to parentify

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Fri Apr 15 16:31:02 UTC 2011


Not in OED.

A child psychologist on CNN explains that a little boy "was parentified at
an early age."

About 1,000 GB results.  Not the earliest:

1975  Max Sugar _The Adolescent in Group and Family Therapy_ (N.Y.:
Brunner-Mazel, 1975) 169 [GB: not verified]: Boszormenyi-Nagy (1972) has
described how the therapist is often "parentified" by parents who, until
then, tended to parentify their children.

Sugar's sense seems to be "to regard or act toward as toward a parent."
Today's exx. seems to mean "to be assigned a care-giving role like that of a
parent."

JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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