9 Signs You Were Overly Parentified As A Kid And Given Way Too Many Responsibilities
Growing up as an overly parentified child has long-lasting consequences.
Gang Zhou | Getty Images Signature via CanvaPro It's important for children to develop a sense of independence and believe in their abilities, but being given too many responsibilities can be a sign you were overly parentified as a kid.
According to a public health study from 2023, parentification occurs when children or teenagers are expected to take on adult roles when they're not cognitively or emotionally ready. Parentification is also called adultification, spousification, or role reversal.
Instrumental parentification is when kids are expected to maintain the household in a way a parent would, through doing chores and providing meals or contributing financially. Emotional parentification means that kids are expected to care for their family members' emotional needs.
Being parentified has direct implications on children's behavioral and emotional development, and it can deeply affect the way they enter relationships later in life.
Here are 9 signs you were overly parentified as a kid and given way too many responsibilities
1. You constantly take on a caregiver role
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If you were overly parentified as a kid, you may constantly act as a caregiver or "fixer" in all your adult relationships, even when there's no explicit expectation for you to do so. According to a research paper from The Alabama Counseling Association Journal, being parentified creates an environment where a child's caretaking behavior maintains the family balance.
Often, parentified children are expected to be emotionally available for their parents, but their parents don't provide any sense of emotional availability in return. Kids who are overly parentified tend to struggle with relationship-building and developing their own individual personalities.
Research has also found that overly parentified children have more "caretaker characteristics" than children who weren't parentified. If you were overly parentified as a child, you tend to take on a caregiving role in your relationships, which mirror the expectations placed on you in childhood. Your identity is so tied to taking care of other people that you continue to do so even after you've left home, which can negatively impact your own emotional well-being and mental health.
2. You have trouble identifying your own needs
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In childhood, your emotional and practical needs were put on the back burner while you tended to everyone else. You might not fully understand what you want or who you are, now that you're living a life that's separate from your parents.
Because you were given way too many responsibilities that you weren't equipped for, you didn't have the time or space to figure out who you were outside of your family dynamics. As a result, you entered adulthood without a strongly defined sense of self.
While your lack of self-awareness isn't your fault, it is up to you as an adult to figure become more self-aware. Psychologist Nick Wignall explained that self-awareness isn't a trait you're born with; rather, it's something you build up with practice.
He shared that paying attention to your own thought patterns and learning how to accept feedback are essential parts of becoming more self-aware. He also shared that highly self-aware people don't judge themselves for how they feel; instead, they acknowledge that they can't control their emotions, only their responses.
"Being judgmental of your own emotions doesn't just not make sense, it obscures your self-awareness," he revealed. "If you're constantly judging your emotions you won't have any energy left to understand them."
3. You're attracted to dependent partners
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If you were overly parentified as a child, it's likely that your current romantic relationships echo the relationship you had with your parents. Since you're accustomed to being depended on, you tend to choose partners who "need" you to take care of them.
A study published by the Graduate Student Journal of Psychology at Columbia University established that being overly parentified as a child can directly affect attachment formation. Attachment outcomes influence identity development and differentiation and with the way parentified children form adult relationships.
Being overly parentified often creates a basis for insecure attachment patterns between children and their parents. It is possible to form a secure attachment style within instrumental parentification, as long as the parents are able to maintain emotional regularity and be continuously available.
Yet secure attachment development is "severely disrupted" by emotional parentification, because the child provides their parent with unreciprocated emotional support. Emotional parentification is internalized and repeated as those kids enter adulthood, which is one reason why you end up with dependent partners after being overly parentified as a kid.
4. You feel responsible for other people's well-being
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Feeling responsible for other people's well-being is a sign you were overly parentified as a kid. You never learned that everyone is responsible for their own emotions; in fact, you were taught the exact opposite. You were responsible for making sure your parents were okay, and that deep-seated pattern of thinking followed you into adulthood.
You have a tendency to overextend yourself to meet others' needs, even at your own expense. As noted in the article from The Alabama Counseling Association Journal, kids who were overly parentified often exhibit people-pleasing behavior later in life. Being a people-pleaser is a hard habit to break.
Licensed clinical social worker Terry Gaspard explained that before someone can move past their people-pleasing tendencies, they have to look back at their childhood. Many people learn to be people-pleasers because their families of origin were dysfunctional. They're held captive by patterns that no longer serve them, because they equate being loved with being responsible for the people they care about.
Gaspard acknowledged that a "Fear of rejection often lies at the root of a person's tendency to bend over backward to please others — sometimes at the expense of their happiness." This can be especially true if you were overly parentified as a kid, because your parents' approval depended on what you could give them.
