AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF
PARENTIFICATION AND PERSONALITY
REBECCA A. JONES and MAROLYN WELLS
This article examines the hypotheses that parentification can predict
three sets of personality characteristics: masochistic or self-defeating,
overt narcissistic, and compulsive. Separate regression analyses were
run for males and females, with parentification used to predict these
personality characteristics, as measured on the MCMI-II. Results indi-
cated that for both genders, parentification was a significant predictor
of masochistic and narcissistic personality, but not compulsive charac-
teristics. The results lend preliminary support to the authors' theory
that parentification can manifest in two different, but related, forms
depending upon the type of familial inducement.
Parentification, the expectation that a child will assume a caretaking
role for the parent(s) (Boszormenyi-Nagy & Spark, 1973), presumably rep-
resents a relational template that is internalized by the child and crystal-
lized into his or her personality. Parentification has been described in
terms of a "family ledger" of "accounts due" that accrues over several
generations. Specifically, adult family members whose own needs were
not met in childhood may compensate by focusing on one of their children.
This child, in order to balance the family account, is then enlisted to estab-
lish family justice by giving the parents all that they were due from their
own families. In this way, the receptive child begins to mold his or her
identity around fulfilling the needs of the adults (Boszormenyi-Nagy and
Spark, 1973).
Parentified children take care of their parents in concrete, physical ways
by comforting them emotionally, and also by shaping their own personali-
ties to meet the expectations of the parents, thereby increasing the parents'
self-esteem. Karpel (1976) has described such children as developing an
Rebecca A. Jones, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor and Practicum Training Coordinator at
the Georgia School of Professional Psychology, 990 Hammond Drive, 11th Floor, Atlanta,
GA 30328. Marolyn Wells, Ph.D., is Training Director / Counseling Psychologist at Georgia
State University.
The American Journal of Family Therapy, Vol. 24, No. 2, Summer 1996 © Brunner/Mazel, Inc.

146 The American Journal of Family Therapy, Vol. 24, No. 2, Summer 1996
"uncanny" sensitivity to the feelings and needs of their parents, some-
times to the point where the child may exaggerate the parents' needs in
order to maintain a sense of self. Thus the parentification process may
undermine the development of the child's "true self" (Boszormenyi-
Nagy & Spark, 1973; Karpel, 1976) and induce characterological adapta-
tions.
This article attempts to expound on this process of parentified self-
development as manifested in adults by examining the relationship be-
tween parentification and predicted characterological adaptations. Spe-
cifically, the authors propose that parentification is related to the
development of both self-defeating and overt narcissistic personality char-
acteristics with compulsive features.
West and Keller (1991), following the work of Bowlby (1977), were the
first to theorize that parentification in childhood may lead to an adult
relationship pattern characterized by compulsive caregiving, which they
equated with self-defeating personality disorder (as defined by the DSM-
III-R). West and Keller proposed that "compulsive care-giving is a mode
of adaptation that in childhood offered the best possibility for achieving
proximity to the parent" (p. 426). In addition, they hypothesized that "the
structure of the person's interaction with the parent is carried forward
into adulthood and serves as a template for negotiating current relation-
ships" (p. 426).
It is our belief that West and Keller described one aspect of a more
complex parentification phenomenon, which can additionally assume a
narcissistic form. We propose that parentification affects the development
of narcissistic and self-defeating characteristics through a similar underly-
ing process, in which a family system induces the child to develop a sense
of self that revolves around parental needs. We hypothesize, however, that
parental needs differ in the parentification process that induces primarily
masochistic or self-defeating characteristics from those in the process that
induces as primarily narcissistic characteristics in a child.
For example, parents may induce masochistic parentification by need-
ing the child directly to take care of the parents' emotional or physical
needs (e.g., by being a good listener and suppressing autonomous striv-
ings, by being "mother's little helper" or the "little man of the family").
In contrast, parents may induce narcissistic parentification by needing the
child to become the parent's idealized self-projection (e.g., by realizing
the parent's dream of becoming a great musician, a genius professor, a
successful entrepreneur). Of course, in some families both parentification
processes affect a child, and, as a result, parentified individuals can pre-
sent with characteristics of both masochistic (self-defeating) and narcissis-
tic personality styles.
Finally, we speculate that compulsive personality features are typically
present in both the masochistic and narcissistic parentification formula-
tions. Compulsive features often manifest the parentified individual's
strivings for perfection, shame over mistakes, and basic insecurity that
propels various ritualized strivings for control through "compulsive care-
taking" (West & Keller, 1991).