Parentification： Malcolm and Simone Debate How Much Responsibility Kids Should Have for Siblings
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss the concept of parentification and the psychological benefits it has brought to our culture. We discuss the history of parental alienation, the role of the older siblings in a family, and the role that children were expected to take on in helping raise their siblings.
Transcript
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hello simone hello gorgeous husband today we are going to do an episode on the topic of
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parentification so what i've learned because i wanted to do some more research on this before
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going live with this episode is like the actual definition of parentification is not the way it
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is used by youtube commenters oh and so we'll be talking about parentification as three different
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concepts throughout this show so first is the way that it is most often used because where i see this
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is when we're watching like ultra progressive reaction videos to pernatalist families i.e
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video families with a lot of kids yeah or when we see fam kids who grew up in large environments with
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a lot of other kids their complaint is parentification and when this is we should say
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kids who grew up in large families who subsequently deconverted from that their birth culture
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essentially yeah so they will say that they were forced to undertake the role of the parent
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in some of like in helping raise their siblings that they were in part responsible for raising
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their siblings this is the way it is used within pop culture then within the medical industry or or
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the way it was originally intended to be used is actually there is emotional parentification which
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means that the parent relies on their child for emotional support that should be coming from their
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partner i.e they are treating their child more like a friend and less like a child the other category
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of parentification here is when a child feels the need to take on responsibility because their parent
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isn't fully responsible okay so an example here would be like their dad ran away their mom's addicted to
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crack and they had to raise their sibling okay this is very different than the way youtubers mean it
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which is i grew up in a family with seven kids and i was responsible for sometimes watching after my
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siblings or feeding my siblings or etc and it's a very important topic to dive into
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because so long as parentification as it is talked about was in the youtube community
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is something that is shamed culturally we will never be able to get above replacement rate again
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because taking responsibility for one's family members historically was just seen as an obvious
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moral good and responsibility of every individual right you cannot raise a large family
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especially in a historic context without the children taking on some of the parental roles
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and to understand what i mean when i say this in the 1800s in the united states
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your average american had seven kids average so that means for every american who didn't get married
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or had zero kids there was another american having over 14 kids okay that means for every american
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who had four kids the measly tiny number of four kids owe shame to that baron spinstress
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which we only recently got to a few days ago that meant that there was another family
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that was having 10 kids okay these were families the average american family where the kids were relied
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upon in part to help with child rearing and we should note how much this was a stalled in a cultural
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context so i read the diary from one of my ancestors in a previous episode it's the episode titled
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something like kids used to like their parents and it was it's a great episode by the way i strongly
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suggest you to check it out it's one of those episodes where it ended up getting rev shared and
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i was like i don't even care too good but great episode but this previous episode in the diaries
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something that was very interesting is it was seen as totally normal and admirable for the older
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siblings in a family to give up their potentiality in life to expand the potentiality of the younger
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siblings so in this family what happened is the you could go work in the local lumber mill and make
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good money but you didn't have any chance of upward social mobility so the older siblings in the family
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the two oldest brothers went to work in the lumber mill and then use the money that they made in the lumber
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bill to make sure that their younger siblings could get a good education and today this would be seen
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of as horrifying how could that happen in the frontier time it's not like the parents had any money
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they were barely scraping by as they had a in the story they had some pigs and they had a spin wheel
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for making dresses and that was it like a one-room house in an outhouse that was what they owned right
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you didn't have anything else and i think that in a historic context we just forget that because we
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compare ourselves only to our parents generation how hard things were we also need to talk about the
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psychological benefits of parentification but before we do that simone i'd love it if you had any
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thoughts on what i've gone over so far yeah you're basically just saying this is a practical reality in a
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high fertility culture which i think is a really important foundation for this because most people
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when they're looking at prenatalism going forward would never think parentification would or could
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be a part of that and a lot of their priors are based on okay how do we raise a kid the way that
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we raise kids now which is unsustainable inherently there has to be parentification yeah it's interesting
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we have a friend who's from a very high fertility family mormon family and who has deconverted and who's
