Journal of Student Research (2013)
Volume 2, Issue 1: pp.
52-57
Research Article
a. Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC, 29733
www.jofsr.
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52
Relations Among Parentification, Parenting Beliefs, and
Parenting Behaviors
Brittney T.
Black
a
& Merry J.
Sleigh
a
Instrumental parentification occurs when children take on adult chores, and emotional parentification occurs when children take
the responsibility for providing an adult-level of emotional support.
This study examined how the level of parentification and
perceived unfairness in the childhood home affected adults’ parenting beliefs and future parenting behaviors.
One hundred and
seven young adults responded to the Parentification Questionnaire which assessed levels of instrumental parentification,
emotional parentification, and perceived fairness.
Participants were asked to imagine themselves as parents and then respond to
questions that assessed their parenting beliefs, planned parenting behaviors, and demographics.
Results revealed that emotional
parentification and perceived unfairness were related to adults’ decreased self-esteem and feelings of attractiveness.
In addition,
parentification and perceived unfairness in the childhood home were linked to negative feelings toward participants’ own parents;
however, parentification did not clearly predict factors associated with parenting.
Keywords: Parentification; Parenting; Behaviors; Beliefs
Introduction
Parentification occurs when children are required to
function as an adult when it is developmentally inappropriate
for them to do so (Wells & Jones, 2000).
The practice of
parentification has been occurring for centuries but only
within the last few decades have researchers associated a
name with it, and research on this topic is limited.
There are
two types of parentification: emotional and instrumental.
Emotional parentification occurs when children provide
emotional support to other family members, such as being
treated as a parent’s friend and confidant (Jurkovic, Thirkfield
& Morrell, 2001).
Instrumental parentification occurs when
children take on family tasks that are typically done by adults,
such as grocery shopping or caring for siblings (Jurkovic et al,
2001).
Parentification often co-occurs with a sense that the
home environment is unfair to them, termed ‘perceptions of
fairness’ (Jurkovic et al, 2001).
This phenomenon is seen
across cultures (e.
g., Shih, Wu, & Lin, 2010; Titzmann, 2012)
and has been linked to both negative and positive outcomes in
adulthood (Carroll & Robinson, 2000; Hooper, Marotta, &
Lanthier 2008; Jurkovic et al, 2001; Peris, Goeke-Morey,
Cummings, & Emery, 2008; Wells & Jones, 2000).
For
example, adults who experienced parentification during
childhood have an increased likelihood of engaging in
substance abuse (Hooper, DeCoster, White & Voltz, 2011),
but also are likely to exhibit resilience in the face of negative
events (Hooper, Marotta, & Lanthier 2008).
The goal of the
current study was to further our understanding of this
relatively new construct by examining whether the childhood
experience of parentification relates to adults’ beliefs about
their own parenting.
Literature Review
Parentification has been associated with several factors
that are believed to be causal.
Parentification has been
consistently linked to family unpredictability, parental
alcoholism, poor parental health, marital conflict, and low
family income (Burnett, Jones, Bliwise, & Ross, 2006;
Burton, 2007; Godsall, Jurkovic, Emshoff, Anderson, &
Stanwyck, 2004; Kelley et al, 2007; Hooper, Doehler,
Jankowski, & Tomek, 2012; Peris et al, 2008).
Not only are
there many factors that may lead to parentification, these
factors can have differential impacts.
Carroll and Robinson
(2000) found that children of workaholics and children of
alcoholics both had the potential for parentification; however,
the children of workaholics experienced significantly higher
levels of parentification than children of alcoholics.
In addition to being multi-causal, parentification is
linked to multiple adverse outcomes.
Parentification has been
linked to a variety of pathologies such as eating disorders,
mood disorders, substance abuse disorders, and personality
disorders (Hooper, DeCoster, White, & Voltz, 2011).
In
addition, children who experience parentification are
vulnerable to the imposter phenomenon, as described by
Castro, Jones, and Mirsalimi (2004).
The imposter
phenomenon occurs when individuals feel as though people’s
positive perceptions of them are inaccurate, resulting in a lack
of confidence in one’s uniqueness, talent, and the ability to
meet others’ demands (Castro et al, 2004).
