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 [00:03:00] kids. Average. So that means for every American who didn't get married or had zero kids, there was another American having over 14 kids.

Okay? That means for every American who had four kids, The measly, tiny number of four kids, oh shame to that barren spinstress, which we only recently got to a few days ago That meant that there was another family that was having 10 kids.

These were families, the average American family, where the kids were relied upon in part to help with child rearing. And we should note how much this was stalled in a cultural context. So I read the diary from one of my ancestors in a previous episode. It's the episode titled something like kids used to like their parents.

And it was, it's a great episode, by the [00:04:00] way, I strongly suggest you check it out. It's one of those episodes where it ended up getting rev shared and I was like, I don't even care. Too good. But great episode. But this previous episode in the diaries, something that was very interesting, is it was seen as totally normal and admirable for the older siblings in a family.

To give up their potentiality in life to expand the potentiality of the younger siblings. So in this family, what happened is the, you could go work in the local lumber mill and make good money, but you didn't have any chance of upward social mobility. So the older siblings in the family the two oldest brothers went to work in the lumber mill and then use the money that they made in the lumber bill to make sure that their younger siblings could get a good education.

And today, this would be seen of as horrifying. How could that happen? In the frontier times, it's not like the parents had any money. They were barely scraping by as They had a in the [00:05:00] story, they had some pigs, and they had a spin wheel for making dresses. And that was it.

Like a one room house and an outhouse. That was what they owned, right? You didn't have anything else. And I think that in a historic context, we just forget that because we compare ourselves only to our parents generation, how hard things were, we also need to talk about the psychological benefits of parentification.

But before we do that, Simone, I'd love it if you had any thoughts on what I've gone over so far.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You're basically just saying this is a practical reality in a high fertility culture, which I think is a really important foundation for this. Because most people, when they're looking at parenatalism going forward, would never think parentification would or could be a part of that.

And a lot of their priors are based on, okay how do we raise a kid the way that we raise kids now, which is unsustainable, inherently. There has to be parentification.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It's interesting. We have a friend who's [00:06:00] from a very high fertility Mormon family and who has deconverted and who's actually incredibly successful.

It's remarkable to me that she has any complaints about her child. I always am like people are like we're your parents. Good. And I go, I don't know, I'm successful and happy with my life. So they must've been they're like what about all the horrible things? I was like it turns out that those must've been in my best interest.

Or, I judge the quality of a parent, not by a child's self description of them, but by how well the child did as an adult. I'm like then your childhood clearly provided you with some utility. Which is, I'm very much a functionalist. People always make fun of us for that.

But. She complained. She's look at my family had a, I had eight siblings and I was the oldest and I always ended up having to take care of them. And it really robbed me of my childhood. And I was like, okay, so which of your siblings would you prefer not to? And she's that's like apple and oranges and it's no it's not the you not getting to do whatever you wanted in your childhood, not getting to live the childhood you saw portrayed in media that [00:07:00] promoted unsustainable family practices.

Not having that childhood is what allowed those other individuals to exist. It's if somebody came and they're like I really hate these guardrails on roads. They block my view as I'm driving. And it would just be somewhat more scenic if we could go to a time when they didn't exist.

I'm like they save X many lives per year. And they're like that's really apples and oranges. And it's no, it's really not apples and oranges. This is a consequence, you not having the view you want of those things existing, and they exist in order to save lives, so that more humans can live fulfilling lives.

And you don't want to internalize that you are the type of person who would deny another human being A chance at life just for your convenience, but you are that type of person. And I think that's the fundamental thing. And so the question is [00:08:00] how did these memes spread in our society? That it is bad to expect responsibility from children.

And I think what they really stem from is the belief that it's bad To expect responsibility from anyone, and then especially children, any time when responsibility was forced on them, as I pointed out, the demonification of Starship Troopers, why is Starship Troopers demonized as fascist.

It is a world that presumably has everything progressive said that they want. It is a world where minorities can enter the highest levels of position within society. It is a world with total gender equality. It is a world with total ethnic equality. It is a world without inter human wars. It is a world of peace.