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actually incredibly successful it's remarkable to me that she has any complaints about her i always
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am like people are like well your parents good parents and i go i don't know i'm successful and
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happy with my life so they must have been they're like what about all the horrible things i was like
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it turns out this must have been in my best interest or i judge the quality of a parent not by a child's
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self-description of them but by how well the child did as an adult i'm like then your childhood
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clearly provided you with some utility which is you know i'm very much a functionalist people always make
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fun of us for that but she complained she's the look of my family had a i had eight siblings and
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i was the oldest and i always ended up having to take care of them and it really robbed me of my
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childhood and i was like okay so which of your siblings would you prefer not to exist and she's
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that's like apple and oranges and it's no it's not the you not getting to do whatever you wanted in
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your childhood not giving to live the childhood you saw portrayed in media that promoted unsustainable
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family practices not having that childhood is what allowed those other individuals to exist
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it's if somebody came when they're like i really hate these guardrails on roads they block my view
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as i'm driving and it would just be somewhat more scenic if we could go to a time when they didn't exist
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i'm like they save x many lives per year and they're like that's really apples and oranges and
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it's no it's really not apples and oranges this is the consequence you not having the view you want
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of those things existing and they exist in order to save lives so that more humans can live fulfilling
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lives and you don't want to internalize that you are the type of person who would deny another human
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being a chance at life just for your convenience but you are that type of person and i think that's
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the fundamental thing and so the question is how did these memes spread in our society that it is bad
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to expect responsibility from children yeah and i think what they really stem from is the belief that
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it's bad to expect responsibility from anyone and then especially children anytime when responsibility
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was forced on them as i pointed out the demonification of starship troopers why is starship troopers
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demonized as fascists it is a world that presumably has everything progressive said that they want
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it is a world where minorities can enter the highest levels of position within society it is a world with
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total gender equality it is a world with total ethnic equality it is a world without interhuman wars it is
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a world of peace but what's the bad thing and it's ah you let it slip you let slip what you really
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wanted which was a world without responsibility what is bad about that world is that to vote you have to
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sacrifice either by participating in the military or through civil some form of civil work which is
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open is made clear in the book and it's not denied in the movie so we have to assume that this is true
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in the movie universe as well that there is always a way to earn the right to become a citizen even if
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you are disabled or mentally disabled or something like that they create something for you the key is
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just that you have to sacrifice something that is given without sacrifice has no value is in the
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lines of the movie and i think it's true this is the way people see things given without sacrifice
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and in the discord server for it they were sharing a post on reddit recently which was like
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our podcast discord server yeah our podcast discord server i'll include a link in the notes it was about
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how everybody deserves housing everybody deserves an hvac everybody deserves internet everybody deserves
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electricity and it's even even if they don't work regardless of employment it said and it's what are you
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actually saying when you say that you're saying that people who are not producing anything deserve
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to have people forced to produce for them that hvac needs to be serviced built same with that house
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same with the electricity those people are essentially working as slaves for the individuals who are doing
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this they are being forced to work without remuneration when they're like well force other people to
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remunerate them that doesn't solve the problem that now you have turned those other people into
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essentially your wage slaves but let's bring this back to parentification because i think it's a
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really important issue and i think an important thing to point to which we've pointed to in many
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other podcasts but still it bears repeating is that removing responsibility from people does not impart
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mental health good mental health it does not impart fitness it does not impart an edge in society
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it does not impart impart competitiveness so when you remove responsibility from someone you are
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pretty much just hurting them but i also want to draw a line here because when i see people commenting
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on parentification sometimes they do so with some merit and i think we do have to draw the line of where
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we think parentification goes too far there there was mention i think the duggars at one point they had
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something called the buddy system which i think is great where you're responsible for
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your immediately younger sibling or a younger sibling something like that where siblings paired
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up and took care of each other and they also just generally had older siblings take care of younger
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siblings one thing that they did were i don't think it was imparting the good kind of responsibility
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was where they gave children tasks that were above and beyond what they could even do for themselves
