#parentification so I feel less qualified to talk about it especially as I’ve experienced parentification myself but not spousification

[panicroomsammy]

Okay while I’m thinking about John and that one post that’s been going around about “‘John taught Dean that boys don’t cry’ is incorrect” here’s my two cents: John did teach Dean to emotionally behave the way he does. Not on purpose and not by example, but accidentally through parentification. Parents of parentified children can themselves be in tune with their emotions and can want their children to be emotionally open, but through the process of emotionally leaning on their children and relying on them to fulfill their emotional needs such children learn to repress their own emotions. I am currently reading John’s journal and lines like this

are glaring examples of parentification. John isn’t doing it on purpose though! He just needs someone to talk to and the only person to talk to his his eight year old son. He may even think that by talking to Dean about his feelings he is teaching Dean that that’s what people do, but talking to kids like this can do the opposite. Dean learns that he has to be there for his dad emotionally, and by default that means that his own emotions are put on the back burner. The way that Dean prioritizes John’s emotions over his own is exemplified here:

On the anniversary of his mother’s death six year old Dean saw that his father was upset and went to comfort him instead of the other way around. He’s being taught to ignore his own emotions not out of malice or gender roles but because his parent is depending on him so out of necessity he puts his feelings aside.

What this translates to as an adult is what we see in the show in Dean’s reluctance to talk about how he feels with Sam who is constantly trying to get Dean to talk to him. After hell Dean doesn’t want to tell Sam about it and burden him with knowing what Dean did. Where I’m at currently in season 10 Dean doesn’t want to acknowledge that the mark may still be affecting him because that’s his problem. Anything that Dean considers to be his own problem he refuses to talk about because he defaults to taking care of other people’s emotional needs first. He didn’t learn that sometimes other people’s emotional needs are taking care of his emotional needs the way that a non-parentified child would learn from a parent who fulfills their emotional needs by taking care of their child.

John isn’t evil. He isn’t some paragon of toxic masculinity. He was just a human man in a bad situation who made mistakes that influenced his children into adulthood.