La thèse étudie le processus de parentification et les facteurs associés d'activation/inhibition sur plusieurs générations. D'autre part, elle distingue la parentification d'autres processus auxquels elle est régulièrement amalgamée. Ainsi, si la parentification, la parentalisation, l'adultisation, la délégation et la responsabilisation ont des points communs, ils n'en restent pas moins des processus distincts. La thèse cerne également la dynamique fraternelle à l'oeuvre dans le processus. L'organisation fraternelle lors d'une parentification n'ayant fait l'objet d'aucun écrit ou presque, la thèse se penche sur la thématique et fait des propositions.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in parentification in military families with a deployed parent and without a deployed parent. Previous research has highlighted increased rates of parentification in situations involving parental absence or unavailability, such as divorce, parental illness, parental alcoholism, and domestic violence. This construct was assessed using the Parentification Questionnaire - Youth, a 20 item self-report survey for children and adolescents. Participants consisted of 22 children, ages 7-17, from military families with a deployed parent and military families without a deployed parent. After removing two statistical outliers from the intact military families group, an independent samples t-test was conducted. It was found that there was a significant difference between military families with a deployed parent and military families without a deployed parent. Military families with a deployed parent had higher rates of parentification than military families without a deployed parent. Limitations include a small sample size due to time constraints, the possible presence of one or both parents during the questionnaire, and lack of control groups. Future research should include a larger sample size, increase the comparison to more family groups (i.e. civilian, divorced, separated by work), and assess possible positive or negative impacts of parentification on military children from families separated by deployment.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

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Research regarding the experience of the psychotherapist in the therapeutic interaction is uncommon in scientific literature and rarer still in the literature of the U.S. When Freud recognized the therapist’s emotional experience in response to the client, he termed it countertransference and identified it as counterproductive to the analytic process. Later it was recognized as containing potentially useful information about the client. Despite a shift in academic concern away from the clinician’s experience, outcome studies have demonstrated the importance of the therapeutic relationship. If the therapist’s experience can help or hinder the relationship and, therefore, the process of therapy, it must continue to be explored. Some researchers have suggested that the field may be disproportionately populated by individuals who had excessive emotional demands placed on them as children (Miller, 1979/1990). Jurkovic (1997) proposed that, along with strengths endowed by this childhood responsibility, parentified therapists may find themselves more vulnerable to a sense of duty that they must help clients. Similarly, these therapists might feel compelled by their empathic concern to go above and beyond. The experience of a therapist in such a situation might be to “feel in too deep with a client” – the phenomenon of concern for this study. Ten practicing, doctoral level psychologists were asked to describe a specific experience in which they felt in too deep with a client. Selection analysis and situational descriptions were reviewed with each participant. Four core themes emerged. They revealed the participants’ experience of feeling in too deep as involving a variety of distressful thoughts and feelings. A specific cluster of feeling insecure, confused, or not in control was universal. The other three core themes were challenge in connection, altering personal style of therapy, and balancing the wants and needs of the different people in the therapy relationship. The unique experiences of participants relative to the core themes are discussed. Recent research on therapist-identified difficult situations provides a context for understanding these themes. Feeling in too deep is considered as a response to an ethical challenge.

Master of Science / School of Family Studies and Human Services / Amber Vennum / Using a sample of 109 students at a Midwestern university with divorced or separated parents I explored a) how sibling order and young adults’ age at parental divorce or separation impacted their experience of boundary ambiguity, parentification, stress, and family satisfaction and support, b) whether parentification mediated the effects of boundary ambiguity on stress, family support and family satisfaction, and c) whether sibling order moderated the relationship between these variables. I found that the child’s age at parental divorce/separation was positively correlated with boundary ambiguity, and negatively correlated with parentification, stress, family satisfaction, and social support. First or only children reported higher rates of parentification, specifically taking on a spousal role with their parents than younger siblings. Further, in divorced/separated families boundary ambiguity was positively related to young adults’ stress and negatively related to their levels of family satisfaction and family support both directly and indirectly through parentification. However, sibling order was not found to moderate the relationships between boundary ambiguity, parentification, family support, family satisfaction, and stress. Implications for theory and intervention are discussed.