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and i do agree with many people who are critics of parentification that minors
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are still developing they're still figuring out their own task because i don't think that you're
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actually criticizing parentification i think you're criticizing basic safety which is just that i think a lot
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of traditional families might scoff at that the one thing that i would draw the line at which i think the
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duggars did is they had some of their children take care of infants overnight when they had
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overnight feeding needs and they were really small and when you're a teen you need a lot of sleep when
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you're a teen you don't necessarily know how to do like advanced infant care it can get really
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complicated and you might wait this is when they were teens that's fine i think it might have been when
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they were younger kids teenagers used to have infants that's true but i know i would still draw the line
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at that i think that there is there is a line you need to draw when it comes to things like health safety
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knowing like child cpr like there's a lot of stuff that's it's too much to put on a kid
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really yeah if it was a if it was like an eight-year-old doing that's one thing okay
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if it's a teenager doing that no they can safely feed a kid at night
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and asking that your family takes on some responsibility for their new siblings specific
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jobs like that i think is fine depending on how you structure their daily routine
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right now it might be less fine if you have them going to a public school or something like that
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where they're expected to manage their time really strictly but if you have a family like ours where
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by the time we're talking this morning a kid's in their teens we're going to be much more focused on
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helping them set up a company um than going to school in a company that they run and have ownership
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of so i wouldn't be as worried about that and i think that this is just one of those things where
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you haven't gotten to the stage yet where our kids are old enough to take on those sorts of
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responsibilities i would be asking to take on those sorts of responsibilities no yeah so there's
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a key part of this which also involves consent so one i think that if your child does not have
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certain self-care things together you cannot expect them to do a good job or be able to take on the
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self-care of another child this is where i just agree pretty strongly with you i think that having an
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individual like if you want an individual to have their own self-care together the single worst thing
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you can do to somebody who is struggling with self-care is remove responsibilities i agree
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removing responsibilities thing you can do to improve an individual's own self-care is increase
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the number of responsibilities they have yeah but i wouldn't say by putting that on someone else i
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wouldn't subject another child to the the care routine of someone who doesn't have their own care
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routine together i just wouldn't i also think that consent is really important with this that kids
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should not be given they shouldn't be forced into brandification without having some kind of
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enthusiasm for it either be that because they get more privileges really i i encourage you to really
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think about what you're saying why do you have these feelings do you think it is not in the best
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interest of the kid because clearly it is you've seen the research right but first we should know
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with additional kids just so people know there's this belief that if you have a ton of kids
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you're really hurting the prospects of every kid you do have which is just not true unless you're
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in south korea unless you're in south korea which we did an episode on but in the united states kids
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actually tend to do a bit better mental health wise and outcomes wise i think up to about sibling
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number two or three and then they begin to do worse but not by a huge margin so for example if i look
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at the study associations of birth order with mental health problems self-esteem reliance and happiness
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among children i can see that only children have significantly more total difficulty scores
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they have more problems with emotional symptoms they have more hyperactivity slash attention deficit
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problems they have more problems with their peer relationships and they have less pro-social
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behavior they also have lower resilience teaching your kids to take on roles that they have a
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responsibility to take on roles within the family unit for those who are defenseless or need care
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more i think is solely a one moral good you are teaching them good morals it is their responsibility
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within their cultural ecosystem to care for those that have less than them okay this is all family
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units as we said are communist systems a well-structured family unit is from each according to their
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ability to each according to their needs and that is what a family is and an infant needs more and the
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teenager can produce more you are teaching a good value system interculturally there one two giving an
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individual additional tasks and teaching them that sometimes they just have to handle something for the
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greater good of their cultural unit is really one psychologically valuable and teaches them good morals it
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reminds me when we started running our company and something that i was raised believing just like
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intuitively because it was the way my house was structured is if you saw a mess it doesn't matter
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who made the mess it is your responsibility to clean it up if there was spilled milk or something like that i
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was never allowed to say but my brother spilled it it's but why didn't you clean it up you knew
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that would cause damage if it stayed there you knew it was a danger to others if it stayed there
