about what he should do.
June had been the oldest of the girls in a ve-sibling family. Her
parents had split up following many rows. June was the one who
looked after the other siblings but also tried to sort her parents out. In
contrast Bruces family experience was of an older sister who had
looked after the siblings, including Bruce himself.
In one session Bruce lost his temper when June mentioned that she
was depressed herself. This revealed how much her request for help
threatened his being looked after as enshrined in his marital vow, You
will look after me until death do us part. The work on how each of
them could step out of their old parenting/being parented axis began.
This started with some work on her depression establishing that she
needed help at times. Bruce resented this but eventually began to
listen to her distress and make some thoughtful suggestions. They
became more mutually supportive.
June started to talk about her work situation. She was assuming a
lead role in sorting out staff conicts in the workplace. She stopped
doing this. This annoyed the staff, who tried to induct her back into
her helpful role. We explored how she had gained valuable inter-
personal skills from her parentication but at a high price. She
realized that she felt empty and no good despite achieving high status
at work. Bruce started to feel better about himself as he became more
helpful to her. June realized that she had been helpful to others in
order to be needed and so feel more secure. Bruce became more
aware of how he made himself more in need in order to have someone
be there for him.
After a holiday together, the couple realized that they did not have to
play out this script in order to need each other. This led to questions
about whether or not they wanted to stay together. The therapist
pointed out that they had never had an experience of choosing the
other or having being chosen. After a period of oscillation and difculty
they decided to go on a second honeymoon. They had stepped out of
their scripts and each had nally chosen to be marital partners.
Problems still arose, but they could collaborate and enjoy themselves.
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Family therapists work on their own parental childhoods
Family therapists, along with many others who are in caring profes-
sions, have often fullled certain parental roles during their own
childhood which has led them to be skilled at caring. Family therapy is
a tting career choice. It could be said that this was their rst training
in family therapy (Goldklank, 1986). It is useful for therapists to be
aware of their own strategies that they used in childhood in caring for
members of their families. Therapists may usefully work on how they
might become recruited by client families into similar roles to those
they took on in childhood. For instance, if they had been caring for
their whole family they may be recruited into being too much in
charge of client families. On the other hand, this experience can
provide considerable sensitivity to family-wide processes. In a session
therapists awareness about their own likely roles enables them to be
more aware of the contexts they are likely to be drawn into. This
allows them to reect on whether or not it is useful in the current
situation. The experience of feeling an impulse to act also provides
useful cues about what is happening within the family system that
invited the therapist into taking a role. Reecting on these can help
the therapist to choose to use the skills learned rather than follow the
family into an unhelpful scenario. It can be useful to do this particular
therapeutic work within supervision, as in the case of Elena, who was a
family therapist in a unit for learning-disabled children.
Elena stepping out of her parental role
Elena tells the story of how she was brought up in Poland. She was the
eldest of eight children and all helped on the poultry farm. The
parents worked seven days a week in order to make ends meet. As far
back as Elena can remember she looked after her siblings. When she
was 4 years old her mother had her fourth pregnancy but the baby
died. Her mother had a serious depression and Elena had to look
after her two younger siblings, as well as her mother. She also
parented the next ve siblings.
Her mother was distant and strict. Her father was warm but was an
alcoholic. During her childhood she kept awake until he came home
and then listened to hear whether he was becoming violent, when she
would run downstairs to stop him hurting her mother, so taking on
the role of policewoman. Her parents relationship was conictual and
when they fought she was the peacekeeper and go-between. She
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became the condante of her mother, while also being a secret ally of
her father. Her eldest two siblings hated being bossed around by her,
but the others accepted her as little mother. The only member of the
family who treated her as a person was her paternal grandfather. She
neglected herself in her constant caring for others. Her mother was
very critical and rarely validated what she was doing or praised her.
She was constantly demanding that Elena do her duty; Elena became
very self-critical and driven to constant caring. Later she became a
therapist. The work I did with her is described below.
This work was done in supervision which enabled Elena to tell the
story which explained why she had developed a paradoxical state of
mind: highly competent but with low self-esteem. This centred on
understanding how and why she became recruited into such roles. We
explored the signicance of this in relation to her work with families. I
shared my thinking with her as a colleague in a mutual exploration
and enrichment of shared ideas. I was able to appreciate her insights
validating her capacity to help others, while remarking on how much
she was doing. Eventually she was able to tell me that in adolescence
she had had a breakdown when the burden became too much. We
made some comparisons with the escalating work load after her
arrival in England. A common theme was that she needed to be
needed as she had such a low opinion of herself and assumed that no
one would really want her. We discussed her attitude towards herself.
I felt a fraud. All the praise she was given she saw as a result of her
fraud not her deeds. She longed for unconditional love but never
thought she could get it. As with all those who have been parental
children I was careful to validate the specic way she looked after
others, both at work and with her friends and family, but I avoided
praising which, especially in this case, can often be taken as unde-
served attery that has to be played down, especially by someone with
low self-esteem.
Further work was done on how to step out of the parentied role.
When Elena travelled to England she was accompanied by two of her
siblings. She eventually stopped giving help over the phone to her
siblings in Poland and those who were living with her. Instead of initiating
contact with them she waited until they got in touch with her. She would
then engage in a sibling discussion rather than a counselling one. She
went back to Poland for a holiday. She was able to tell her mother that she
was very upset when she was left out of many things in which her siblings
were involved. Both cried and then hugged each other. They said they
loved each other. She was using her mother as a condante rather than
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the other way around; an appropriate relationship between a mother
and a daughter in her thirties. Elena was no longer her own grand-
mother. She started to make space for romantic relationships. We could
now work on that issue. She wanted a family of her own.
As with many people who had been parentied it showed in her
relationship to the therapist. She tried to look after me in a number of
ways. She was a very good client, making me feel good about my work.
She was also very attentive to any problems she thought I might have
and she was always helpful. At different times we discussed this. She
described her work context. She was a very diligent therapist taking on
an ever increasing case load. Her line manager sent her as many cases
as he thought she wanted. She was also looking after other staff in
meetings. She became the star member of staff. She was, however,
reaching a point of collapse. She was angry with her manager for not
limiting her case load, but she said nothing. We worked on how she
could discuss her vulnerability. She asked for help from her line
manager supervisor. He told her that he had worried about her but
was waiting for her to stop asking for more cases because he thought,
probably correctly, that she would have felt insulted. A proper line
manager relationship was established. We also discussed how her
impulse to help in so many of her ingrained ways was both valuable
but needed to be understood by her before offering appropriate
interventions. Her work became less frantic and she seemed more alive.
It would be valuable for trainers of supervisors to address parenti-
cation processes that can occur in the context of supervision.
Conclusion
Addressing the phenomenon of children playing parental roles can
play an important part in helping families in difculty. Its potential to
benet families as well as prevent future problems has not been
sufciently appreciated. This is because it is often a background issue
not clearly in need of addressing in the crisis of referral. Presenting
problems naturally take precedence. If family therapists have know-
ledge of the role of parental children and the consequences it is more
likely to become a routine part of family therapy, providing an
additional dimension readily integrated into the work. Perhaps the
most valuable aspect is that it validates strengths as well as addressing
the destructive elements. Further research is needed to understand
parentication better, clarify its role and provide indications for what
to do in therapy.
160 John Byng-Hall
r2008 The Author. Journal compilation r2008 The Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Michael Gopfert for many valuable ideas about
parentication.
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