What's the bad thing? And it's ah, you let it flip. You let slip what you really wanted, which was a world without responsibility. What is bad about that world is that to vote, you have to sacrifice, either by participating in the military or [00:09:00] through civil some form of civil work, which is openness made clear in the book and it's not denied in the movie.

So we have to assume that this is true in the movie universe as well. That, there is always a way to earn the right to become a citizen, even if you are disabled or mentally disabled or something like that, they create something for you, the key is just that you have to sacrifice. Something that is given without sacrifice has no value, is in the lines of the movie, and I think it's true.

This is the way people see things, given without sacrifice. And in the Discord server for, they were sharing a post on Reddit recently, which was like, our private Discord server. Yeah, our podcast discord server, I'll include a link in the notes. It was about how everybody deserves housing.

Everybody deserves an HVAC. Everybody deserves internet. Everybody deserves electricity. And it's even if they don't work, regardless of employment, it said. And it's what are you actually saying when you say that? You're saying, That people who are not producing anything deserve to have people forced to produce [00:10:00] for them.

That HVAC needs to be serviced, built. Same with that house. Same with the electricity. Those people are essentially working as slaves for the individuals who are doing this. They are, being forced to work without remuneration. And they're like we'll force other people to remunerate them.

That doesn't solve the problem that now you have turned those other people into essentially your wage slaves.

Simone Collins: But let's bring this back to prioritification because I think it's a really important issue. And I think an important thing to point to, which we've pointed to in many other podcasts, but still it bears repeating is that removing responsibility from people does not impart mental health good mental health.

It does not impart fitness. It does not impart an edge in society. It does not compart. in part competitiveness. So when you remove responsibility from someone, you are pretty much just hurting them. But I also want to draw a line here because when I see people commenting on parentification sometimes they do [00:11:00] so with some merit.

And I think we do have to draw the line of where we think parentification goes too far. There, There was mention, I think the Duggars at one point, they had something called the buddy system, which I think is great. Where you're responsible for your immediately younger sibling or a younger sibling, something like that, where siblings paired up and took care of each other.

And they also just generally had older siblings, take care of younger siblings. One thing that they did where I don't think it was imparting the good kind of responsibility was where they gave people, Children tasks that were above and beyond what they could even do for themselves. And I do agree with many people who are critics of parentification, that minors.

are still developing. They're still figuring out their own Define a

Malcolm Collins: task, because I don't think that you're actually criticizing parentification. I think you're criticizing basic safety, which is to say

Simone Collins: I think a lot of traditional families might scoff at that. The one thing that I would draw the line at, which I think the Duggars did is they had some of their children take [00:12:00] care of infants overnight when they had overnight feeding needs and they were really small.

And when you're a teen, you need a lot of sleep. When you're a teen, you don't necessarily know how to do like advanced infant care. It can get really complicated. And you might wait. This is when they were teens.

Malcolm Collins: That's fine.

Simone Collins: I think it might've been when they were young, the kids

Malcolm Collins: teenagers used to have infants.

Simone Collins: That's true. But I know I would still draw the line at that. I think that there is, there's a line you need to draw when it comes to things like health safety, knowing like child CPR, like There's a lot of stuff that's, it's too much to put on

Malcolm Collins: the kid. Really? Yeah, if it was a, if it was like an eight year old doing that's one thing, okay?

If it's a teenager doing that, no, they can safely feed a kid at night. And asking that your family takes on some role. Responsibility for their new siblings specific jobs like that, I think is fine. Depending on how you structure their daily routine. Now, it might be less [00:13:00] fine. If you have them going to a public school or something like that, where they're expected to, manage their time really strictly, but if you have a family like ours where by the time, We were talking this morning and kids in their teens. We're going to be much more focused on helping them set up a company um then going to school and a company that they run and have ownership of so I wouldn't be as worried.

About that and I think that This is just one of those things where you haven't gotten to the stage yet where our kids are old enough to take on those sorts of responsibilities or are asking to take on those sorts of responsibilities. No,

Simone Collins: yeah, so there's a key part of this, which also involves consent.

