Parentification as Childhood Role-Reversal Wrong Attractor: A Displacement Framework Analysis

This paper applies the Displacement Framework to parentification, analysing it as a wrong-attractor state imposed on a developing child when the family system displaces adult emotional or practical burdens onto the child. Using displacement cost D(ξ), accumulated displacement Φ, and basin geometry, we show how parentification captures the child in a caretaker configuration that substitutes adult responsibility for developmental need-fulfilment.

The accumulated displacement includes both the direct cost of age-inappropriate burdens and the opportunity cost of displaced developmental phases. Nine formal propositions characterise the developmental threshold mechanism, identity substitution, role-identity lock, intergenerational transmission, and return paths through grief work and reparenting. Published as part of The Phronesis Issues preprint series.