This was a really interesting reflection. We see this a lot I think a new term comes in, takes over social media, becomes the backbone of every conversation and excuse, and then settles down into a more appropriate and likely realistic space. Cultural differences are often lost in this space and there feels like there is less tolerance for discussion in this space, thank you for sharing!
I really appreciate the depth and nuance in this post.
Mental health discourse on social media can help spread awareness but it often flattens and dilutes complex concepts until they don’t really mean anything at all.
Mainstream psychology also usually doesn’t often account for cultural differences, as you’ve rightly pointed out!
Thank you for writing this, Selda. I draw a parallel to a case I'm passionate about, which you might find intersecting with your field of expertise or not, but both my case and your example in your essay have a common root cause: online discourse.
My case is the online discourse in the well-being space about nutrition, where everyone and their dog claims and witnesses cautious healthful eating with a single narrative: that sugar is bad, that carb is harmful, other camp preach carnivore is the way to go, while the elites on the other camp swear by the plant-based foods, and almost unequivocally everyone agrees that UPFs are evil.
Guess that I followed many different advice from one extreme to another, and ended up with disordered eating (I'd like to say ED but never formally and not intending to be diagnosed), like in orthorexic and AN cases.
The short-form content, if any, may be to blame in various cases like this where an individual forms their view and decides their next steps based on the online discourse alone. My fear of sugar and UPFs was real and I kept them out of my kitchen, only until I decided to face my health issues properly with eating more, nourishing my body. And yes, UPFs and sugar could provide quick energy for malnourished folks.
Context matters. In your example, children helping their families within context, within reason, are normal and to be expected. Same case as, sugar, carbs, fat, and UPFs above when a starving person needs all the energy to rebuild the body. I agree with you that not every task done by a child is a case of parentification. Not every sugar molecule entering your bloodstream causes you type 2 diabetes.
Perhaps, what experts in psychology could do is to help society understand nuance, context, and balance. Eat balanced meals, experts say, but nobody knows what balanced means anymore. Have a balanced structure in household chores, people shout at parents giving children age-appropriate tasks, because nobody knows what balanced or appropriate means anymore.
But then again, context, nuance, and balance need more words to explain. Not everything can be poured out in a thread of short-form content, can it?
Less time to read, shorter attention span, more saturated online content market, so the experts are crushed to condense everything. Lost of communication.
When the online mass becomes an echo chamber because of the signal reduction, when the population fail to understand the spectrum (health and household chores, for instance) and see everything in black and white, that's when we have to reassess our communication style.
Hi Sekar, thank you for your comment. I do agree with the fact that nuance is lost online and especially due to short-term content. Even I feel helpless sometimes with somewhat longer ones, such as this piece. I always feel the need to give more context, more dependencies, just to make sure I’m not misunderstood and people get the most important information to make a judgment. But of course, that’s impossible.
Thank you for a very reasoned and in depth newsletter. My mum relied very heavily on me emotionally and I've put other people's needs before my own for decades, but as you say, awareness and understanding are helping me to see why my mum behaved as she did and choose how I want to move forward putting my needs back in the picture. I have held resentment towards my mum (she died 6 years ago) but I now see how many positive qualities she had and that she instilled in me. I'm so grateful for her and all she was able to give me 💞
I was fortunate to have grown up in a family where my father worked outside the home and my mother kept house and took care of my siblings and myself. Every Saturday the children would do household chores and for that we received a small allowance. My mother was loving, capable and remained very healthy until all of us children had left the nest. I believe that this kind of upbringing prepared me well for my current situation in which I’m caring for a very ill spouse while battling several chronic illnesses myself. It might seem old fashioned, but the only time my mother worked outside the home was before she married, when she briefly worked with her older sisters in an aircraft plant during World War Two. I had never heard the term Parentification until I read this post. Thank you, Good Doctor, for sharing this fascinating topic. I always seem to enjoy your thoughtful, balanced posts, whether or not they apply directly to my own life experiences.
Hi Rafael! I had many responsibilities when I was growing up and helped out a lot. I believe that those experiences prepared me well for later in life too. Thank you for sharing your own experience!
And here I am wishing that my parents gave me more chores! My mom stayed home to take care of my siblings and me and while we were given some responsibilities, we never followed a regular chore schedule. I have always been highly conscientious, and in my twenties, I felt guilty about living with my parents and seeing my mother complain about how tedious household tasks are since she has being doing them for 20+ years and isn’t satisfied by them anymore. So I stepped up and took ownership over specific chores like laundry, cleaning the kitchen after meals, making beds and general organization. My mom tells me how helpful I am, and I hope she really means it, because I want to feel like I am lifting a real burden off her shoulders. I want to teach my own children responsibilities that they can complete safely and effectively, not because I simply want a well-run home (since any competent adult can technically do that without children) but because I want to provide a source of pride, achievement and efficacy for them.
Yes, this is why while I appreciate the mainstreaming of therapeutic concepts in terms of helping people understand themselves, it has real problems because the definitions get so blurred and reductive. I didn't realise parentification had become synonymous with "doing chores" for some people ... wow. As you point out, parentification is role reversal. It's you having to take the lead, whether practically or emotionally. If your boss gives you a task to do, that doesn't make you the boss. If your boss bails for a week, and you have to figure out how the hell to keep the business running so you can eat, well. That's a bit different.
