This week I am pleased to share a post by clinical psychologist and former Navy psychologist Lisa Stinson PhD. Lisa has written a book exploring how to manage the difficult choice of whether to care for an ageing parent who did you harm.
If you’d like to share your experience or expertise on this Substack, then leave a comment and I’ll get in touch with you.
I also now have a policy on the use of AI and citations in guest articles.
If you grew up in a family where love was conditional, where one sibling could do no wrong and another could do nothing right, you already know that those roles didn’t end when you left home. They followed you. They showed up in your relationships, your workplaces, your nervous system. And if your parent is aging, you may be discovering that they show up most powerfully in the caregiving years.
This is what I want to talk about today.
In family systems theory (the branch of psychology that looks at families as emotional units, not just collections of individuals) the roles that form in dysfunctional families are not personality types. They are functions. They exist to serve the family system, and specifically to protect the psychological equilibrium of the parent at the centre of it (Bowen, 1978; Minuchin, 1974). The golden child, the scapegoat, the invisible child: these are not descriptions of who you are. They are descriptions of what the family needed you to be. And there is a profound difference between those two things.
Let me describe each one, because if you grew up in one of these families, you may recognize yourself immediately, you may recognize a sibling, or both.
The golden child was the one who could do no wrong. You may have been the one whose accomplishments were announced at the dinner table, whose mistakes were quietly forgiven, whose presence seemed to make the parent visibly relax. From the outside, this looks like a gift. From the inside, it is a cage. The golden child learns that love is conditional on performance; that they are valued not for who they are, but for what they reflect back to the parent (McBride, 2008; Miller, 1981).
The scapegoat was the one who could do nothing right. You may have been the one whose mistakes were catalogued and remembered, whose emotional responses were labeled “too much” or “too sensitive,” who was blamed (explicitly or implicitly) for the family’s unhappiness. The scapegoat becomes the container for everything the parent cannot accept in themselves: the shame, the inadequacy, the rage (Forward, 1989; Miller, 1981). None of that belongs to the child. But the child carries it anyway, often for decades, often long after they’ve left the house where it was first placed on their shoulders.
The invisible child (sometimes called the lost child) was the one who learned that the safest thing to do was disappear. You may have been the one who played quietly in your room while the family drama unfolded around you, who stopped asking for things because asking rarely worked, who became so self-sufficient that the family stopped noticing you were there. From the outside, this looked like independence. From the inside, it felt like being forgotten. The invisible child didn’t cause problems; but they also weren’t truly seen, and they learned, early and thoroughly, that showing up meant getting hurt.
What is important to understand (whether you are reading this as the scapegoat, the golden child, the invisible child, or someone who held different roles at different times) is that none of this was random, and none of it was your fault. These roles were not assigned because of who you actually were. They were assigned because of what the family system needed. A child’s temperament, their birth order, even the timing of their arrival in the family can influence which role they are handed. But the roles themselves exist to serve the parent’s psychology - to keep the parent’s world organized, to protect the parent from their own complexity, to maintain a kind of emotional order that has nothing to do with the truth of any individual child.
These roles are assigned in childhood, often before the child has language for what is happening. And they are remarkably durable. Research on sibling differentiation in narcissistic family systems consistently finds that these roles persist into adulthood, shaping how siblings relate to each other, how they relate to the parent, and how they respond when the parent’s needs change (Bowen, 1978; Minuchin, 1974; Pillemer & Suitor, 2006).
When the parent ages, the family system doesn’t dissolve. It reconvenes.
One of the most consistent (and most painful) patterns I see in my clinical practice is this: when the narcissistic or difficult parent needs care, it is frequently the scapegoat who provides it. This seems counterintuitive. Why would the child who was blamed, criticized, and never chosen, be the one who shows up?
The answer lies in the psychology of the wound itself. The scapegoat spent their childhood trying to earn love that was never available. They learned, at a very early age, that if they just worked harder, were more helpful, caused fewer problems, they might finally be seen (Forward 1989; Herman, 1992). That pattern doesn’t disappear in adulthood. When the parent becomes vulnerable, the scapegoat’s old hope reactivates - maybe now, finally, things will be different. Maybe the caregiving will be the thing that changes the relationship. Maybe the parent, facing their own mortality, will finally say what needed to be said.
