When Kids Have to Act Like Parents, It Affects Them for Life

[HarryPotterFan]

When Kids Have to Act Like Parents, It Affects Them for Life

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/10/when-kids-have-to-parent-their-siblings-it-affects-them-for-life/543975/?utm_source=quartzfb

A new article from The Atlantic details the lifelong negative affects of being forced into a parent role at a young age. Child development experts who have studied this phenomena have dubbed it "parentification." The article highlights the stories of a few women who were forced into taking care of their baby siblings as kids, or taking care of a parent, and they talk about their experiences and how it has affected their mental health, physical well-being, and relationships with their siblings. The women in the article had parents battling addiction, not parents who decided to turn them into sister-moms. It's an interesting article, and the experts talk about lifelong affects on the ability to form relationships, brain development, and the immune system.

I'd love for the experts quoted in the article to study the fundies we snark on and get their take on it. The article also talks about how one woman was affected by food scarcity and how that has complicated her relationship with food as adults, and it made me think of the poor Rod kids.

A few excerpts (how do you do the quote box on mobile phones?):

Spoiler

Kiesel’s story is one of what psychologists refer to as destructive parentification—a form of emotional abuse or neglect where a child becomes the caregiver to their parent or sibling. Researchers are increasingly finding that in addition to upending a child’s development, this role reversal can leave deep emotional scars well into adulthood. Many, like Kiesel, experience severe anxiety, depression, and psychological distress. Others report succumbing to eating disorders and substance abuse.

 

This quote reminds me of Jenni sobbing at her sister mom's wedding:

Spoiler

“When you think about it, if you’re parentified and you leave your younger siblings, it’s like having a parent abandon them,” said Rene. For years after, she was plagued by feelings of guilt—a common experience among people who have been parentified.

 

Spoiler

Unpredictable childhood trauma has long-lasting effects on the brain. Studies have shown that people with adverse childhood experiences are more likely to suffer from mental- and physical-health disorders, leading people to experience a chronic stateof high stress reactivity. One study found that children exposed to ongoing stress released a hormone that actually shrank the size of their hippocampus, an area of the brain that processes memory, emotion, and stress management. Individuals who have experienced emotional or physical neglect by a parent are also at a greater risk of suffering from chronic illness as adults.

Basically Jim Boob/Mechelle, JRod and David, the Bates, etc are all super crappy. Which we already knew.

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

12 minutes ago, HarryPotterFan said:

A few excerpts (how do you do the quote box on mobile phones?):

On my phone, it's available if I turn the phone sideways to the "landscape" view.

It's good to see experts taking crap like this seriously. 

[acheronbeach]

Parents who choose this big-family buddy-system lifestyle are never raised in it.  It's really a reflection of American prosperity the these families are now viewed as good examples.

Before the Pill was a thing, these big, uneducated families would've been viewed as trash by a heck of a lot of people.  I say that because my dad is one of 10, from a poor, religious family who were viewed by local WASPS as Catholic trash.

My dad regrets and feels ashamed at the fact he dropped out of school at 13 to support his siblings. In his seventies, he still has food insecurity issues - he eats tons of peanut butter, because he associates it with celebrations (his mum bought it on the black market from American GIs) and he hoards chocolate like crazy.  Even when i was a teen, he was very open with me that he thought birth control was one of the greatest inventions in history.  It was soooo uncomfortable at the time, but as an adult, I see why. 

When the Duggars no longer have TLC money, we'll see smaller families, mark my words. 

[front hugs > duggs]

Thank you @HarryPotterFan for posting this; it's kind of validating my emotions. I'm someone who had to parent my parents starting around age 12 (alcoholism, depression, and some just selfish behavior), and while things are much better for me now in life than then, I'm almost feeling more anxiety/depression now than when I was in those times. I used to go to therapy to "fix" my relationship with my dad, but ultimately only he can change himself/I can change my expectations of him. Now I think I want to go back to focus more on these issues that are still affecting me 10-15 years later.

