Role Reversal

They were sitting in their brown VW bug as her dad drove them home from church that sunny spring afternoon.  She had on a dress and tall white knee socks. The year would have been about 1980.  Annie's mom was in the front passenger seat crying.  The car was silent except for her quiet sobs.  Annie was sitting directly behind her mother, so she couldn’t see her, but the tension in the car was palpable.  Her sister sat staring out the window, appearing to be somewhere else completely.  Her dad drove in silence, hands tightly gripping the steering wheel.

Annie didn’t know what was wrong, but felt that someone needed to comfort her mother.  The silence was deafening. Her mom was so sad, and Annie felt like she couldn’t bear it.   Why wasn't someone comforting her? So, Annie offered her the only thing she had, which was a little anecdote from her Sunday school class that morning about Jesus carrying a lamb home on his shoulders.  

Her mom absorbed that story as if it was the perfect medicine for what ailed her.  She told Annie how wise she was and how comforting.  “No one can comfort me the way that you do.  No one understands me the way that you do.”

And in that moment, Annie felt both the glory of being the only person in her family who could comfort her mother, and she felt the weight of it too.  It felt like it was now her job.  No one else would do it. Maybe no one else could do it. Her mother’s stability rested on little five year Annie's shoulders.

Was it really her job?  No, of course not.  The wife had a husband who chose not to show her comfort and care.  So, in the pain of that void, she pulled her daughter into that role. Annie was a kind and empathetic child.  She filled that relational emptiness.  The daughter became the partner that the mother wanted.  Annie was a better caretaker than her father was. Many years later, deep into adulthood, she was still filling that role.  She had no idea that it was harmful to her. Annie thought that she truly was responsible for her mother. 

What happened?  There was a deep void of intimacy in the parents’ marriage, and the mother used her daughter’s kind heart to bring her comfort and care.  This was not a one time event.  It was an ongoing pattern of dysfunctional relating.  It was a role reversal.  The mother needed something from the girl.  She was the parent who ought to have provided the comfort to Annie, but she needed to receive it from her instead.  This is called parentification.

The repercussions of parentification are vast.  It’s called covert sexual abuse for a reason.  It has a lasting impact on the sense of self, and creates an exaggerated responsibility for others’ emotions. It keeps the daughter from knowing how to identify or acknowledge her own needs. It silences her voice and disconnects her from her body.  She develops a people pleasing style of relating that harms her ability to trust others, and it affects her own ability to have intimate relationships.

You may wonder, how could you know that from one little story from a girl at age five.  That story was just the first of many to emerge from deeply hidden places during storywork.  And after naming the dysfunction, the impact, and the ways it shaped her, she began to see more clearly.  Through grief and anger she named the harm of being used, of being pulled into a role that was never hers. The emotional expression gave her power to begin to set boundaries.  She stepped out of that role. She began to heal. She will no longer be the parent to her parent.  And, she  will never ask her children to parent her.  The cycle has been broken.