So one, I think that if your child does not have certain self care things together, you cannot expect them to do a good job or be able to take on the self care of another child. This is where I disagree pretty strongly

Malcolm Collins: with you. I think that having an individual, like if you want an individual to have their own self care together, the single worst thing you can do to somebody who is struggling with self care is remove responsibilities.

The [00:14:00] single worst thing you can do to improve an individual's own self care is increase the number of responsibilities they have.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but I wouldn't say by putting that On someone else, I wouldn't subject another child to the care routine of someone who doesn't have their own care routine together.

I just wouldn't. I also think that consent is really important with this, that kids should not be given, they shouldn't be forced into parentification without having some kind of enthusiasm for it. Either, be that because they get more privileges, but it's wrong.

Malcolm Collins: I encourage you to really think about what you're saying.

Why do you have these feelings? Do you think it is not in the best interest of the kid? Because, clearly it is. You've seen the research, right? But first, we should know with additional kids, just so people know. There's this belief that if you have a ton of kids You're really hurting the prospects of every kid you do have, which is just not true unless you're in South Korea, which is an episode on,

but in the United States kids actually tend to do a bit better mental health wise and outcomes wise, I think up to [00:15:00] about sibling number two or three.

And then they begin to do worse, but not by a huge margin.

So, for example, if I look at the study associations in birth or whatever, with mental health problems, self-esteem reliance and happiness among children.

I can see that only children to have significantly more total difficulty scores. , they have more problems with emotional symptoms. They have more hyperactivity slash attention deficit problems. They have more problems with their peer relationships and they have less pro-social behavior. They also have a lower resilience.

Malcolm Collins: Teaching your kids to take on roles that they have a responsibility to take on roles within the family unit for, those who are defenseless or need care more, I think is solely a one moral good. You are teaching them good morals. It is their responsibility within their cultural ecosystem to care for those that have less than them.

Okay. This is, all family units, as we said, are communist [00:16:00] systems. A well structured family unit is from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs and that is what a family is, and an infant needs more, and the teenager can produce more, you are teaching a good value system interculturally there, one, two, giving an individual additional task, and teaching them that sometimes, They just have to handle something for the greater good of their cultural unit is really one psychologically valuable and teaches them good morals.

It reminds me when we started running our company and something that I was raised believing just like intuitively because it was the way my house was structured is if you saw a mess, it doesn't matter who made the mess. It is your responsibility to clean it up. If there was spilled milk or something like that, I was never allowed to say, but my brothers spilled it.

It's, but why didn't you clean it up? You knew that would cause damage if it stayed there, you knew it was a danger to others [00:17:00] if it stayed there, why didn't you handle it? I agree with that

Simone Collins: philosophy.

Malcolm Collins: I just think

Simone Collins: that there's nuance to this, and when the health and safety of other people are involved.

I think it's really important that when you give adversity to someone and responsibility to someone that there is something of when possible, an opt in element of this you're stepping up for it and that can mean because you're getting additional privileges I can mean, because when you do that, good things happen.

You get additional resources. You get. Additional power or privilege or something that makes your life also better.

Malcolm Collins: But I do think I don't know if I agree with this. I do not think capitalist system should be so capitalist system exists in the world, outside of the family. When you start rewarding things inside the family, every positive action has a reward.

I think that creates a really negative psychological framing for your kids.

Simone Collins: I agree. I think being mercenary is the wrong way to go. And I, what you can see it from the Duggar family, huh? Have I changed your [00:18:00] mind? No. You're not changing my mind. I just think this is a lot more nuanced than you think it is.

Like with the Duggar family, where the boy's taking care of their little siblings, not really.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, so it was done in a gendered

Simone Collins: Duggar's, Biography. She writes about the fact that she enjoyed it. Like it was something that she appreciated. Oh yeah. I love that the people who read it, like the progressives were like, she was brainwashed.

Yeah. They refused to believe that it was, a thing that she could have possibly appreciated. But there, there are elements of aptitude. There are elements of capability. There are elements of interest, even in families that don't give people the choice and to act as though you're going to foist upon.