Consider a woman I’ll call Renata. She is the middle child of three, the one who was always “too sensitive,” the one her mother compared unfavorably to her older sister for as long as she can remember. When her mother was diagnosed with early-stage dementia, Renata was the one who rearranged her work schedule, drove to appointments, managed medications. Her older sister (the golden child) sent flowers and called on birthdays. Her younger brother (the invisible child) simply wasn’t there. Renata did this for three years. Her mother, in her clearer moments, still found ways to criticize her. The will, when it came, left the house and the bulk of the estate to the golden child sister; Renata and her younger brother split what remained. Renata’s years of labor were not acknowledged. The family system had simply continued as it always had (Suitor et al, 2017).
Renata’s story is not unusual. It is, in my experience, the norm.
Here is something I want to name directly, because it is almost never said: the scapegoat is often the most genuinely capable caregiver in the family. Not despite their childhood, because of it. The hypervigilance that developed from years of reading a volatile parent’s moods, the emotional attunement that came from learning to track everyone else’s feelings before their own, the ability to manage chaos without falling apart, these are not accidents (Herman, 1992; van der Kolk, 2014). They are skills, built under duress, in a household that required them for survival. The scapegoat became competent at exactly what caregiving demands: anticipating needs, managing crises, holding multiple difficult things at once without shutting down.
Recognizing this is both validating and, for many people, quietly enraging. Because it means the family system did not accidentally select the scapegoat for the caregiving role. In some functional sense, it selected them precisely. Their wound made them qualified. The scapegoat will be thanked less than they deserve, criticized more than is fair, and compensated, financially and emotionally, less than the sibling who was nowhere to be found (Suitor et al., 2009; Suitor et al., 2017).
There comes a moment when the scapegoat realizes, with a clarity that is almost physical, that the dynamic is not going to change. The parent is not going to finally see them. The caregiving is not going to be the thing that repairs what was never built. The recognition arrives differently for different people: sometimes it is a comment the parent makes from a hospital bed; sometimes it is the moment the will is read; sometimes it is simply a Tuesday afternoon, managing a medication schedule alone, when the knowledge settles in. The dynamic was never about you. It was never going to change. And you have been waiting, without fully knowing it, your entire adult life.
That recognition is a form of grief. It deserves to be treated as one (Boss, 1999).
And I want to say something about what comes after the grief: you are allowed to make different choices than the ones your role has always demanded of you. You are allowed to set limits on what you will and won’t do, not as a punishment to the parent or the sibling, but as an act of honesty about what you can sustain. You are allowed to ask for help, even if asking has never worked before, even if the family system has trained you to believe your needs don’t count. You are allowed to name the inequity - to say, plainly, to a sibling or a social worker or a care coordinator: this is not an equal distribution of responsibility, and it needs to change. You are allowed to stop carrying more than your share.
The scapegoat’s wound is the belief that they have to earn their place, that if they give enough they will finally be chosen. The caregiving years are an opportunity (a painful one) to begin to heal that wound by making choices based on what you actually need, rather than what the family system has always expected of you.
The golden child’s frequent absence during the caregiving years is not simply selfishness (though it can look that way), and the scapegoat’s anger about it is entirely legitimate. It is also the collapse of a role.
The golden child was the perfect one. The one who succeeded, who reflected well on the family, who was celebrated. Caregiving is not glamorous. It does not reflect well. It is exhausting and incompatible with the performance of perfection. And so the golden child (who has built an entire identity around being the capable, successful, admired one) frequently finds reasons not to be there. A demanding job. A difficult commute. A spouse who needs them. The reasons are real, and they are also convenient.
What the golden child is often unconsciously avoiding is not just the work of caregiving. It is the confrontation with the parent’s mortality, which is also a confrontation with the family’s mythology. As long as the parent is alive and the golden child is the favorite, the story holds. The parent’s decline threatens the story. And the golden child, who has never had to develop the emotional resilience that the scapegoat built through years of adversity, is often less equipped to face it.