Adults who
experienced parentification as a child are also vulnerable to
feelings of shame versus guilt (Wells & Jones, 2000).
Shame
is considered the more damaging of the two, because mistakes
leave a shame-prone person feeling badly about the self; in
contrast, guilt is a focus on the behavior and ways to correct
it.
Parentification may have more of an impact than parents
realize.
Peris, Goeke-Morey, Cummings, and Emery (2008)
examined parental reliance on emotional support from
children during marital conflicts.
The researchers found that
mothers tended to seek emotional support from children more
than fathers and especially from their daughters.
The results
also showed that parents reported more closeness and warmth
with their children, while children reported low levels of
warmth and support from parents.
These findings suggest that
children feel more negative effects from emotional
parentification during marital conflict than parents perceive.
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Despite the many negative associations, previous
research has revealed some positive associations with
parentification.
Hooper, Marotta, and Lanthier (2008) found
that people who experienced parentification could have
posttraumatic growth, particularly increased resiliency.
Posttraumatic growth refers to the positive outcome that the
individual experiences after going through an aversive
situation.
In Hooper et. al’s (2008) case, the aversive situation
was parentification and as a result of experiencing
parentification, the individual was more resilient to negative
life events.
Similarly, instrumental parentification in the form
of caring for siblings was linked to psychosocial adjustment
(versus maladjustment) perhaps because the act of caregiving
increased self-efficacy in the individual (Fitzgerald,
Schneider, Zinzow, Jackson, & Fossel, 2008).
The potential
for positive outcomes may depend to some extent on the
child.
For example, Williams and Francis (2010) argued that
an internal locus of control may shield children from the
negative effects of parentification.
Despite the potential for
positive outcomes, researchers who examine both typically
find more negative effects of parentification than positive
effects, especially in regard to emotional parentification
(Black, Lindberg, Garansi, & Sleigh, 2011).
Similarly,
Hooper, Doehler, Jankowski and Tomek (2012) found that
adolescents with alcoholic parents were less likely to have
alcohol problems themselves if they were experiencing
parentification, but were more likely to exhibit depressive
symptoms.
In other words, parentification was a buffer for
one adverse outcome and a moderator for the other.
Because parentification is so closely tied with parenting,
it seems logical that childhood parentification would impact
adults’ parenting behaviors.
Hooper (2007) suggested that
parentification should be conceptualized as interference with
healthy attachment between the parent and child.
Emotional
parentification and perceived unfairness may be particularly
detrimental to the parent-child relationship, as they both
contain an emotional element.
In fact, Nutall, Valentino, and
Borkowski (2012) recently found that mothers who
experienced parentification were less warm with their young
children, resulting in those children exhibiting more
problematic
externalizing
behaviors.
Instrumental
parentification, in contrast, is more about practical matters,
such as getting dinner on the table and has even been linked to
increased interpersonal competence (Thirkield, 2002).
We examined how childhood parentification related to
adults’ parenting beliefs and behaviors.
We hypothesized that:
(1) participants who experienced parentification would
perceive their own parents in a poor light and report a desire
to raise their own children in a different way and (2) adults
who experienced parentification during their childhood would
have different parenting behaviors and beliefs than adults who
had not experienced parentification.
Our hypothesis was non-
directional because we were unsure of whether people would
repeat their experiences with childhood parentification or they
would choose a different parenting experience than their own.
Method
Participants
One hundred seven adults with a mean age of 20.
63 (sd
= 2.75) participated in the study.
Forty-seven percent
identified as Caucasian, 40% identified as African-American,
and 13% identified as another ethnicity.
Sixty-six percent of
the participants were women and 34% were men.
Participants
confirmed their status as non-parents.
This study was
approved by the university’s Institutional Review Board, and
all participation was voluntary.
Materials
We measured instrumental and emotional parentification,
and perceived fairness in participants’ childhood homes with
a modified Parentification Questionnaire (Hooper & Wallace,
2010).
The original Parentification Questionnaire was a 30
item, self-report measure developed by Jurkovic and Thirkield
(1998).
Hooper and Wallace (2010) focused on 21-items that
loaded on three constructs (instrumental parentification,
emotional parentification, and perceived fairness), and
demonstrated this modified scale as a reliable measure of
parentification; Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were over.
