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Parentification: Malcolm and Simone Debate How Much Responsibility Kids Should Have for Siblings
In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone delve into the controversial topic of parentification, exploring its various definitions and implications for raising children in large families. They discuss how the concept is often misused by YouTube commenters and contrast it with the medical industry's understanding of emotional and instrumental parentification. Malcolm argues that historically, children taking on parental roles was seen as a moral responsibility and necessity for maintaining high fertility rates. Simone adds nuance to the discussion, highlighting the importance of consent, aptitude, and ensuring children's safety when assigning responsibilities. The couple also touches on the psychological benefits of giving children age-appropriate tasks and the dangers of creating a culture where kids believe they can shirk responsibilities they dislike. Join Malcolm and Simone as they navigate this complex issue and offer insights on fostering a sense of moral responsibility in children.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Hello, gorgeous husband. Today, we are going to do an episode on the topic of parentification. , so what I've learned, cause I wanted to do some more research on this before going live with this episode. Is like the actual definition of parentification is not the way it is used by YouTube commenters.
Oh. And so we'll be talking about parentification as three different concepts throughout this show. So first is the way that it is most often used because where I see this is when we're watching like Ultra progressive reaction videos to prenatalist families, IE video families with a lot of kids,
Industry Collins: or
Malcolm Collins: when we see fam kids who grew up in large environments with a lot of other kids, their complaint is parentification.
And when this is,
Simone Collins: we should say kids who grew up in large families who subsequently deconverted from that, their birth culture, essentially.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So they will say that they were forced to undertake the [00:01:00] role of the parent to In some of like in helping raise their siblings that they were in part responsible for raising their siblings.
This is the way it is used within pop culture.
Then within the medical industry or the way it was originally intended to be used is actually there is emotional parentification, which means that the parent relies on their child for emotional support that should be coming from their partner, i.
e. they are treating their child more like a friend and less like a child. The other category of parentification here is , when a child feels the need to take on responsibility because their parent isn't fully responsible.
Industry Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Example here would be like their dad ran away, their mom's addicted to crack and they had to raise their sibling.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: This is very different than the way [00:02:00] YouTubers mean it, which is, I grew up in a family with seven kids, and I was responsible for sometimes watching after my siblings, or feeding my siblings, or, etc.
And it's a very important topic to dive into because so long as parentification as it is talked about within the YouTube community is something that is shamed, culturally we will never be able to get above replacement rate again. Because taking responsibility for one's family members historically was just seen as an obvious moral good and responsibility of every individual, right?
You cannot raise a large family. Especially in a historic context without the children taking on some of the parental roles. And to understand what I mean when I say this, in the 1800s in the United States, your average American had seven [00:
Published on 1 year, 5 months ago