The Hidden Damage of Making Children Emotional Spouses in Narcissistic Families
Written by Elizabeth Day, RTT® Therapist & Coach
Elizabeth Day specialises in working with both individuals and companies, eliminating both emotional and physical issues, enabling peak performance, both personal and professional success. Working with a range of issues from eating disorders and addictions to autoimmune disease and repetitive negative relationship patterns, achieving rapid results.
Imagine being just 12 years old and feeling responsible for your parent's happiness. You know when they're upset before they say a word. You listen to their problems, reassure them when they're distressed and try desperately to keep the peace at home. You may even find yourself comforting them about their relationship with your other parent.
People tell you how mature you are. How thoughtful, responsible and caring you've become. But what if that maturity comes at a cost? What if, instead of simply being allowed to be a child, you've quietly taken on the emotional responsibilities of an adult?
This is a form of ‘emotional parentification’, and in families affected by narcissistic or emotionally abusive behaviour, its effects can be profound and lasting.
What is emotional parentification?
Parentification occurs when the normal relationship between parent and child becomes reversed and a child assumes responsibilities that should belong to an adult. There are different forms of parentification, but emotional parentification is particularly complex because it is often invisible.
A child may become their parent's confidant, emotional caretaker, mediator or source of reassurance, fulfilling a role that should belong to a spouse. Often, the parent will overshare with the child and confide inappropriate details about their sex life or emotional needs. The boundaries that should be there aren't.
When a child is treated as a substitute emotional partner, it's sometimes described as spousification. The child may be made to feel special, trusted or exceptionally mature. Yet beneath that apparent closeness lies an unhealthy imbalance: the adult is receiving emotional support the child is not developmentally equipped to provide.
There is an important distinction between a loving family where children learn empathy and responsibility and one where a child's sense of security depends on managing a parent's emotional needs.
The role of narcissism in family dynamics
Clinical psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula, author of It's Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People, has explored how children in narcissistic family systems can be assigned roles that serve the emotional needs of the adults around them.
One child might become the peacemaker, constantly trying to prevent conflict. Another becomes the fixer, taking responsibility for everyone's problems. Another might be praised for always understanding and supporting a parent. These roles can shape how a child sees themselves and what they believe relationships require of them.
Importantly, even a parent who is experiencing abuse may unintentionally turn to their child for emotional support when they feel isolated, overwhelmed or unsupported themselves. This is a particularly difficult aspect of parentification to confront because it is not always intentional. Nevertheless, the emotional responsibility placed on the child can still be harmful.
Children can become caught between parental needs and suffer collateral damage during relationship breakdowns. They might have one parent who has escaped an abusive situation and, as a result, can't protect them from the narcissistic abuse of the other parent. For example, the other parent may then replace the partner with the child, expecting the child to meet their emotional needs. Or perhaps both parents place the children in a spousal role to fill the gap left by the partner.
When the child becomes the substitute spouse
The boundaries can become especially blurred when a parent begins sharing information about their romantic relationship, marital problems or emotional distress with their child. The child may become involved in adult arguments, feel responsible for protecting a parent or believe they must take sides.
Sometimes the child becomes the person the parent turns to first, not simply for comfort but for advice, validation and companionship that would more appropriately come from another adult. The parent may involve the child in their own interests or become overly involved in activities the child likes, seeking companionship through doing everything together and becoming overly attached.
The child may feel loved because they are needed. But being needed is not the same as being emotionally nurtured. A child who grows up believing that love must be earned by looking after someone else's emotional needs can carry that belief into adulthood.
The invisible cost in adult relationships
Research into parentification has identified associations with emotional distress, relationship difficulties and challenges around identity and boundaries, although experiences and outcomes vary. Some children grow into adults who feel compelled to rescue others, struggle to say no or feel guilty whenever they prioritise themselves.
They may become exceptionally capable and independent while finding it surprisingly difficult to ask for support. They may also become drawn to relationships where they are once again responsible for another person's happiness. Their childhood role has become an adult relationship pattern.
This is where understanding the origins of our emotional beliefs can become an important part of the healing process. Through my work as an RTT Therapist, I see the inextricable link between our early beliefs about responsibility, belonging and love and how they continue to influence our choices and sense of worth. The good news is that once a person has identified the root causes of these beliefs, they can reframe them and replace them with new, positive ones, changing their pattern of choices and the way they feel about themselves.
Radical acceptance: Recognising what we cannot change
Another important concept in Dr. Ramani's work is radical acceptance. In the context of narcissistic relationships, radical acceptance involves recognising patterns of behaviour for what they are, rather than continually hoping that we can change another person through greater understanding, patience or sacrifice. It does not mean approving of harmful behaviour, excusing it or giving up on protecting ourselves.
For adults who experienced emotional parentification, this may mean recognising that the parent they needed was not always emotionally available to them. It may also mean accepting that they cannot spend the rest of their lives being responsible for that parent's emotional wellbeing.
For parents, acceptance can involve acknowledging that a child has been placed in an inappropriate role and taking meaningful steps to restore healthier boundaries. This process may be painful, but it can also create the opportunity for change.
Breaking the cycle: Allowing children to be children
The first step is awareness. For parents, this means recognising the difference between emotionally connecting with a child and depending on that child for emotional support.
Children should be free to love both parents without feeling responsible for resolving adult conflict. They should be reassured that adult problems belong to adults and that they are not responsible for anyone else's happiness.
For adults who were parentified as children, healing may involve learning to establish boundaries, reconnect with their own needs and question deeply held beliefs about what they must do to deserve love. Therapeutic approaches that explore childhood experiences, emotional responses and limiting beliefs can support this process when practitioners also have an extensive understanding of narcissism.
In my therapeutic work, I use a combination of psychotherapy and hypnotherapy that allows the client to access memories representing the key moments when these beliefs and emotional responses were embedded. Clients can then understand that they no longer need these beliefs and begin replacing them with new ones. Once these new beliefs are embedded in the subconscious, they affect decisions and conscious behaviour, changing those old limiting and negative patterns.
Healing means giving yourself permission to stop carrying everyone else
One of the most powerful realisations we can have is that we are not responsible for managing another person's emotions. That responsibility never belonged to us as children, and it does not have to define us as adults.
Understanding emotional parentification is not about blaming parents or denying the difficult circumstances families may have faced. It is about recognising the importance of healthy emotional boundaries and giving the next generation something fundamentally different: the freedom to grow up feeling loved for who they are, rather than for what they can do for somebody else. Because perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give a child is the freedom to simply be a child.
Read more from Elizabeth Day
Elizabeth Day, RTT® Therapist & Coach
Elizabeth Day specialises in working with women with trauma from abuse, burnout and limiting blocks to achieving their goals, building self-confidence and guiding them to reinvention and success. Her own background is one of abuse, having escaped a 30-year relationship with an abusive partner and rebuilt her life and reinvented herself. Her experience of working with corporates for over 25 years has led to her to use both this experience and her own trauma to heal and coach clients and achieve ultimate success.
