All things S.

Emotional incest, also known as “covert incest”, “spousification” or “parentification” is a certain type of unhealthy relationship that can exist between a parent and child. In these situations, the child is treated more like a “subsitute spouse”or even a “substitute parent” to their parent than an actual child. The parent’s need to have an adult life partner or a parent of their own outweighs the child’s need for an actual childhood, and the child takes on an adult role in the relationship at a much, much earlier age than is developmentally appropriate. Although this does not involve actual physical incest, it can give the child lifelong struggles with intimacy, relationships and self-esteem. 

Sounds familiar to you? You may have experienced emotional incest or parentification if:

You grew up in a family that was dysfunctional or broken in some way. Emotional incest (EI) and parentification generally don’t happen in households where there are stable, loving parental figures who have a healthy relationship between them. EI usually occurs in households where one parent is dead, disabled, incarcerated or absent, or in households where there is serious dysfunction - alcoholism, drug use, mental illness, violence, poverty, divorce or other major issues. Generally, EI stems from a parent being unable to cope with their own loneliness or with the seriousness of their circumstances, and leaning hard on their child as a result. 

Your parent confided in you at an inappropriately young age. You were treated like your parent’s substitute therapist, and asked for your input on situations that you were much too young to handle - your parent may have told you about their sex life, your other parent’s infidelity, their own experiences of child abuse, or other adult issues that you were not old enough to handle. No attempt was made to explain things in an age-appropriate manner, and you were not told these things for your benefit; your parent simply dumped their emotional issues on you, and expected you to deal with them in a meaningful way, even when you were barely old enough to understand them. 

It was your responsibility to keep the household running. Almost all children are responsible for some amount of age-appropriate household chores, like dishes and vacuuming, but you were responsible for major household tasks that should have been your parent’s responsibility. You had to make sure that there was food in the fridge, school clothes for the younger children and that someone had paid the electrical bill, because if you didn’t do those things, nobody else was going to. At an age where most children can’t use the stove by themselves, you were expected to keep the household functioning.

You had to set rules and boundaries for your parent, not the other way around. You were the one who had to lecture your parent about responsibility when they came home drunk on a Tuesday night or when they forgot to take their medication again. You had to take on the “adult” role in the relationship and beg or scold your parent into growing up and being an adult for once. Although being on equal footing with your parent might sound awesome once you are both adults, it is an exhausting thing for a child to have to deal with - you aren’t even old enough to take care of yourself yet, but you are already responsible for trying to emotionally parent a grown adult.

You may have had to physically take care of your parent. In some households, children are made to engage in something called “instrumental parentification” - this is where you are expected to physically take care of a parent. This can happen in households where a parent has a physical disability and needs their child to prepare their meals, dress them, etc, but it is especially common in households where one or more parents struggles with substance abuse. If you had to routinely put a drunk parent to bed and clean up their vomit, you are well aware of what instrumental parentification feels like.

You were given no discipline or structure by your parent. It might sound awesome to live in a house where there are no rules and you can do whatever you want, but it is actually emotionally devastating to grow up in a household where no one gives a shit if you drop out of school or don’t come home at night. You weren’t given healthy boundaries and no one made any meaningful effort to look after your well-being - if you wanted to smoke and have unprotected sex in high school, no one cared. All of your boundaries and responsibilities were things you had to figure out for yourself.

You are probably the eldest child, or the eldest child of your sex. Children who experience EI or parentification are normally one of the oldest children in the family. Eldest daughters are at especially high risk, as both fathers and mothers are disproportionately likely to turn their eldest girl into a substitute mother or spouse. There are cases, however, where a parent chooses the eldest son for their codependency; this is especially likely in families where the father figure is dead or absent. 