[louisa05]

My mother-in-law had to parent her much younger brother in her teens. Her parents ran their own businesses (a used car lot and a bar) and left him with a grandmother during the day and my mother-in-law as soon as she was home from school. She was not allowed to be involved in school activities as she had to stay home and take care of her brother instead--she had to get him ready in the mornings and take him to the grandmother's house before going to school, then pick him up at the end of her day, care for him on evenings and weekends as well. She was also responsible for meals and all the household cleaning. 

She married very young (at 18) to get away from it and my sister-in-law was a honeymoon baby born to a pair of kids who didn't want children that quickly if at all--but no one ever told them anything about birth control until the ob/gyn after SiL was born. 

When she talks about the time when SiL was a baby, she is very detached about it. She makes mention of being tired of small children after being responsible for her brother and not wanting to parent until after Mr. 05 was born 3.5 years later. Her relationship with SiL now is defined by enmeshment and codependency. She was so afraid of her own children having to do too much at home that SiL in particular never had to do anything and left home lacking basic life skills. And she definitely exhibits high stress reactivity. She also has a tendency to hypochondria. 

Interesting article. It kind of gives me some insight into what may have gone wrong for her. 

 

[HermioneSparrow]

I need to link this to my mother. It happened to me and took a few years of therapy to reconcile with her. Thanks for the article link!

[Hane]

This was my life, to a lesser extent, and that of my mother and one of my dad’s sisters. While none of the mothers involved was an alcoholic or drug abuser, there was a fair amount of depression, narcissism, and borderline personality disorder—plus the mentality that each of us was Mom’s Lieutenant, and we’d better snap to and keep the others in line. 

Many years later, I visited a reiki practitioner and psychic “healer,” on a whim. I told the woman NOTHING about myself. As I was leaving, she asked me, “Why do you always blame yourself for things that aren’t your fault?” I was in shock—that’s what happens when you’re raised by a mother who had never apologized for anything in her life.

[SuperNova]

I was "raised" by my sister who was given the role of "little mommy" by my mother. Mom was the youngest of 8 children that were born over the course of more than two decades. Her only sister was the second oldest and was more like a mom than a sibling to her. She always wanted to be closer to her own sister so she pushed my sister to raise me. We are only two years apart.

It occured to me as I was reading the other comments that I couldn't recall reading about an older sibling abusing this relationship dynamic. My sister certainly did. She would alternate between care and cruelty. She would lie to me, scare me, and physically abuse me. Since she was my "mom" it never occured to me to go to my real mom. It's worth mentioning that I was quite ill as a young child and was exempt from many of the day to day chores of the family. My sister resented my illness and her role as caregiver and who could really blame her?

[dripcurl]

On 10/26/2017 at 10:39 PM, acheronbeach said:

Parents who choose this big-family buddy-system lifestyle are never raised in it.  It's really a reflection of American prosperity the these families are now viewed as good examples.

Before the Pill was a thing, these big, uneducated families would've been viewed as trash by a heck of a lot of people.  I say that because my dad is one of 10, from a poor, religious family who were viewed by local WASPS as Catholic trash.

My dad regrets and feels ashamed at the fact he dropped out of school at 13 to support his siblings. In his seventies, he still has food insecurity issues - he eats tons of peanut butter, because he associates it with celebrations (his mum bought it on the black market from American GIs) and he hoards chocolate like crazy.  Even when i was a teen, he was very open with me that he thought birth control was one of the greatest inventions in history.  It was soooo uncomfortable at the time, but as an adult, I see why. 

When the Duggars no longer have TLC money, we'll see smaller families, mark my words. 