As a paradigm of a wounded healer, parentified therapists may be gifted with therapeutic talents, but also with related vulnerabilities that may have a significant influence on their therapeutic practice. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to explore the impact of parentification on therapeutic practice, especially on the therapeutic skills of empathy and boundary settings. For this purpose, a mixed method design was employed in which 38 trainee psychologists provided self-report data on the constructs of parentification measured by parentification questionnaire (Jurkovic, 1997), empathy, measured by Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980), and boundary settings, measured by Exploitation Index (Epstein, 1990) in a survey study, while 4 trainee psychologists were interviewed in a separate study. First, the quantitative data were analysed to assess the existence of possible relationships among the variables of parentification, empathy and boundary transgressions by a regression analysis. The results offered significant suggestions for the predictive power of parentification in regard to empathy and boundary transgressions. Following this, a qualitative study analysed the interviews with the 4 trainees using thematic analysis to explore the above relationships and provided a deeper insight, especially for their therapeutic utility. Combining the findings, the current study supported that parentification may first of all catalyse the choice of a psychologist's profession, well as the choice of the psychotherapeutic approach. In regard to the interpersonal skills, parentification may positively impact the development of enhanced levels of empathy, boundary flexibility, and creativity. On the other hand, parentification may also negatively impact on practitioners by making them more vulnerable to enmeshed therapeutic relationships. Especially in the case of destructive parentification, professional support may be needed to minimise the risk for enmeshed relationships, by increasing self-care and self-other differentiation. Clinical implications for parentified therapists were also discussed.

There is a void of existing measures assessing young adults’ perceptions of childhood disorganized and controlling attachment. The current research project aimed to fill this gap by developing a convenient self-report measure, the Childhood Disorganization and Role Reversal Scale (CDRR: Meier & Bureau, 2012), which comprehensively assesses for the complexity of those attachment constructs in young adults. The CDRR is a novel measure as it assesses the unique attachment representations of mother-child and father-child relationships. This research project had three main objectives. The first objective was the development of the CDRR. It was guided by the recommendations of various scholars in scale development using classical measurement theory. The items of the CDRR were informed by the attachment and family systems literature. The factor structure of the CDRR was determined through conducting principal components analyses (PCA). The second objective, constituting Study 1, aimed to assess the psychometric properties of the CDRR, namely, its structural stability, internal reliability, temporal reliability, convergent and discriminant validity and criterion-related validity. Lastly, the third objective, involving Study 2, sought to provide further support for the validity of the CDRR. It accomplished this goal by exploring the associations of the CDRR to psychological outcomes consistent with the attachment literature, namely, problems in the separation-individuation process, unresolved feelings towards caregiver, and current psychological well-being. The results of the PCA revealed a four-factor structure for both CDRR parent versions. The CDRR mother version includes the Disorganization/Punitive, Mutual Hostility, Affective Caregiving, and Appropriate Boundaries scales, while the CDRR father version includes the Disorganization, Affective Caregiving, Appropriate Boundaries, and Punitive scales. Overall, support was provided for the psychometric properties of the CDRR. The CDRR scales demonstrated adequate structural stability, internal consistency, temporal reliability and various forms of validity. Generally, the disorganized and controlling scales were positively related to problematic separation-individuation, unresolved feelings towards caregivers and psychological problems. It is hoped the CDRR will assist researchers in broadening the understanding of psychological outcomes of disorganized and controlling attachment representations in young adulthood.

<p>Using self-reports from 83 military connected youths, the results of the present study challenge convention, suggesting first that the best fitting model for youth’s non-normative caregiving behaviors includes three distinct behavior types: Parentification, Adultification, Role Reversal. Second, that while non-normative caregiving behaviors may be associated with youths’ socio-emotional well-being, how these behaviors are associated may depend on both the behavior and the outcome. Lastly, that Unfairness significantly moderates the association between youth’s non-normative caregiving behavior types and socio-emotional wellbeing. Implications and directions for future research on youths’ non-normative caregiving experiences and types of non-normative caregiving behaviors are considered.</p>

Expectations of children to perform parenting tasks above their development level, a phenomenon known as parentification, is said to be destructive in western literature. However, in other cultures, children taking on some parenting duties may not be considered a detriment but rather an attribute of filial responsibility. The current study examined the relationships between identity distress and parentification as it differs by culture. A comparison of parentification by ethnicity revealed that individuals who did not classify as an ethnic minority experienced significant levels of identity distress compared to ethnic minority individuals regarding parentification. This variation may be attributed to elements of parentification seen as an expectation by some ethnic groups. Further analyses of the data and implications for understanding cultural bias in our assumptions of the adverse effects of parentification is discussed.