This was a really interesting reflection. We see this a lot I think a new term comes in, takes over social media, becomes the backbone of every conversation and excuse, and then settles down into a more appropriate and likely realistic space. Cultural differences are often lost in this space and there feels like there is less tolerance for discussion in this space, thank you for sharing!
Thank you, Helen!
I really appreciate the depth and nuance in this post.
Mental health discourse on social media can help spread awareness but it often flattens and dilutes complex concepts until they don’t really mean anything at all.
Mainstream psychology also usually doesn’t often account for cultural differences, as you’ve rightly pointed out!
Thank you, Farah. I'm glad you like it.
Thank you for writing this, Selda. I draw a parallel to a case I'm passionate about, which you might find intersecting with your field of expertise or not, but both my case and your example in your essay have a common root cause: online discourse.
My case is the online discourse in the well-being space about nutrition, where everyone and their dog claims and witnesses cautious healthful eating with a single narrative: that sugar is bad, that carb is harmful, other camp preach carnivore is the way to go, while the elites on the other camp swear by the plant-based foods, and almost unequivocally everyone agrees that UPFs are evil.
Guess that I followed many different advice from one extreme to another, and ended up with disordered eating (I'd like to say ED but never formally and not intending to be diagnosed), like in orthorexic and AN cases.
The short-form content, if any, may be to blame in various cases like this where an individual forms their view and decides their next steps based on the online discourse alone. My fear of sugar and UPFs was real and I kept them out of my kitchen, only until I decided to face my health issues properly with eating more, nourishing my body. And yes, UPFs and sugar could provide quick energy for malnourished folks.
Context matters. In your example, children helping their families within context, within reason, are normal and to be expected. Same case as, sugar, carbs, fat, and UPFs above when a starving person needs all the energy to rebuild the body. I agree with you that not every task done by a child is a case of parentification. Not every sugar molecule entering your bloodstream causes you type 2 diabetes.
Perhaps, what experts in psychology could do is to help society understand nuance, context, and balance. Eat balanced meals, experts say, but nobody knows what balanced means anymore. Have a balanced structure in household chores, people shout at parents giving children age-appropriate tasks, because nobody knows what balanced or appropriate means anymore.
But then again, context, nuance, and balance need more words to explain. Not everything can be poured out in a thread of short-form content, can it?
Less time to read, shorter attention span, more saturated online content market, so the experts are crushed to condense everything. Lost of communication.
When the online mass becomes an echo chamber because of the signal reduction, when the population fail to understand the spectrum (health and household chores, for instance) and see everything in black and white, that's when we have to reassess our communication style.
Hi Sekar, thank you for your comment. I do agree with the fact that nuance is lost online and especially due to short-term content. Even I feel helpless sometimes with somewhat longer ones, such as this piece. I always feel the need to give more context, more dependencies, just to make sure I’m not misunderstood and people get the most important information to make a judgment. But of course, that’s impossible.
Thank you for a very reasoned and in depth newsletter. My mum relied very heavily on me emotionally and I've put other people's needs before my own for decades, but as you say, awareness and understanding are helping me to see why my mum behaved as she did and choose how I want to move forward putting my needs back in the picture. I have held resentment towards my mum (she died 6 years ago) but I now see how many positive qualities she had and that she instilled in me. I'm so grateful for her and all she was able to give me 💞
Yes, you explained a common experience. I think turning resentment into gratitude is amazing, although it’s not that easy.
I was fortunate to have grown up in a family where my father worked outside the home and my mother kept house and took care of my siblings and myself. Every Saturday the children would do household chores and for that we received a small allowance. My mother was loving, capable and remained very healthy until all of us children had left the nest. I believe that this kind of upbringing prepared me well for my current situation in which I’m caring for a very ill spouse while battling several chronic illnesses myself. It might seem old fashioned, but the only time my mother worked outside the home was before she married, when she briefly worked with her older sisters in an aircraft plant during World War Two. I had never heard the term Parentification until I read this post. Thank you, Good Doctor, for sharing this fascinating topic. I always seem to enjoy your thoughtful, balanced posts, whether or not they apply directly to my own life experiences.
Hi Rafael! I had many responsibilities when I was growing up and helped out a lot. I believe that those experiences prepared me well for later in life too. Thank you for sharing your own experience!
And here I am wishing that my parents gave me more chores! My mom stayed home to take care of my siblings and me and while we were given some responsibilities, we never followed a regular chore schedule. I have always been highly conscientious, and in my twenties, I felt guilty about living with my parents and seeing my mother complain about how tedious household tasks are since she has being doing them for 20+ years and isn’t satisfied by them anymore. So I stepped up and took ownership over specific chores like laundry, cleaning the kitchen after meals, making beds and general organization. My mom tells me how helpful I am, and I hope she really means it, because I want to feel like I am lifting a real burden off her shoulders. I want to teach my own children responsibilities that they can complete safely and effectively, not because I simply want a well-run home (since any competent adult can technically do that without children) but because I want to provide a source of pride, achievement and efficacy for them.
Yes, this is why while I appreciate the mainstreaming of therapeutic concepts in terms of helping people understand themselves, it has real problems because the definitions get so blurred and reductive. I didn't realise parentification had become synonymous with "doing chores" for some people ... wow. As you point out, parentification is role reversal. It's you having to take the lead, whether practically or emotionally. If your boss gives you a task to do, that doesn't make you the boss. If your boss bails for a week, and you have to figure out how the hell to keep the business running so you can eat, well. That's a bit different.