80
for all scales (instrumental parentification = .81, emotional
parentification = .
82, perceived unfairness = .
88).
Instrumental parentification included five items such as,
“I often did the family’s laundry” and “My parents expected
me to help discipline my siblings.
” Emotional parentification
included seven items such as, “At times I felt I was the only
one my mother or father could turn to” and “In my family I
often made sacrifices that went unnoticed.
” Perceived fairness
included nine items such as, “My parents often tried to get me
to take their sides in conflicts” and “It often seemed that my
feelings weren’t taken into account in my family.
”
Participants rated how true each statement was of them on a
five-point Likert scale with one representing “Strongly
Disagree” and five representing “Strongly Agree.
” Some
items were reverse-scored and a mean score was calculated
for each sub-scale (Hooper & Wallace, 2010).
The higher the
score on each sub-scale, the more of that specific type of
parentification the participants experienced in their childhood
homes.
Thirty-five additional questions/statements were created
by the researchers.
Parenting behaviors were assessed by
having participants respond with their level of agreement to
five statements such as “I try to protect my child from
growing up too fast” and “I probably do more for my child
than I should.
” Parenting beliefs were assessed by having
participants respond with their level of agreement to 15
statements such as “Children deserve an allowance” and
“Children should not question their parents.
” The parenting
belief and behavior statements were created after examining
existing lists of parenting activities and seeing many
consistent themes across them.
We also asked participants to
rank three future behaviors (caring for your spouse/partner,
caring for your child/children, having a successful career)
from the one most important to the one least important to
them. Last, participants responded to demographic questions.
Procedure
The survey was posted online through
surveymonkey.
Participants were recruited for the study
through social media using a snowball technique.
The authors
posted the link to the survey on their own social media sites,
and visitors to those sites were asked to share the link through
their social media sites.
Participants also were provided the
link through undergraduate classrooms and offered extra
credit for participating.
The survey was posted for a period of
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Volume 2, Issue 1: pp.
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Research Article
ISSN: 2167-1907
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com
54
two months, and participants recruited outside of the
classroom were offered no incentives for participation.
Participants first responded to the Parentification
Questionnaire, followed by the questions related to parenting
behaviors and beliefs.
Participants were asked to imagine
themselves in the role of a parent and then to respond in a
way that reflected the parenting beliefs and behaviors they
planned to use with their own child(ren).
Data was analyzed
using Pearson’s correlations.
Results
We computed a “Perceptions of Fairness” score (POF),
an “Emotional Parentification” score (EPS), and an
“Instrumental Parentification” score (IPS) for each participant
by following Hooper and Wallace’s (2010) instructions to
reverse score specified items and then calculate a mean for the
relevant questions on each dimension.
A higher POF score
indicated that participants perceived a greater sense of
unfairness in their childhood home.
For IPS and EPS, a higher
score indicated more experience with that particular type of
parentification.
We examined relationships among the sub-scales using
Pearson’s correlations.
Emotional parentification and
instrumental parentification were positively correlated, r(99)
= .48, p < .01.
POF was positively correlated with both
instrumental, r(99) = .33, p < .01 and emotional
parentification, r(102) = .66, p < .01.
These correlations,
revealing medium to large effect sizes, among the sub-scales
are consistent with previous research (e.
g., Hooper &
Wallace, 2010).
Parentification and Perceptions of Parents
Results can be seen in Table 1.
The higher the IPS, the
more participants agreed that they were unhappy with the way
they were raised, r(99) = .23, p = .023, revealing a small
effect.
The higher the EPS, the more participants agreed that
their parents were not there for them, r(99) = .
48, the more
unhappy participants felt about the way they were raised,
r(99) = .
45, the less participants agreed that they want to raise
their families in the way they were raised, r(99) = -.
49, and
the less participants agreed that their parents did the best job
they could in raising them, r(97) = -.
40 (p < .01 and revealing
medium effect sizes in all cases).
The higher the POF, the more participants agreed that
their parents were not there for them, r(99) = .
70, the more
unhappy participants felt about the way they were raised,
r(99) = .
72, the less participants agreed that they want to raise
their families in the way they were raised, r(99) = -.
71, and
the less participants agreed that their parents did the best job
they could in raising them, r(97) = -.
