2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Author: Maria Mukhina, psychologist, systems therapist
Violations of the hierarchy in the family system
Hierarchy is one of the parameters of the family system, designed to establish order, determine belonging, authority, power in the family and the degree of influence of one family member on others.
One of the provisions of the hierarchy is that in the family, parents are responsible for the children and have all the power in the nuclear family.
Triangulation is an emotional process between two people that tends to involve a third person in a relationship. In a disrupted family, where internal boundaries are blurred, parents can sometimes make children their emotional partners. This is an inverted hierarchy, in which the status of the child in the family is equal to that of the parent.
Example: "Daughter-friend". Mom communicates with her daughter on an equal footing, as partners, as friends, which leads to psychological discomfort in the child, to a mixing of roles, to a weakening of the child's strength.
Normally, the child's strength should be directed to society, used to communicate with peers, friends and siblings (brothers, sisters).
In the case when a mother begins to share with her daughter what a bad relationship she has with her father, how they conflict, shares her suspicions about her father's betrayal, confusion begins in the child's soul.
When a mother becomes a friend to her daughter, in the eyes of her daughter, this reduces her authority and, as a result, the daughter involuntarily emotionally joins her father. The child does not want to hear such things, it is difficult for him to listen to negative things about one of the parents. As a result, the daughter tries to distance herself from her mother. The same happens in the case of an overly trusting, companionable relationship of one of the parents with the son.
Touching upon the topic of excessive frankness in communicating with children, one should immediately outline what children normally should not know.
Children should not know about personal intimate details and secrets of their parents. This primarily concerns sexual relations. Metaphorically, it sounds like this:
"The door of the children's matrimonial bedroom must be tightly locked."
Yes, children know that there is this door, and that's it.
Also, children should not know about premarital affairs, relationships, and parental love. By telling her children about her premarital relationship, the mother takes away the strength of the father and turns the children against herself.
The same goes for the father, children should not be aware of his premarital relationship. If there was a marriage and the children asked about it, it makes sense to report only the fact of marriage and this should not be deeply recorded, so as not to cause anxiety in the children and their doubts about the stability of the parents' union.
Now let's return to the violations of the hierarchy in the family system.
The term parentification comes from the English word “parents”. This literally means that children functionally become parents to their own parents. This version of the inverted hierarchy often occurs in the case of alcoholism or drug addiction of one or both parents.
Example: If a father is chemically dependent and has a son in the family, then he often replaces the father's codependent mother. The father and mother in such a family are often infantile, so the child is forced to become the only adult and bear responsibility for the family, its existence and homeostasis. He makes decisions, he is responsible for the boundaries of the family, making them tough.
Hard boundaries in this case look something like this: no one should find out that the father is addicted, so no one should be called into the house, no one should share what is happening in the family with anyone. As a rule, such a child has no friends, he leads a closed "adult" life. This is an inverted hierarchy, in which the status of the child in the family is higher than that of the parent.
Another example of parentification: in the event of an early death of the mother, the daughter functionally replaces her and, as a result, ceases to be a daughter. She does a lot of female household chores from an early age, caring for and supporting her father. Having never fully become acquainted with the role of a daughter, growing up, she most often becomes a functional mother to her husband.
Breaking the hierarchy in the sibling subsystem
It occurs as a consequence of parentification, when an older child takes responsibility for the parental subsystem, he also takes responsibility for the child's subsystem (younger children).
Or another option: when only in the children's subsystem there is no hierarchy, there is no leader and follower, older and younger children are on an equal footing. This happens when one parent harshly, authoritarianly influences children, joining in a coalition with the child's subsystem and thereby weakening the other parent.
Example: A dad who spends a lot of time with his sons of different ages (sports, chess, fishing), without differentiating them into senior-junior, and at the same time mom is out of their class. In this case, the mother, feeling weakened, feels irritated at the father-sons coalition and seeks with whom to create her coalition, for example, with her parents or a psychotherapist.
It should be noted that along with dysfunctional coalitions uniting parent and child, there are also healthy options - these are horizontal coalitions, which include intra-family coalitions between spouses and between siblings.
Dear Parents!
- When you are “friends” with your children, when you complain to them about your adult life, when you demonstrate your inability to cope with your losses and defeats;
- When you mend the holes of your loneliness with a child's soul, when you force the child to cover your painful addictions;
- When, driven by your selfishness, you blame your child's ingratitude and demand a bribe for "sleepless nights" in the form of attention or sympathy - know that by doing so you are depriving your child not only of a parent, which you, violating the hierarchy, cannot be. You are depriving the child of his Life, because while the child is serving your adult needs and needs, he is not living his childhood (or already adult) life. Be aware of this.
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