Thank you for sharing your dad's story. Before the Pill, I feel like most of the population did not try to have 19 kids. I heard a story from a friend of a friend who had a grandma with 25 kids (lots of multiples, maybe a couple of stillbirths), but all of my grand parents, and their ancestors we can trace, averaged between 1-10 siblings. This seems to be the trend with the ancestors during the pre-Pill eras of other families I know as well. While having a large family was beneficial for an agrarian culture, it seems that no poor family wanted more kids than they could feed, and no rich family wanted more kids than they could properly educate and civilize. 

The Duggars, and many Quiverfull people I have met in my local movement (with strong ties to the now-fallen VF empire), view their children as points in system. This is not some hypothetical, abstract idea, this my observation from their treatment of their kids and their competitve tone in discussing their own reprodutive endeavors.  They tend to be passive when it comes to interaction with and awareness of their kids, but aggressive when it comes to legalism and enforcing unfairly over-responsibility for siblings. I hope I am not the only one who thinks that forcing your little girl to wear a long skirt and memorize doctrine but then not stepping in when a hyper older girl is wailing on her while she yells for help and asks the kid to stop is the pinnacle of shit parenting. They view the kids as mere means to an end.

I know Geoff Botkin has a talk called "Children as Pets" (Below is part of the description, the talk costs $6 and I have not listened to it in years) referencing how many mainstream modern families view their kids as accessories, or a hobby to try. Honestly, I do agree with this in and of itself. And to the Botkins' credit they are pretty classy and educated, and have a manageable number of kids with actually humane spacing, but I am far from a Botkin apologist. However, many of these families use Botkin material, and I think they could take a lesson in actually valuing your child a person*, as an individual soul, not one more tally to prove how holy you are by pushing your body to the extreme and not adopting kids. It is hypocritical for all these Quiverfull people to subscribe to the ideals of intense discipleship, when they really do adopt the mindset of many a shallow yuppie in viewing their children as status symbols. 

*not that the Botkins encourage autonomy 

Quote

When the turbulent first half of the 20th century came to a close, America emerged into a season of peace and prosperity. While enjoying the economic boom of the 1950s, Americans drifted away from Biblical practices and toward materialistic self-indulgence. Family life came to be seen in terms of personal fulfillment, temporal affluence, or conformity to popular trends. In some social circles, children became lifestyle accessories, status symbols, or temporary nuisances to be managed by the experts. In just two generations, American parents lost the knowledge of biblical and wise parenting in ways that have affected millions of children. But how can we recover the basic Biblical doctrines that can return joy to the home and blessing to the nation? Geoffrey Botkin compares the deepest weakness of the American Dream with the vibrancy of Biblical family life. 

 

[CyborgKin]

On 01/11/2017 at 6:10 AM, dripcurl said:

*not that the Botkins encourage autonomy

Unless you're an adult son who's married.  (too little, too late?)

[Howl]

Pretty sure my parents used condoms to determine family size and all three of us were planned children and this was in the 1940s.  

Besides the issues already discussed, one thing I realized fairly early on with the sister-mom arrangement is how awful it would be for the sister-daughter when her sister-mom bails out to marry.   In huge families, the sister-mom would be the real mom and the real mom would be more of a figurehead.  I can't imagine the feelings of loss and distress for sister-daughter, especially when everyone is so excited and happy for sistermom. 

[dripcurl]

5 hours ago, CyborgKin said:

Unless you're an adult son who's married.  (too little, too late?)

Better than Steve

[AuLait]

This hits home.

MIL passed away this last weekend. She has been in decline since '96 when her husband passed away unexpectedly. He went in for leg pain & 10 day later was dead. Enormously traumatizing. She stopped parenting. She still had two kids at home (14 & 10) and the 14yo SIL had to take over. The first couple years were particularly wretched. MIL burned through an entire life insurance policy on QVC, filling their home with junk. Her kids made a suicide pact with her to ensure they wouldn't find her dead one morning. Her children had to comfort her  grief. They had no one to comfort them or provide hope. Then they had no money, so MIL "ran" a daycare though she never left her bed. SIL ran it entirely while she supposed to be homeschooled. This went on for 10 years. MIL never left her bed except for short periods. SIL was the parent. It created a bizarre relationship that was so unhealthy. Created pretty severe mental issues in SIL and BIL. SIL ends up pregnant, MIL insists for 9 months it was immaculate. I am not joking. After delivery she finally admits her daughter had to have had sex.

