Editor Nancy Chase defines parentified children as parents to their parents—those are the children who are compelled to fulfill the role of parent at the expense of their own developmentally appropriate needs and pursuits. With uncanny sensibilities, these children are attuned to their parents′ moods, wishes, vulnerabilities, and nuances. This volume is a comprehensive study of parentification in the family, covering both theoretical as well as clinical topics. Contributors have written chapters that are grouped into two sections: theory and research, and clinical and broader contextual perspectives. Part One of this book covers research related to parentification and gender, work addiction, families with a disabled or chronically ill child, and assessment for clinical or research practices. The chapters having a stronger clinical or contextual emphasis address varied interventions and theoretical orientations and posit parentification in cultural and ethnic contexts. Students, academics, and professionals in areas of family studies, social work, child abuse, developmental psychology, school psychology, and family therapy will find Burdened Children an excellent resource on this phenomenon.

This volume is a comprehensive study of parentification in the family—children who fulfill the role of parents to their own parents or to their siblings, almost always at the expense of their own development. The book is divided into two sections: theory and research and contextual perspectives.

Birth order has a powerful effect on children's emotional development, on their self-esteem, and on their sense of well-being. The youngest child, the firstborn, the middleborn, twins, and the only child all have specific birth order issues that, if not atted to early on, can impair their functioning and their interpersonal relations at home and at school, and can follow them into adulthood. Parental birth order, too, plays an important role, as do such other factors as gender and family size. To understand these birth order blues, the author, an expert in parent-child relationships, first raises parents' awareness of the impact of birth order upon children. She then shows how to identify their children's birth order problems, often disguised by behaviors such as underachievement or aggression, and suggests how they can resolve these issues and prevent negative behavioral patterns from developing.

What are the developmental effects on children who must fulfill the family role of parent? Editor Nancy D. Chase defines parentified children as children who are compelled to perform the role of parent at the expense of their own developmentally appropriate needs and pursuits. With uncanny sensibilities, these children are attuned to their parents moods, wishes, vulnerabilities, and nuances. This volume is a comprehensive study of parentification in the family, covering both theoretical as well as clinical topics by a group of distinguished contributors. Students, academics, and professionals in family studies, social work, child abuse, developmental psychology, school psychology, and family therapy will find Burdened Children an excellent resource on this phenomenon.

"Based on groundbreaking research that has the power to change the lives of countless children--and the adults who love them." --Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts. A book that offers hope and a pathway to success for parents, teachers, psychologists, and child development experts coping with difficult children. In Tom Boyce's extraordinary new book, he explores the "dandelion" child (hardy, resilient, healthy), able to survive and flourish under most circumstances, and the "orchid" child (sensitive, susceptible, fragile), who, given the right support, can thrive as much as, if not more than, other children. Boyce writes of his pathfinding research as a developmental pediatrician working with troubled children in child-development research for almost four decades, and explores his major discovery that reveals how genetic make-up and environment shape behavior. He writes that certain variant genes can increase a person's susceptibility to depression, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and antisocial, sociopathic, or violent behaviors. But rather than seeing this "risk" gene as a liability, Boyce, through his daring research, has recast the way we think of human frailty, and has shown that while these "bad" genes can create problems, they can also, in the right setting and the right environment, result in producing children who not only do better than before but far exceed their peers. Orchid children, Boyce makes clear, are not failed dandelions; they are a different category of child, with special sensitivities and strengths, and need to be nurtured and taught in special ways. And in The Orchid and the Dandelion, Boyce shows us how to understand these children for their unique sensibilities, their considerable challenges, their remarkable gifts.

Bioethics is the study of ethical issues arising out of advances in the life sciences and medicine. Historically, bioethics has been associated with issues in research ethics and clinical ethics as a result of research scandals such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and public debates about the definition of death, medical paternalism, health care rationing, and abortion. As biomedical technologies have advanced, challenging new questions have arisen for bioethics and new sub-disciplines such as neuroethics and public health ethics have entered the scene. This volume features ten original essays on five cutting-edge controversies in bioethics written by leading philosophers. I. Research Ethics: How Should We Justify Ancillary Care Duties? II. Clinical Ethics: Are Psychopaths Morally Accountable? III. Reproductive Ethics: Is There A Solution to the Non-Identity Problem? IV. Neuroethics: What is Addiction and Does It Excuse? V. Public Health Ethics: Is Luck Egalitarianism Implausibly Harsh? S. Matthew Liao and Collin O’Neil’s concise introduction to the essays in the volume, the annotated bibliographies and study questions for each controversy, and the supplemental guide to additional current controversies in bioethics give the reader a broad grasp of the different kinds of challenges in bioethics.

Parentification - the assumption of responsibility for the welfare of family members by children and adolescents - is increasing as a result of various forces both inside and outside of the family. Evidence suggests that pathological parentification of children has serious consequences for them, and for succeeding generations, as do other forms of maltreatment.; This work is an exploration of the forces at work in families with parentified children - and the treatment strategies that hold the promise of interrupting a cycle of destructive behaviour.; The author begins by guiding the reader from conceptualization to possible causes and manifestations of parentification, facilitating a clear understanding of how and why this scenario is common. The second part of the book builds on this foundation to introduce methods of assesment, treatment, and prevention. This part of the text includes insights into the professional, ethical and personal challenges faced by therapists who themselves have a history of pathological parentification.

Gain a better understanding of parent-child boundaries and the mechanisms for their dissolution The breakdown of appropriate generational boundaries between parent and child can threaten the child’s psychological development. Implications of Parent-Child Boundary Dissolution for Developmental Psychopathology: Who Is the Parent and Who Is the Child? explores this covert and oftentimes ignored form of emotional abuse, discussing in detail the various ways it can manifest. This revealing text comprehensively examines how the burden of meeting the emotional needs of the parent interferes with the child’s healthy development. The boundary dissolution patterns of role reversal, enmeshment, psychological control, and triangulation are closely examined with an eye toward providing appropriate strategies for dealing with the problem. Implications of Parent-Child Boundary Dissolution for Developmental Psychopathology is separated into four sections to focus extensively on every aspect of the problem. The first section discusses definitions, concepts, and methodological concerns of the phenomena, including a consideration of the child’s developmental responses to boundary dissolution. The second section explores the empirical research concerning boundary dissolution within the family system, and includes intriguing information on the actual mechanism that passes the pattern of role reversal on to the following generation. The next section closely examines boundary violations within high-risk families, with a focus on those undergoing divorce. The final section concentrates on cultural contexts of boundary dissolution and includes a look at the perception of familial responsibility and its effects on Bosnian youths. This one-of-a-kind resource is extensively referenced, and provides a solid foundation to inspire a new generation of theory, research, and clinical work. Implications of Parent-Child Boundary Dissolution for Developmental Psychopathology examines: a multidimensional model of boundary dissolutionwith supporting research a comprehensive review of published literature in the areas of attachment theory, developmental capacities of the infant, child-rearing practices, and parental beliefs the theoretical background supporting the construct of boundary dissolution the boundary disturbance patterns of enmeshment and control the relationships between interparental conflict, parental responses to children’s emotions, and representations of role reversal and vulnerability in children’s family drawings the ’spill over’ effect of marital conflict role reversal in high-risk families children’s rejection of one parent over another in custody disputes post-war adjustment of Bosnian adolescents psychological control in individualist and collectivist groups representations of parents and children in twentieth century American novels Implications of Parent-Child Boundary Dissolution for Developmental Psychopathology is crucial reading for researchers and clinicians who deal with families and psychopathology and is of particular interest to graduate students in clinical child psychology, child and family studies, social work, and developmental psychology.