Consider a man I’ll call Marcus. He was the eldest of two, the son his father introduced at every dinner party, the one whose college acceptance letter was framed in the hallway while his younger sister’s achievements went unmentioned. When their father’s health began to decline, Marcus flew in for the initial hospital consultation (organized, composed, the son who knew how to make a good impression even in a waiting room) and then, gradually, stopped coming. He sent his sister detailed emails about what should be done. He researched facilities online and forwarded links. He told her, more than once, that he trusted her judgment completely. From a distance, this looked like delegation. From where his sister was standing (managing their father’s care alone, week after week) it looked like abandonment.
What Marcus was also experiencing, though he didn’t have language for it yet, was guilt. Not the guilt of someone who has done something wrong and knows it, but the more disorienting guilt of someone who is beginning to realize that the story they have always told about themselves (capable, good, the one who handles things) is not quite accurate. The parent’s decline is stripping the golden child of the conditions under which their identity was built. And that is an identity crisis, even if it doesn’t look like one from the outside (McBride, 2008).
Some golden children do eventually show up. Usually late. Often imperfectly. They arrive after months of absence and want to make decisions; the scapegoat, who has been making decisions alone for a year, finds this maddening. They offer help that is more about managing their own guilt than about what is actually needed. They are emotionally fragile in ways that require the scapegoat (once again) to manage their feelings as well as everything else. This is not nothing. It is also not the cavalry arriving.
The invisible child learned, early, that the safest strategy was to disappear (Safer, 2002). They didn’t fight for attention. They didn’t rebel. They became self-sufficient to a degree that looked, from the outside, like independence, and felt, from the inside, like abandonment. They were the child who played alone in their room while the family drama unfolded around them. The one who was never the problem - and never quite seen, either.
In the caregiving years, the invisible child often continues to disappear. They may live far away. They may be emotionally unavailable in ways that are hard to name. They may contribute financially but not personally. And when the scapegoat (who is doing the work) reaches out for support, the invisible child may simply not respond in the ways that are needed.
What is important to understand is that the invisible child’s absence is not indifference. It is the continuation of a survival strategy that was formed before they had any choice in the matter. They learned that showing up meant getting hurt. They learned that the family system had no room for their needs. And so they stopped having needs - or at least, stopped showing them.
Consider a man I’ll call David. The youngest of four, he was the child who was never in trouble and never celebrated. When his father’s health declined, David sent money every month without being asked. He never visited. When his siblings (the scapegoat sister who was managing everything) called him, he was warm and sympathetic and then unavailable. He wasn’t cruel. He was simply, as he had always been, not quite there. The family system had taught him that not being there was the safest place to be.
What the caregiving years can do, for the invisible child, is force them out of their disappearing act for the first time. A parent’s serious illness does not allow for the usual strategies of quiet withdrawal. There are phone calls that must be answered. There are decisions that require a signature. There are moments (a hospitalization, a fall, a diagnosis) when not being there is no longer possible without a cost that even the invisible child cannot ignore. And they are pulled back into a family system they spent their whole life learning to exit. The disorientation of this (of suddenly being needed, of being in the room, of being visible) can be profound.
For the invisible child, the caregiving period often brings a grief that has nowhere obvious to go. It is not just grief for the parent who is declining. It is grief for the childhood they never fully inhabited; the years they spent in their room, quiet and unclaimed, while the family’s drama organized itself around everyone else. It is grief for the relationship with the parent they never had, and never quite stopped hoping for. It is grief for the siblings they never really knew, because the family system kept them all in their separate roles and called it a family.
This grief is often the quietest in the room. The scapegoat’s pain is visible - they are exhausted, they are angry, they are doing the work (Pillemer & Suitor, 2006; Fingerman et al., 2009). The golden child’s absence or late arrival is visible and generates its own friction. But the invisible child’s grief tends to arrive without drama, without a clear cause, without anyone noticing that it is there. They may not even recognize it themselves. They have spent so long not having visible needs that they have lost some of the language for naming them.
The caregiving years are, in many ways, the dysfunctional family system’s final exam. Every dynamic that was present in childhood (the hierarchy, the roles, the unspoken rules about who matters and who doesn’t) gets amplified under the pressure of a parent’s decline.
