Parentification of adult children of divorce: A multidimensional analysis

The goal of this study was to compare the responses of late adolescent and young adult children of divorce and nondivorce on a neu multidimensional me asure of parentification assessing the extent and fairness of pasty and pre sent caregiving in one's family. of origin. Three-hundred-and-eighty-two in dividuals participated. item analyses and internal consistencies of the dif ferent parentification scales M ere initially conducted on one-half of the sample and cross-validated on the other half The scores of European and Afr ican American participants from the validation sample whose parents either divorced before middle adolescence (N = 35) or never divorced (N = 68) were then compared. The divorced group reported providing more emotional and in strumental caregiving and experiencing more unfairness in their families of origin than did the nondivorced group, although the effect for emotional c aregiving was moderated bp temporal perspective. Evidence that problematic forms of parentification in children of divorce continue into late adolesce nce and young adulthood has implications for models of understanding and he lping these children and their families.