You raised your younger siblings. You were, for all intents and purposes, the true parent of your younger siblings. Most older siblings have to do some occasional babysitting or keeping an eye out for the younger siblings, but your role went well beyond that - you may have been the only one making sure that they were fed, bathed and doing okay in school. If you didn’t get them up and off to school in the mornings, they simply didn’t go. You probably signed field trip permission slips, made sure that everyone had clothes for school, and took an interest in your siblings’ lives in a way that your parent never did. Your parent may have kept on having kids well into your adolescence - there was an assumption that you’d just keep on raising whatever children they handed to you.

Your parent was unable to handle your emotions, so you stopped showing them. Whenever you had some kind of breakdown or emotional moment, your parent absolutely could not handle it; they were depending on you to be the “rock” of the household, and when you showed any signs of cracking, it completely overwhelmed them. They could not step up to the plate and cope with your emotions in any way; they often made your emotions all about them. So you quickly learned to push everything down and put on a brave face at all times, all for the sake of your parent. 

Your parent did everything in their power to prevent you from moving out. Your parent was likely not a huge fan of the idea that you would one day move on with your life and leave them to fend for themselves, and they may have gone to great lengths to delay it. They might have discouraged you from having any kind of independence by preventing you from going to college or having a job, or they may simply have appealed to your emotions, insisting that you were needed at home and that leaving would mean “abandoning” them. Your parent may have intensely disliked all of your romantic partners, and felt threatened by the idea that your partner was trying to “take you away” from them.

Examples of emotional incest and parentification in fiction:

Fiona from Shameless. Fiona is perhaps the boilerplate example of extreme parentification. She is the oldest daughter in a family where one parent has outright abandoned the family, and the other parent is a low-functioning alcoholic with little interest in being a father. Fiona raises all of her younger siblings and ensures that the household is somewhat functional, at the cost of her own happiness. She repeatedly makes poor decisions in her personal life, but does not have any parent around to offer her guidance.

Princess Carolyn from Bojack Horseman. Princess Carolyn was raised by an alcoholic mother, and often had to fill in for her mom at her cleaning job when she was too drunk to work, so her mother would not be fired. Her mother also tries to use guilt to keep Princess Carolyn from leaving home to achieve her dreams. As an adult, Princess Carolyn continues to be hyper-responsible for the dysfunctional adults around her, and jumps in to save them from themselves even when it harms her. 

Bella from Twilight. Bella’s parents are depicted as being flighty, irresponsible and clueless, particularly her mother, Renee. Bella expresses guilt over leaving each of her parents to fend for themselves at different points in the story, even though she is a minor and they are both adults. Even while living with her father Charlie, Bella takes over the household chores and does all of the cooking, as her adult father is unable to cook for himself. 

Like anything else, emotional incest and parentification fall on a spectrum. You may have had a parent who was relatively functional when it came to finances and household chores, but made a habit of unloading on you emotionally and expecting you to give advice on adult issues. Or you may have had a deeply mentally ill and addicted parent who required huge amounts of care. Sometimes, parentification and emotional incest are temporary things - your parent may have leaned on you to be their parent for a few years after a major upset, like a divorce, before gradually getting back on their own feet, or their functionality may have waxed and waned as they recovered and relapsed from their issues. Some people have experiencing everything on this list and more, while some may have only experienced one or two things, and only for a short time. Not two families are alike. 

It’s also important to remember that the impacts of emotional incest are deeply negative. There is a huge misconception that being a parentified child is somehow “good” for you, because it will make you wise and responsible at a young age. This isn’t actually the case; what many people see as “responsibility” is usually just high-functioning anxiety, which comes from being raised in a household where you got very little guidance and there wasn’t always a parent there to back you up if you messed up. Parentified children often get a “late start” in life, as they may continue to feel responsible for their parents well into their 20s, and their parents may go out of their way to discourage life milestones like college, independence and marriage. Children who have experienced emotional incest also tend to struggle with their own relationships as adults; they frequently have poor self-esteem and an enormous tolerance for dysfunction in their romantic partners, which can be a dangerous combination. They often struggle to have relationships without taking on codependent tendencies and placing an enormous caretaker burden on themselves, and it can take a long time for them to feel comfortable in egalitarian relationships.

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