People responsibilities. So they're not willing to take on when there are other helpless people involved, I think is a deeply early role

Malcolm Collins: as parents. If our kids are not willing or eager to, from a moral standpoint, to take on the responsibility. Yeah, but

Simone Collins: There are a variety of responsibilities that kids can choose to take on to do their part in the house. Even at, without [00:19:00] remuneration, in a totally communist system where they can shine. And I think that giving people that at least market based communism where everyone steps in to contribute what they're best at contributing is really important.

Maybe one kid is going to get really good at fixing things for other people. Or resolving disputes, one is going to be incredibly into. Younger child care or organizing events. But that is still the communist system from each according to their abilities. But I know, but what you're implying is just foisting upon people responsibilities that are not that willing to give to a teenage boy carefree that has no interest in it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I am suggesting that there are certain responsibilities that nobody wants to deal with you when you create a system or a moral framework for kids where they believe that they don't have to do something because they don't like doing it, you are creating a ball that rolls down a hill, which ends in modern progressivism.

You cannot I [00:20:00] understand you're like I want to make a compromise here, or I want to make a compromise here. And I am okay with making compromise when the safety of another kid is at stake. Okay, when it's something like an infant or something like that, and you do not think the infant will be safe.

Fine. But I am not okay with saying that I am making this compromise because the kid doesn't want to do it. The kid should understand that they are seen as a failure in the eyes of the family. for not being willing to undertake this responsibility themselves. And that when you're building a moral framework that says, and this is why, this is how all of these systems when they're trying to like, why does the urban monoculture, why does the virus teach people about parentification in this way?

Why does it use this idea of parentification? Because it is a good way to drive a wedge between an individual and their birth culture and their parents. Because all cults, that is the core goal. Even if it was obviously in their best interest, they need to say you were brainwashed. You were gaslit.

Even when [00:21:00] they've left their family. Even when they have an antagonism to their family. And they're like yeah, but this thing wasn't bad for me. And they're like no. You only think that because gaslighting these thoughts is really important to cults in terms of breaking people out of family and traditional cycles.

And I think yeah, I want to know, do you really believe what you're saying? That teaching a kid that they shouldn't have to do something that just needs to be done for like society. If somebody says I didn't want to clean up the milk, therefore I don't have to. Do you not see the problem in that?

No, you know that's not

Simone Collins: true with the way that I parent. You know that I draw lines where I'm like, if you want this, you have to do this other thing first. Hold on for a second.

That said, when it comes to the care of other people, I think it's really important for there to be an opt in factor. And that you cannot put someone who is openly unwilling over, in the care of someone else. Now, I do think raising families with a responsibility where everyone feels like their personal responsibility for the safety and well being of their [00:22:00] siblings is crucial.

And that's a culture thing. But I think assigning people like, okay, you now are responsible for this person and You, even though I know, but what do you do about the things that nobody wants to do? I think that there's always someone who is willing, more willing to do something than the other person. And having a market based system for that works out really well.

If one kid really hates taking out the trash or cleaning or doing laundry or cooking or watching after a certain kid. They'll trade responsibilities. And

Malcolm Collins: I think the way you have it is if you have tradable responsibilities that are divided equally. Yeah. So every kid gets a shift on, child feeding, every kid gets a shift on trash takeout, and then they can trade individual responsibilities.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's

Malcolm Collins: one way

Simone Collins: that I

Malcolm Collins: would find that market based. Exactly. That's still, everybody gets equally distributed responsibilities.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But then, people are doing what they have more of an aptitude for. I feel like there has to be, there's an opt in element to that, where,

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And the way that you can handle that is if you [00:23:00] allow the trading of responsibilities you can have for the responsibilities people don't like I will do one nighttime feeding in exchange for these five other responsibilities.

Exactly. Because I hate this so much. And

Simone Collins: that's how it works with most task trading like that. If you help me, get an A on this test, I will. Like a biology test. I will do your math homework for the next five weeks or all two to, it's all about value.