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why didn't you handle it i agree with that philosophy i just think that there's nuance to this and when
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the health and safety of other people are involved i think it's really important that
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when you give adversity to someone and responsibility to someone that there is something of when possible an
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opt-in element of this you're stepping up for it and that can mean because you're getting additional
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privileges that can mean because when you do that good things happen you get additional resources you
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get additional power or privilege or something that makes your life also better but i do think
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know if i agree with this i do not think capitalist system should be so capitalist system exists in the
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world outside of the family when you start rewarding things inside the family every positive action has a
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reward i think that creates a really negative psychological framing for your kid i agree i think being
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mercenary is the wrong way to go and i what you can't see huh have i changed no you're not you're
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not changing my mind i just think this is a lot more nuanced than you think it is like with the
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duggar family were the boys taking care of their little siblings not really oh so it was done in a
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gender but also like in jill duggar's biography she writes about the fact that she enjoyed it like it was
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something that she appreciated oh yeah i love that the uh people who read it like the progressives were
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like she was brainwashed yeah they refused to believe that it was a thing that she could have
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possibly appreciated but there there are elements of aptitude there are elements of capability there
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are elements of interest even in families that don't give people the choice and to act as though
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you're going to foist upon people responsibilities so they're not willing to take on when there are
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other helpless people involved i think is deeply morally wrong parents if our kids are not willing
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or eager to from a moral standpoint to take on the responsibility yeah there are a variety of
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responsibilities that kids can choose to take on to do their part in the house even at without
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remuneration in a totally communist system where they can shine and i think that giving people that
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at least market-based communism where everyone steps in to contribute what they're best at contributing
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is really important maybe one kid is going to get really good at fixing things for other people
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or resolving disputes one is going to be incredibly into younger child care or organizing events that
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is still in the communist system from each according to their abilities but i know but what you're
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implying is just foisting upon people responsibilities that are not that willing to give to a teenage
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people that nobody want there's no interest in it yeah i am suggesting that there are certain
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responsibilities that nobody wants to deal with you when you create a system or a moral framework for kids
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where they believe that they don't have to do something because they don't like doing it you are
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creating a ball that rolls down a hill which ends in modern progressivism you cannot i understand you're
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like i want to make a compromise here or i want to make a compromise here and i am okay with making
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compromise when the safety of another kid is at stake okay when it's something like an infant or
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something like that and you do not think the infant will be safe fine but i am not okay with saying that
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i am making this compromise because the kid doesn't want to do it the kid should understand that they are
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seen as a failure in the eyes of the family for not being willing to undertake this responsibility
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themselves and that when you're building a moral framework that says and this is why this is
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how all of these systems when they're trying to like why does the urban monoculture why does the
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virus teach people about parentification in this way why does it use this me this idea of
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parentification because it is a good way to drive a wedge between an individual and their birth culture
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and their parents because all cults that is the core goal even if it was obviously in their best
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interest they need to say you were brainwashed you were gatling gaslit even when they've left
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their family even when they have antagonism to their family and they're like yeah but this thing
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wasn't bad for me and they're like no you only think that because gaslighting these thoughts is really
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important to cults in terms of breaking people out of family and traditional cycles and i think
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yeah i want to know do you really believe what you're saying that teaching a kid that they shouldn't
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have to do something that just needs to be done for like society somebody says i didn't want to
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clean up the milk therefore i don't have to do you not see the problem in that how it no you that's
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not true the way that i parent you know that i draw lines where i'm like if you want this you have to do
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that said when it comes to the care of other people i think it's really important for there to be
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an opt-in factor and that you cannot put someone who is openly unwilling over in the care of someone
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else now i do think raising families with a responsibility where everyone feels like their
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personal responsibility for the safety and well-being of their siblings is crucial and that's
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a culture thing but i think assigning people like okay you now are responsible for this person
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and you even though what do you do about the things that nobody wants to do
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i think that there's always someone who is willing more willing to do something than the other person