After many years SIL married a super great guy, moved out, and started setting boundaries but it was a constant struggle. Her son has complex mental issues stemming part from his early childhood where he was hothoused and raised by two dysfunctional women. SIL was invested full time into  this care and that of MIL. SIL worked so hard to have a normal healthy relationship with her Mom but so much revolved around SIL caretaking for her (heavy smoker for 50 years,morbidly obese, so many health issues) she could never get fully free. Every vacation, every single one, MIL has an incident that required SIL to return or have to spend a significant amount of time handling from afar. 

Since MIL death on Sat, which of course SIL was very emotional about at the time, she has been numb and I have a sense that she is relieved while also not knowing how to do life without caretaking to an extreme level. I want to tell her it's ok to be relieved and feel free while still grieving her mother but how can you put that into words that won't hurt?

Sorry for the TL;DR but damn, this was so relevant and I can't talk about it with my husband because of his own grief.

[Jana814]

The idea of a older sibling being expected to raise their younger sibling is just sad. 

[HarryPotterFan]

I'm glad some of you found this article helpful, but I'm also sorry that people here have had to go through this. It's so unfair to children to make them be adults.

Relatedly, I found this YouTube channel with several documentaries (which is a rabbit hole in itself, there are some about mega families) from the UK. They have one documentary about "child carers." It highlights 12 year old and 9 year old sisters who take care of their four little brothers and a kid who takes care of his mom, who has chronic pain due to fibromyalgia. 

The family dynamics of the sister pair are super messed up. The parents are legally blind, and use that as an excuse not to care for their children (but have no problem pouring a glass of beer or lighting a cigarette). Their home life is really appalling and heartbreaking.

[mango_fandango]

This is a fairly big thing in the U.K., the idea of kids having to do stuff round the house for their parents at a young age because of the parents being chronically ill. Obviously this is different though as they've not been made to do it by their mother, but child carers are a thing.  

About that YouTube channel: I saw a video from them (I think) which was titled something like "Boy has panic attack from trying to look after nine siblings". Pretty sure it was an American family. 

[smittykins]

I keep thinking of what I read in Kathryn Joyce’s Quiverfull about the nine-year-old girl who couldn’t read, but every morning she woke, dressed, and fed her younger siblings.  I seriously hope she was only hypothetical.

[Jana814]

@HarryPotterFan I saw that one. So weird and very wrong. It's one thing if a older sibling takes care of their siblings while a parent works but being expected to be the soul carer of a sibling is just wrong. 

The singer Tony Orlando took care of his disabled sister while his single mother worked nights.  Doing this he realize he had a good voice because his singing was the only thing that calmed her down. 

[HarryPotterFan]

@mango_fandango The documentary mentions a child carers club that plans activities so the children can have a day where they get to be kids once in a while. How much responsibility is normal for a child carer? Is it normal for child carers to take on such extreme responsibility (like the two girls seem to do everything, it sounded like the parents don't even change diapers when they're at school), or is it more doing extra things to help? Is there a point where social services intervene?

 

7 minutes ago, Jana814 said:

@HarryPotterFan I saw that one. So weird and very wrong. It's one thing if a older sibling takes care of their siblings while a parent works but being expected to be the soul carer of a sibling is just wrong. 

The singer Tony Orlando took care of his disabled sister while his single mother worked nights.  Doing this he realize he had a good voice because his singing was the only thing that calmed her down. 

Right. One of my friends in high school helped out a lot with his younger siblings (5, I think. The youngest was born our junior year of high school). Both of his parents worked so he babysat a lot, but he was by no means the sole carer.

