Eve, a 51-year-old from Sydney/Gadigal lands, recalls how she and her siblings began taking on adult responsibilities at home while still in school due to their mother's severe depression and their father's increasing absence. "[Mum] would leave instructions for getting dinner ready and she'd leave the stuff in the fridge," Eve said. Over time, they were "basically running the household, doing everything from cooking, laundry, cleaning, shopping, all of that."

Beyond physical tasks, Eve also became an emotional support for her mother, who had experienced childhood sexual trauma. She described how her mother would share these experiences with her, effectively using Eve as a "quasi-counsellor," which Eve found inappropriate.

This experience is an example of parentification, a psychological term describing a role reversal where children take on parental-level responsibilities beyond what is developmentally appropriate. Dr Rachael Sharman, a psychology lecturer and researcher specializing in child and adolescent development, explains this phenomenon. Child and adolescent psychologist Deirdre Brandner from Melbourne/Naarm adds that children who are parentified assume emotional and instrumental duties before they are developmentally or emotionally ready. She notes that emotional parentification can be particularly damaging because the child manages the parents' emotions.

International research, including a large nationally representative study from Poland in 2021, suggests that up to one in three young people, especially adolescents, experience emotional parentification. Eve only came to understand the term and its implications after studying to become a social worker.

Experts highlight that recognizing parentification as part of one's childhood is a crucial step toward healing.

Sources