She described that thought pattern by referencing a phrase created by Dr. Harold Bloomfield: The "Approval Trap." People who fall into the approval trap ensure that everyone else is happy, yet by overextending themselves emotionally, they neglect their own happiness. "You are not obligated to meet the needs of others," Gaspard concluded. "That is their responsibility and only you know what's best for you."
5. You struggle to ask for help
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Asking for help can be really hard if you were overly parentified growing up. You were taught from a young age that you had to be the helper, which often meant you didn't get the support you needed. You learned that your survival depended on being self-sufficient, and as an adult, you feel a deep sense of shame when you need help.
You might still think that asking for help is a sign of weakness, or that it's not worth asking for, because you won't get it. Asking for help is an act of vulnerability. It means you have to drop your emotional armor and let other people in. Being vulnerable is scary for anyone, but it can be especially scary when you were overly parentified as a kid and given way too many responsibilities. You essentially weren't allowed to be vulnerable, so you suppressed your emotional needs in service to the rest of your family.
Asking for help gets easier with practice. Being vulnerable is a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it. You can build up to asking for help with small, easily-met requests, then move onto bigger tasks when you feel ready. You might never actually feel ready, and that's okay. Ask anyway.
6. You have a hard time setting boundaries
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Boundaries are the key to having healthy relationships. If you were overly parentified, you probably weren't taught how to set boundaries as a kid because your family's boundaries were inherently blurred to begin with.
Psychotherapist and speaker Merle Yoste offered guidance on how to re-define boundaries and overcome even the messiest childhood. Yoste revealed that our childhood experiences have a direct effect on how we set — or don't set — boundaries as adults.
"We believe our family's patterns are 'just how it is,'" he explained. "I call this experience with our families 'the dance of intimacy.' This dance sets up most of the interactions in our lives. The dance of intimacy that we learn from our family, we take into the world and believe that is just how the world works."
Someone who was overly parentified holds onto the belief that they have to put other people before themselves. They think they can't say "no," and if they do, they won't be loved. Yoste noted that a toxic family paradigm often "leaves people boundaryless and vulnerable to being controlled and manipulated."
"Becoming aware of the pattern and how it affects your relational choices is helpful in solidifying your boundaries," he continued. Yoste shared that being introspective is a pathway into understanding yourself and setting boundaries that suit you.
"Being introspective means that you are aware of who and how you are," he concluded. "We are constantly changing, so staying attuned to our growth is necessary. This prevents others from defining us."
It might not be easy to let go of your old identity and set boundaries that protect the new version of yourself, but it is completely worth it.
7. You feel guilty when you focus on yourself
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If you were expected to work after school to help your family financially or get dinner on the table every night or perform any other caregiving task on a habitual basis, putting yourself first can trigger feelings of anxiety, guilt, or even shame.
Centering your own needs is crucial to truly taking care of yourself. Learning to release that guilt might take time, but the more you focus on you, the better you'll feel. As intuitive coach Ronnie Ann Ryan sharedd, "All self-care options lead to honoring the unique being you are, your right to exist, take care of yourself, and make yourself happy."
8. You have a fear of abandonment
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Worrying that your loved ones will abandon you is a sign you were overly parentified as a kid. Your fear of abandonment is rooted in your fear that if you're not always providing for other people, they won't need you, and they'll leave. You learned to equate your sense of self-worth with what you gave to your family, and there's always a tiny voice in your head whispering that you are not enough, on your own, as you are.
Having a fear of abandonment can usually be traced back to having an insecure attachment style. As the research article from Columbia University explained, overly parentified kids "often experience anxiety over abandonment and loss, and demonstrate difficulty handling rejection and disappointment within interpersonal relationships."
Even though the roots of your fear run deep, you don't have to stay stuck there. Psychotherapist Diane Poole Heller shared that moving from an insecure attachment style to a secure attachment style can be achieved when you pay attention to your patterns and actively work to change how you connect to other people.
"It's best to honor the experiences you've had in your life and realize that even if they've been difficult, there are practices that can help you heal as much as possible," she explained. "While the issues in your past might have shaped your current attachment response, you are always capable of moving forward and creating a better, safer future for yourself."
"We all deserve to live a well-loved life and to learn to love well," Heller concluded.
9. You have control issues
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Because you were forced to take on major responsibilities as a young age, you might still see yourself through the lens of needing to be depended on in a way that wasn't actually healthy.
Being overly controlling often stems from anxiety. People who need to be in control of every outcome and situation tend to rely on that sense of control as a way to feel safe. If you were overly parentified as a kid, your parents probably didn't offer you the protection you should have received. In order to make yourself feel secure in an unstable environment, you developed control issues.
It isn't easy to release the idea that you can control everything. Letting go of control is scary, no matter who you are, but it can also be liberating. You're allowed to not have the answer to everything. You're allowed to exist on this earth without serving other people's needs. You're allowed to just be you, and find fulfillment there.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.