What I want to say to the person who is doing the work (who is managing the appointments and the medications and the difficult conversations while their siblings are absent or unhelpful or actively obstructive) is this: you are not imagining it. The inequity is real. The exhaustion is real. The grief is real - not just for the parent you are losing, but for the family you never had and the siblings who are, once again, not showing up.
But I also want to say something to everyone in this picture - the scapegoat who is carrying too much, the golden child who is beginning to feel the weight of their own absence, the invisible child who is being pulled, disoriented, back into the room. What the caregiving years do, more than almost anything else, is make the family system visible. Not as you always half-suspected it might be, not as a vague uneasy feeling at the holiday table, but clearly, concretely, in the light of actual events. Who showed up. Who didn’t. Who made decisions. Who was thanked. Who was left out of the will. The family system that spent decades operating in the background, shaping everyone’s behavior without ever quite being named, becomes impossible to ignore.
That visibility is painful. It is also the beginning of something. Because you cannot make a free choice about a system you cannot see. And the caregiving years, for all their difficulty, have a way of finally making it visible to all three of you, in different ways, at different speeds, with different degrees of readiness. What you do with that clarity is yours to decide. But the clarity itself is not nothing. It is, in fact, the first honest look at what was always there.
Know someone who needs to read this? Share it.
If what you’ve read here resonates, The Obligation Myth: Rethinking What You Owe Your Difficult Aging Parent by Lisa D. Stinson, Ph.D. goes deeper into these dynamics - the psychology of obligation, the caregiving trap, and what it actually means to make a free choice about your aging parent when the family system has spent decades telling you that you don’t have one. It is written for adult children of narcissistic, difficult, or abusive parents who are facing the caregiving question and need both clinical clarity and permission to think differently about what they owe.
References
Bowen, M. (1978). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. Jason Aronson.
Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous Loss. Harvard University Press.
Brown, B. (2010). The Gifts of Imperfection. Hazelden.
Fingerman, K. L., et al. (2009). Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 64B(6), 708–717.
Forward, S. (1989). Toxic Parents. Bantam Books.
Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books.
Kerr, M. E., & Bowen, M. (1988). Family Evaluation. Norton.
McBride, K. (2008). Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Free Press.
Miller, A. (1981). The Drama of the Gifted Child. Basic Books.
Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and Family Therapy. Harvard University Press.
Pillemer, K., & Suitor, J. J. (2006). Journal of Marriage and Family, 68(2), 537–553.
Safer, J. (2002). The Normal One. Free Press.
Suitor, J. J., et al. (2009). Journal of Marriage and Family, 71(3), 571–586.
Suitor, J. J., et al. (2017). The Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 72(3), 547–556.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking.
Walker, P. (2013). Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Azure Coyote.
Lisa D. Stinson, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist specialising in complex PTSD, narcissistic abuse recovery, adult children of dysfunctional families, and the psychology of toxic family obligation. Her expertise was forged through extensive experience as an active-duty Navy psychologist, where she predominantly worked with trauma patients. Dr Stinson holds both a Master’s degree and Doctorate from the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant International University, following her undergraduate studies at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Drawing from a career spanning private practice and dedicated service with the U.S. Department of Defence, Dr Stinson’s research delves into personal trauma stemming from intergenerational family violence from a Jungian psychology and attachment theory perspective. Research shows that 1 in 4 adults grew up in a home marked by abuse, neglect or dysfunction — and millions of them are now being asked to care for the very parent who caused that damage. Read more in her Substack.
AI was used by the author to locate research articles (online and print articles) and add the appropriate citations from books, book chapters, and peer reviewed journal articles. As a result, this article may flag for AI.
If you would like to take part in this series then message me.
If you found this post helpful then below are posts from my series on caring for ageing parents:
If you’d like conversations like this in your inbox, subscribe for free - I write weekly for both estranged parents and estranged children trying to make sense of what’s happened.
This work takes time, and paid subscribers make it possible to keep building the community. Paid subscribers get:
a monthly supported journaling activity, designed to help you process estrangement at your own pace
recorded livestreams you can return to whenever you need them
full access to the paywalled archive, including past pieces on estrangement, reconciliation and grief
Not in a position to commit? That's completely understood - here are other ways to support the work:
Buying books through my curated bookshop:
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.