64 (p < .01 and revealing
large
effect
sizes
in
all
cases).
Table 1
Correlations between parentification sub-scales and perception of parents
Statement
POF
EPS
IPS
I want to raise my family in
the same way that I was
raised.
-.713
.000
-.487
.000
Overall, I fell very
negative/unhappy about the
way in which I was raised.
.720
.000
.446
.000
.229
.023
I believe that my parents
did the best job they could
in raising me.
-.642
.000
-.395
.000
My parents were not there
for me as much as I would
have liked them to be.
.690
.000
.479
.000
Parentification and Parenting Behaviors
We examined relations among variables using Pearson’s
correlations.
Instrumental
parentification,
emotional
parentification, and perceived unfairness scores did not
predict how participants responded to the list of parenting
behaviors.
In other words, a childhood experience with
parentification was not linked to a particular pattern of
participants’ planned parenting behaviors.
However we did
find that participants high in POF, ranked their career as more
important than caring for their spouse or children, r(94) = -
.23, p < .05, revealing a small effect size.
Parentification and Parenting Beliefs
The higher the EPS, the less participants agreed that it is
very important for children to do well in school, r(96) = -.
21,
p < .05.
The higher the POF, the less participants agreed with
the notion that children should not question parents, r(96) = -
.24. POF was positively correlated with the belief that parents
should respect their child’s privacy, r(96) = .21, and that
parents should always speak in a calm voice to their children,
r(96) = .
24 (p < .05 in all cases, revealing small effect sizes).
IPS did not predict participants’ parenting beliefs.
Because we did not find strong relations between
childhood experiences and parenting behaviors, we examined
participants’ overall responses to parenting situations.
The
results revealed that participants varied in their beliefs about
parenting.
Over 50% of participants were in agreement on
only nine of the 15 parenting statements (see Table 2).
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Table 2
Percentage of Participants who Agreed with Parenting Belief Statements
Statement
Percentage of
Participants who
Agreed
Parents should tell their children “no” when needed.
98%
Parents should clearly explain the rules and expectations to their child.
94%
It is very important that children do well in school.
92%
Physical affection with children is important.
91%
Parents should get their child to try new things.
89%
Parents should have high expectations of their children.
75%
Parents should be sensitive to every one of their child’s moods.
66%
It is important for parents to teach their children to share their beliefs
(religious or cultural).
61%
Parents should respect their child’s privacy.
58%
Children need to compete with others to learn about the real world.
46%
Spanking a child is an appropriate form of discipline.
45%
Parents should always speak in a calm voice to their children.
45%
Children deserve an allowance.
31%
Children should not question their parents.
24%
It is the school’s responsibility to educate children, not the parent’s job.
3%
Post-hoc Analyses
The higher the POF, the lower the participants’ self-
esteem, r(94) = -.
37, p < .01, and the less attractive
participants rated themselves, r(95) = -.
21, p = .04, revealing
small effect sizes.
The higher the EPS, the lower the
participants’ self-esteem, r(94) = -.
27, p < .01, and the less
attractive participants rated themselves, r(95) = -.
23, p = .026,
revealing small effect sizes.
IPS did not predict participants’
self-esteem or perceptions of their own attractiveness.
Discussion
The purpose of the study was to examine whether
childhood experiences with parentification affected adults
parenting beliefs.
We hypothesized that participants who
experienced parentification would perceive their own parents
in a poor light and report a desire to raise their own children
in a different way.
This hypothesis was supported.
Participants high in instrumental parentification, emotional
parentification, or perceived fairness reported being
“unhappy” with the way in which they were raised.
Emotional
parentification and perceptions of fairness were also
associated with participants wanting to raise their own
families differently than they way in which they were raised.
In other words, childhood parentification was linked to adults’
unhappiness with their childhood home, as well as a general
desire to avoid replicating that situation with their own
children.
We also hypothesized that parentification would
influence the way adults planned to parent, and this
hypothesis seemed especially likely to be met given the
unhappiness that our parentified participants reported with
their own parents; however, our results only partially
supported this hypothesis.
Emotional parentification,
perceived fairness, and instrumental parentification levels did
not predict participants’ support of specific parenting
behaviors.