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and having a market-based system for that works out really well if one kid really hates taking out
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the trash or cleaning or doing laundry or cooking or watching after a certain kid they'll trade
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responsibilities and i think well then the way you have it is you have tradable responsibilities that are
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divided equally yeah so every kid gets a shift on child feeding every kid gets a shift on trash takeout
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and then they can trade individual responsibilities yeah that's one way that i would find that that's
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not market-based exactly that's still everybody is equally distributed responsibilities yeah but then
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people are doing what they have more of an aptitude for i feel like there has to be there's an opt-in
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element to that where yeah and the way that you can handle that if you allow the trading of
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responsibilities you can have for the responsibilities people don't like i will do
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one nighttime feeding in exchange for these five other responsibilities exactly and that's how it
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works with most task trading like that if you help me get an a on this test i will like a biology test i
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will do your math homework for the next five weeks or all two it's it's all about value and i do think
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that giving people that is really important plus it teaches people how to negotiate and don't you want
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children who know how to negotiate yes but i want to make sure that we do not create a culture where
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you say something like feeding young children is off the table because you can't do it safely a
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teenager should be able to do that safely oh no yeah yeah but overnight care for an infant
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i think for teens and for kids sleep is really important really freaking important and i don't
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believe in compromising but it's not as important as food is for babies i hear you but parents can get
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their shit together and take care of their own things you are just such a terminator simone you are
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so hard working that you couldn't even imagine not handling everything yourself which i really
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appreciate many of the stories that i have heard of kids who really resented their parentification and
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yes they were brainwashed into the woke mind virus or whatever but still the most common complaints
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are oh then got to this point where my mom just got so sick and tired during each pregnancy that then
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everything fell to me a lot of it like it comes down to not i was given responsibility that i resent
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it was that my parents failed at being parents and i think that i resent the laziness of my parents
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and i think exactly that you can't have a system of parentification and i think this is a really
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important point if the kids don't see the parents going above and beyond this can't be like the
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uncle in a series of unfortunate events on the back flip it we'll take it in the dining room at
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eight o'clock and we'll expect absolute silence but we've never made dinner before it's already
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seven thirty eight o'clock dinner is served pasta putinesca where's the roast beef roast beef
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where you have some parent who's just go do this go do that and they're not doing anything themselves
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the parent needs to be doing double what indian indian individual kid is doing a triple
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you know huge like many times over and if the parent isn't delivering in that way
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then there's no merit to that system no i agree with that and i think that and i can definitely see
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this like accidentally assigning to parents it was parentification what they actually mean is i just
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didn't respect my parent because they didn't put in the work of other people and especially with
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stay-at-home moms i can see a lot of people i know the number of stay-at-home moms who also have like
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staff working in the house who are also relying on their kids for child care which i think is a
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totally different system than the one that we implement and i should clarify for people because a lot
00:26:06.040
of people misunderstand our stance on at least our cultural stance i believe that diversity of
00:26:11.020
culture should try different things but they're like what's it do you promote daycare and it's no
00:26:14.980
we don't really promote daycare either we promote working from home in an environment where you can
00:26:20.800
either through sharing with neighbors or through different types of trades find ways to take care
00:26:25.880
of your kids within a cultural ecosystem of your family but both parents should always be working
00:26:32.520
because it is just i don't think economically feasible to elevate systems where one parent isn't
00:26:37.920
working in today's economy and so if you're going to be any sort of a like this is how you make
00:26:42.740
things work saying that's how you make things work is just comical for the majority of people
00:26:48.380
yeah i agree uh so yeah the role of actual biological parents is underrated in parentification
00:26:56.640
and i think that you're underestimating the world of child labor we need to send our kids to the
00:27:02.800
mines no i agree i agree that giving kids responsibility is crucial there's that famous
00:27:09.260
meme that minecraft shows that children crave the mines they crave to return to the mines they want
00:27:14.600
to return let them let them back yeah i mean i think that also like many kids enjoy it and they want
00:27:21.180
they want to take care of especially girls young girls really like taking care of other babies you can
00:27:27.560
see this in other cultures too where it's like just common practice for within a tribe for a young
00:27:33.060
girl to just carry around whatever new baby there is all day while the mother goes back to working or
00:27:37.800
doing whatever and they don't mind it they like it it gives them something to do so yeah i'm for it and
00:27:42.820
i'm not for letting anyone shirk responsibility however aptitude and optionality need to be a part of
00:27:50.380
this forcing anyone into especially consider our kids how anti-authoritarian our kids are there's no
00:27:56.480
way they would accept a system where someone's just you have to do this no compromising you know
00:28:01.660
what i mean yes but you want to build a system where they're not doing it because they're being told
00:28:06.680
or because of threats but because you've built a sense of moral responsibility in them
00:28:10.480
that's right anyway i love you we love you guys and we're so happy to be introducing you to
00:28:18.540
industry america's collins or indy if you want to hold her up for the camera uh shoot it anyway
00:28:24.760
i'm excited to have another kid and i'm excited to start working on more soon