Parentification and psychological impacts in adjustment to adulthood : resilience and attachment style as potential mediators

Abstract

Parentification is a common phenomenon of role reversal in families, in which a child assumes the responsibilities and tasks of his/her parent due to reasons such as parental divorce, parental illness, or parental substance abuse. While this family dynamic has been widely studied in Western countries, there has been a lack of discussion on the topic within the Chinese population. To fill this research gap, the current study examined the relationship between parentification, and psychological distresses experienced by Chinese individuals. A total of 235 emerging adults were recruited to complete a set of online self-report questionnaire. Results showed a significant positive correlation between parentification and psychological distresses, suggesting that individuals who experienced parentification reported higher levels of psychological distresses in adjustment to adulthood. Furthermore, insecure attachment, namely anxious and avoidant attachment styles, mediated this relationship. This suggested early parentification experience could lead to the failure of individuals to develop a secure bonding with their parents and create prolonged internalizing problems and emotional difficulties during adulthood. The current findings provided more insight for psychologists/health professionals during clinical practice through an in-depth understanding of the impacts of parentification on individuals’ psychological adjustment in later stages of life. Furthermore, future studies could further study how different factors play a role in affecting the developmental outcome of individuals who grew up in this family dynamic so that more perpetuating and protective factors could be identified for treatments and interventions in the psychological field.