What Parental Codependency Looks Like and How It Damages Family Relationships

No family is perfect, though some families try their best to be seen that way. Many of the families who seem healthy and happy on the outside secretly struggle with toxic dynamics caused by parental codependency.

Parents don’t always know when they have fostered codependency with their children, and few families with these issues would be willing to take accountability and make changes. It is possible to heal an unhealthy family dynamic, though, and it’s never too late.

What Parental Codependency Looks Like

Many families normalize certain behaviors to the point that they don’t feel strange or negative. It is only years later, as children start growing up and developing their own identities and values, that the cracks begin to show. Codependency is an unhealthy relationship dynamic that requires one party to stifle their emotions and preferences so that they can remain in the relationship and avoid abandonment.

In the context of parental codependency, parents become overly reliant on their kids to give them a sense of identity, purpose, and fulfillment of their emotional needs. This leads to a host of unhealthy behaviors like excessive strictness, toxic boundaries, fear of abandonment, and a lot of manipulation and guilt-tripping. It may take years or decades for children to realize that they’ve been part of a codependent relationship with one or both parents and sometimes siblings.

When they do recognize the issue, it can be difficult to confront the situation because most codependent parents struggle with direct communication. Many become defensive when they feel as if they are being accused of certain behaviors. They would rather turn the conversation back on their child than take responsibility for their actions.

You might have grown up in a codependent family if your parents did any of the following things or raised you with these ideas:

Don’t rock the boat. Hear no evil, speak no evil

Parental codependency often places the weight of peace and harmony on their children’s ability to stay silent. It’s not just a case of ‘children should be seen and not heard’; it’s the expectation that if the children notice something problematic, they are expected to be silent on the topic.

In most households with codependent parents, confrontation or truth-telling of any kind is not encouraged. Children are frequently punished and disciplined for speaking out, especially on topics that call out their parents’ toxic behavior.

It’s not okay to talk about problems

Codependent parents love to play happy family and pretend that nothing is wrong, even while things fall apart. This commitment to pretense stems from the desire for others to see them as stable, loving, and thriving. Unfortunately, it comes with the price of having to repress and ignore problems that will not be resolved by pretending they don’t exist. Some issues fester and become toxic as they lie beneath the cover of a fake, perfect family.

Direct communication seldom happens

Parental codependency often uses a type of communication called triangulation. This is where one person, often the favorite sibling or one of the parents, acts as a messenger to convey things. Direct communication might lead to open dialogue or people expressing their honest feelings. This would threaten the delicate balance of a codependent household.

Instead, they choose to be as indirect as possible, communicating what they consider unacceptable emotions and opinions via a messenger. Of course, this often leads to more upsets and little resolution, but things will soon be ignored and repressed once again.

Individuality is seen as being problematic

By nature, most children will happily follow rules, guidelines, and corrections. They thrive when they have structure and when they know what is clearly expected of them. However, when children turn into teens, they often begin pushing back on these boundaries and questioning things.

Uniqueness and individuality are a healthy part of growth for anyone, but a threat to parental codependency. They expect conformity to their rules and are quick to punish any deviation or perceived rebellion, much in the way a dictator would.

There is no space or freedom to express your feelings and opinions

In a codependent household, emotions are categorized as acceptable and not acceptable, and only the ones deemed acceptable may be expressed. Opinions, values, and preferences are only allowed to be expressed if they match the parents’ own.

Once a child grows up and learns to use their critical thinking, many codependent parents begin to be more overtly manipulative of the children they consider to be wayward. They realize that they can no longer control their children’s opinions or emotions except by more subtle means. This often means that they play the victim to withhold approval and affection until they find compliance.

Codependent parents expect you to enjoy the things that they do

It’s natural for families to do things together and to have common interests. However, codependent parents actively ignore their children’s preferences and interests if they do not align with their own. In their thinking, a vital bond would be lost if their children were to pursue interests that don’t align with the family’s pastimes.

This becomes more of an issue as children become teenagers. Independence and individuality are deeply important to teens, and the primary way they begin to establish their adult identities. Far from recognizing this and giving the teens space to develop, parental codependency will try to shorten the leash on the children as they grow.

Do as I say, not as I do

Unsurprisingly, codependent parents are hypocritical. They expect their family members to play by all the rules, even the ones that they frequently break themselves. When they are caught on the wrong side of their own law, they expect to be met by grace and leniency, even when they are slow to extend those same kindnesses to their children. One of the reasons most codependent parents avoid direct communication is that they want to avoid accountability and being called a hypocrite.

Why These Toxic Behaviors Are Codependent

There are a lot of complex tactics at play in family dynamics like these. Parental codependency is almost always hidden under attitudes that appear entirely normal, traditional, or even desirable. From the outside, it might seem like the family unit is healthy, if not a little strict. This is precisely the image that codependent parents wish to convey.

The mindset of a codependent family sees every action of the children as a reflection or extension of the parents’ reputation, for good or bad. This is why there is constant pressure on the children to perform, behave, and achieve.

In their first decade of life, children will naturally comply and obey their parents, without a frame of reference for how healthy their family is. The children are rewarded for their obedience and adherence to the rules. The children uphold the parents’ reputation, finding acceptance, approval, attention, and affection as long as they obey.

Dynamics like these are as toxic as they are fragile. Coexistence and happiness rest entirely on the children’s compliance and the parents’ ability to maintain the rule of law. When real issues arise, calling for accountability and grace, as they do in any family, parental codependency often ensures that the family skirts around the issue without addressing or resolving it.

Many codependent families experience rifts that last for decades only because no family member wants to be humble and take responsibility for their role in the divide.

Making Right

With a lot of self-work and reflection, it is possible to correct and heal a family affected by parental codependence. You will have to recognize the patterns of toxic behavior, establish individuality and independence for each family member, and enforce some strict boundaries between parents and children.

These changes are often hard work. Every family like this would benefit from therapy and counselling. You may never reach perfection as a family, but you may find that simply being healthy is the best option.

If you would like to find out about options for counseling, please feel free to browse our online counselor directory. We hope to help you find someone who fits your needs as an individual or family. Contact us whenever you are ready.