[Jana814]

4 minutes ago, HarryPotterFan said:

 

 

Right. One of my friends in high school helped out a lot with his younger siblings (5, I think. The youngest was born our junior year of high school). Both of his parents worked so he babysat a lot, but he was by no means the sole carer.

I have a friend who has identical twin brothers who are 10 years younger then her. When she was in her teens she would look after them while her parents worked nights at Home Depot. She was still able to have a life outside and her parents encouraged it. 

[Rachel333]

23 minutes ago, Jana814 said:

I have a friend who has identical twin brothers who are 10 years younger then her. When she was in her teens she would look after them while her parents worked nights at Home Depot. She was still able to have a life outside and her parents encouraged it. 

That's funny, I have identical twin sisters 10 years younger than me.

I definitely helped raise my younger siblings (they even called me "mama [their version of my name]" when they were little) but not nearly to the extent of the people discussed here.

[3SecondSideHugger]

Thanks for sharing this article, very interesting. 

I had an ideal childhood up until age 13 when everything and everyone in my life hit the fan. I was mostly alone at home for months at a time with my 3 years younger brother. He's luckily an independent guy, but I had to manage the household essentially for the next few years. I moved away for college and it was the best possible thing that could've happened to me. My mental health vastly improved being on my own and away from that household. 

I have always felt more mature  than kids my age, as young as I can remember, but in high school I really felt that they didn't understand the responsibilities I carried. Even now in my 20s, I still feel years ahead than most in terms of maturity, but I feel it to be an advantage more now and not something that makes me feel *different*. I can only imagine if my whole childhood had been bearing that weight.. the effects it has...

[mango_fandango]

@HarryPotterFan I think it probably depends on what disability the parent has, and also how old the kid is. Here's an article about an eight-year-old who cares for her mother who has scoliosis and bipolar disorder; the mum helps sometimes if she's well enough. The article says that research done in 2010 by the BBC shows that there are around 700,000 young carers in the U.K., which is about how many kids in the U.K. have autism, so slightly more than 1 in 100. The mum ensures her daughter gets counselling through CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service) which is something.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/03/im-a-child-carer

[3SecondSideHugger]

@mango_fandango I work with the special needs population, which includes parents who both have special needs, low IQ, medical disabilities and then many have their own kids who have disabilities... I've never seen a child actually taken away from a family unless their life is *literally* threatened. Many just have caseworkers who check on them like.. twice a year? I guess it gets into ethics as to what becomes acceptable or not but I've never even DCF truly get involved unless there is physical violence :/  Also depends on how many children, as caseworkers get more involved, in my experience, when the families in question continue to have more kids

[Lurky]

4 hours ago, HarryPotterFan said:

Is it normal for child carers to take on such extreme responsibility (like the two girls seem to do everything, it sounded like the parents don't even change diapers when they're at school), or is it more doing extra things to help? Is there a point where social services intervene?

There was a piece of specific UK research about Young Carers for the Children's Commissioner, and while the findings were depressing, the fact it is a priority for that part of the Government is heartening

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-38381725

IIRC, one of the reasons a lot of Young Carers don't access services is families try to keep it secret, because they're worried about social services intervention - and one of the priorities local to me (if not nationally) is trying to get passed that, so the families can access services they're entitled to.

Charities like Barnardos have a better record of reaching YCs because they're seen as more independent, and they include young carers for parents not just with disabilities, but also with addiction issues, which carry a lot more stigma.

http://www.barnardos.org.uk/what_we_do/our_work/young_carers.htm

It's the sort of thing that has national TV campaigns and other awareness-raising work about every few years, to try to help young carers access support (eg this Newsround (BBC news for kids) piece: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/38750929 or this BBC piece http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3hF1NQ6lR0whg3Qn2KVL3C2/being-a-young-carer )and for schools/other services to be more aware, and provide more support.