Was It Trauma or Did You Just Grow Up in the 80s?

Key points

Parenting styles have changed since the 1970s and 1980s.

How we parent is impacted by policies at the state and national levels.

Different generations parenting together can learn to communicate effectively through differences.

At a party we had at our home this summer, I was talking about a book I’ve been working on focused on the topic of parentification, or a role reversal between parent and child in which a child is forced to take on a parenting role, either emotionally, logistically, or both. Parentification can be considered a form of child abuse as it falls under emotional neglect (and may intersect with other forms of abuse such as physical or sexual abuse ). This ended up leading us to a conversation about what kinds of discipline everyone had experienced gr