And I do think that giving people that is really important. Plus it teaches people how to negotiate and don't you want children who know how to negotiate?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. But I want to make sure that we do not create a culture where you say something like feeding young children is off the table because.

You can't do it safely. A teenager should be able to do that safely.

Simone Collins: Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah, but overnight care for an infant. I think for teens and for kids, sleep is really important. Really freaking important. And I don't believe in compromising that. But it's not as important as food is for babies.

I hear you, but parents can get [00:24:00] their shit together and take care of

Malcolm Collins: their own babies.

Industry Collins: You

Malcolm Collins: are just such a terminator, Simone. You are so hardworking that you couldn't even imagine not handling everything yourself, which I really appreciate. Many

Simone Collins: of the stories that I have heard of kids who really resented their parentification and yes, they were, brainwashed into the mind virus or whatever.

But still the most common complaints are, Oh, then, got to this point where my mom just got so sick and tired during each pregnancy that then everything fell to me. A lot of it, like it comes down to not, I was given responsibility that I resent. It was that my parents failed at being parents and I think the laziness of my parents and I think that you can't have a system of parentification.

And I think this is a really important point. If the kids don't see the parents going above and beyond, this can't be like the uncle in a series of unfortunate

events,

We'll take it in the dining room at [00:25:00] eight o'clock. And we'll expect absolute silence but we've never made dinner before. It's already seven thirty. Eight

Dinner is served. Pasta puttanesca. Where's the roast beef? Roast beef? But you didn't tell us you wanted roast beef.

Simone Collins: Where you have some parent who's just go do this, go do that. And they're not doing anything themselves. The parent needs to be doing double.

What indian individual kid is during a triple huge like many times over and if the parent isn't delivering in that way then there's no merit to that system.

Malcolm Collins: No, I agree with that. And I think that and I can definitely see this like accidentally assigning to parents it was parentification.

What they actually mean is I just didn't respect my parent because they didn't put in the work of other people. And especially with stay at home moms, I can see a lot of people, I know the number of stay at home moms who also have like staff working in the house who are also relying on [00:26:00] their kids for childcare, which I think is a totally different system than the one that we implement.

And I should clarify for people because a lot of people misunderstand our stance on at least our cultural stance. I believe that diversity of culture should try different things. But they're like, what's it, do you promote daycare? And it's no, we don't really promote daycare either. We promote working from home in an environment where you can either through sharing with neighbors or through different types of trades Find ways to take care of your kids within a cultural ecosystem of your family.

But both parents should always be working because it is just I don't think economically feasible to elevate systems where one parent isn't working in today's economy. And so if you're going to be any sort of uh, like this is how you make things work saying that's how you make things work is just comical, you for the majority of people.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I agree. So yeah the role of actual biological parents is underrated in parentification. And I

Malcolm Collins: think that you're underestimating the role of [00:27:00] child labor. We need to send our kids to the mines.

Simone Collins: No, I agree. I agree that giving kids

Malcolm Collins: responsibility is crucial. There's that famous meme that Minecraft shows that children crave the mines.

They crave to return to the mines.

Simone Collins: They want to return, let them back. But yeah, I think that also like many kids enjoy it and they want the, they want to take care of, especially girls. Young girls really like taking care of other babies. You can see this in other cultures too. Where it's like just common practice for within a tribe for a young girl to just carry around whatever new baby there is all day while the mother goes back to working or doing whatever and they don't mind it.

They like it, it gives them something to do. So yeah I'm for it and I'm not for letting anyone shirk responsibility. However, aptitude and optionality. Need to be a part of this forcing anyone to, especially consider our kids, how anti authoritarian our kids are. There's no way they would accept a system where someone's just you have to do this, [00:28:00] no compromising.

Malcolm Collins: You know what I mean? Yes, but you want to build a system where they're not doing it because they're being told, or because of threats, but because you've built a sense of moral responsibility in them.

Industry Collins: That's right.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I love you,

Anyway, we love you guys and we're so happy to be introducing you to Industry America's Collins, or Indy. If you want to hold her up for the camera, uh, she's a anyway, I'm excited to have another kid and I'm excited to start working on more soon. Love you.