Similarly, experience with emotional parentification and
perceptions of fairness predicted limited parenting beliefs.
Participants with high EPS were less likely to agree that it
was important for children to do well in school.
Participants
with high POF disagreed that children should not question
their parents and agreed that parents should respect children’s
privacy and speak to children calmly.
Participants who felt
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they were treated unfairly seem to be revealing parenting
beliefs that decrease the power of the parent over the child
and thus, decrease the ability for unfair treatment.
Participants
who scored high in POF also ranked career as a more
important priority than caring for their spouse of children.
Once again, these participants may be attempting to
compensate for the unfairness they perceived in their
childhood home, as lower family income is one predictor of
parentification (Burton, 2007).
Despite these associations, it is noteworthy that most
parenting beliefs did not relate to experience with
parentification.
For example, instrumental parentification was
not associated with parenting beliefs.
Out of the fifteen
presented parenting beliefs, emotional parentification was
associated with only one belief, and perceived fairness was
associated with three beliefs.
One interpretation is that an
individual’s experiences with childhood parentification do not
relate to their planned parenting in adulthood.
Another
plausible interpretation is that participants who experienced
parentification wanted to raise their own families differently
but did not share a common idea of what this might mean.
In
other words, participants may plan to be different than their
own parents in a variety of ways, with some planning to be
more permissive and others planning to be more hands-on.
In
support of this interpretation, we did not find clear consensus
in how participants responded to the parenting behavior
statements.
Taylor, Lauder, Moy and Corlett (2009) argued that even
though the details might be complicated, there is general
agreement among adults about what it means to be a “good
enough” parent.
In other words, most young adults share an
implicit idea of how good parents function.
Interestingly, our
participants who experienced parentification did not show this
expected agreement.
This lack of agreement may reflect the
fact that children experiencing parentification do not have
enough exposure to typical parenting situations that lead to
normative parenting ideas.
Burton (2007) demonstrated that
children who experience parentification are often perceived as
“different” from other children because of the uniqueness of
their life experiences.
Another possibility is that this finding
reflects yet another atypical outcome of parentification not yet
identified in previous research.
Previous research revealed that sometimes individual’s
parenting beliefs and behaviors do not match (Burchinal,
Skinner, & Reznick, 2010).
In this study, we were asking non-
parents to predict their future parenting behaviors.
Although
parentified participants shared the belief that they did not
want to be like their own parents, they may not have been
able to accurately translate that belief into accurate
predictions of their own parenting, resulting in the diversity of
responses we collected.
Perhaps if participants were actually
in a parenting situation, we would have uncovered unique
patterns of behavior as did Nutall, Valentino, and Borkowski
(2012).
Our results also revealed that emotional parentification
and perceived unfairness predicted participants’ decreased
self-esteem and perceived attractiveness, matching previous
research (Black et al, 2011).
In other words, experiences with
parentification can have long-lasting effects on feelings of
self-worth.
This finding raises questions about how
parentification can impact people’s self-image without having
any clear effect on their image of themselves as parents.
This
area is ripe for future research.
One limitation of the current study is that we studied
only non-parents.
Future studies may want to focus
specifically on people who are actually parents and compare
parenting beliefs and behaviors of non-parents to actual
parents.
Future researchers also could use observational
methodology to compare parenting behaviors of adults who
experienced parentification and those who did not, as well as
to assess how their parenting beliefs and behaviors match.
Another limitation is that we did not randomly sample
our participants from a broad population, relying instead on a
university population.
Because of their successful enrollment
at a university, these participants may not have experienced
extreme parentification, such as that of adult children of
alcoholics.
Adults in more extreme childhood situations may
have had less opportunity to witness typical parenting and
may exhibit more extreme reactions to their childhood home.
That greater impact may translate into unique parenting
beliefs.
Future studies may want to focus on more vulnerable
populations.
In sum, this data in combination with previous research,
demonstrates that parentification impacts individuals in ways
that are likely to influence their parenting, such as decreased
self-esteem.
However, parentification did not clearly predict
parenting beliefs or behaviors.
Adults who experienced
childhood parentification expressed unhappiness with the way
they were raised, yet did not report consensus in the ways
they planned to differ from their own parents.
This finding
adds to our growing understanding of parentification and
parenting.
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