Parental Parts & Differential Treatment of Children: A Parts-Based Perspective

It is a commonly observed phenomenon that parents often treat their children differently, even when they strive to be fair and equal. Birth order is often cited as a key reason—the first child enters a world with fundamental insecurity, trying to emulate the parents, while later children understand the distinction between parent and child roles. However, parts of self from a Jungian or parts-based therapy view also play a significant, less visible role in why and how parents relate to each child uniquely. This article will explore how parental parts shape family dynamics and the treatment of children.

Birth Order & Family Structure Changes

The Adlerian concept of birth order affecting personality is well-established. The arrival of a first child fundamentally changes the family system. These firstborns often feel pressure to be “little adults”, mimicking parental behavior out of existential insecurity. In contrast, later children enter a world with clear parent-child roles, reducing their drive to be parental stand-ins.

Psychologist Alfred Adler argued birth order molds personality because the parent-child relationship and family structure evolve over time. A first child gets 100% of parental investment and anxiety, while later kids split attention. Firstborns thus feel dethroned and strive to regain favor through mature behavior. Middle children, squeezed between older/younger sibs, become diplomatic peacemakers. Youngest children, accustomed to others doing things for them, remain immature attention-seekers. Only children mix first/lastborn traits.

Over time, parents also grow more confident and less perfectionistic. A first-time parent may nervously monitor an infant sleeping, while by the third child, they relax unless they hear screams! This increasing parental security means later children face looser boundaries and less hovering. Fathers especially back off harsh discipline after the firstborn.

So in a nutshell, both child factors (birth order) and parent factors (confidence, boundaries) shift the parent-child dynamic across siblings. However, something even deeper is at work—the subpersonalities or “parts” of the parent’s psyche.

Parental Parts & Differential Treatment

Jungian and parts-based therapies assert we all have multiple subpersonalities driving us, often outside awareness. Parents are no exception. Unintegrated parental parts, often inherited from their own parents, can profoundly impact how they relate to each child’s parts.

Sidra and Hal Stone’s Voice Dialogue method explores how people unconsciously draft others to play roles matching their own parts. For example, a parent with an angry, controlling part and a passive, submissive part will cast one child as a “scapegoat” to absorb their disowned anger, while assigning another to placate the tyrant, just as they did with their domineering parent growing up.

In this way, unresolved issues and fragmentary parts pass down the generations. The Stones note that a “borderline mother” will often groom children, especially sons, to attend to her emotional needs while neglecting their own. Caught in this role of parental emotional caretaker, these sons later seek out borderline partners, replaying the dynamic. The disorder skips a generation.

Narcissistic parents instill a “vulnerability is weakness, I’m always right” mentality to prop up their grandiose yet fragile self-image. Children internalize this and repress/attack vulnerable, creative parts in themselves and others as adults. Right-wing political and religious views vilifying weakness and worshipping strength appeal. Unlike BPD, this mentality transmits directly to kids, perpetuating a lineage of grandiosity and emotional constriction.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy also views the psyche as a gallery of parts. IFS founder Richard Schwartz proposes that parents’ hurt inner children and controlling “managers” interact with the child’s parts, not their core Self. Therapy involves the Self tenderly witnessing and unburdening these parts.

For example, if a parent exiles their playful, spontaneous part due to childhood ridicule, they may criticize those qualities in their child, not realizing it’s their own disowned part attacking itself externally. Only by befriending their playful part can the parent affirm it in their child. In this way, parts work is a path to more secure, attuned, “good enough” parenting.

Games Parents & Children Play

Transactional Analysis founder Eric Berne detailed the unconscious “games” people play via their Parent, Child, and Adult ego states. Child ego states want permission and approval, Parent states control and criticize, while Adult states stay grounded in the here and now. Conflict and dysfunction arise when two people’s maladaptive ego states collide.

For instance, in Alcoholic families, the “Yes, but” game involves constant advice-seeking and rejection. The Child ego state asks for help but petulantly shoots down all suggestions, frustrating the advice-giver’s Parent state. Both get a payoff—the Child feels validated yet unchallenged, while the Parent feels wise yet unappreciated. Nobody’s Adult ego state engages to implement real solutions.

The Child thus learns indirect communication gets needs met. Asking directly feels too vulnerable. So the game repeats with friends, partners, and offspring, who feel obligated to help yet resentful and baffled. “Why won’t they take my advice?!” the exasperated child turned parent eventually cries, blind to the cycle.

Schema therapy also elucidates such internalized roles and relationship patterns. The “Detached Protector” part distances to avoid the activation of abandonment/abuse schemas, while the “Compliant Surrenderer” part does anything to appease and preserve the relationship. These parts, often adopted to survive a dysfunctional childhood, lead to miscommunications and hurt. Identifying schemas and embracing banished parts can break the cycle.

Trauma Bonding & Passing the Torch

In abusive families, parts work sheds light on the perplexing ways adult children continue unhealthy dynamics. Often the least functional, still enmeshed child becomes a staunch defender and replica of the toxic parent, frustrating healthier siblings.

This child is essentially trauma bonded, clinging to the parent’s destructive parts as proof of intimacy and specialness—”Nobody else really understood Mom except me.” Imitating the parent’s abusive behavior, substance abuse, or bigoted views wards off the grief of seeing them realistically. Keeping the parent’s worst parts alive maintains the fantasy bond.

Psychosynthesis & Parts Integration

Psychosynthesis pioneer Roberto Assagioli saw parts integration as key to self-actualization and good parenting. When parents reject parts of themselves, they inevitably reject those parts in their children. The perfectionist parent shames their dreamy child. The stoic parent belittles their sensitive child.

For instance, a mother who learned as a child that crying is weak shuts down her son’s tears. In Psychosynthesis therapy, she contacts memories of being shamed for emotions and empathizes with her son’s experience. Holding space for her own sadness helps her attune to his, rather than exile it in both of them.

Similarly, a father mocks his daughter’s shyness because social anxiety was taboo in his family of origin. Embracing his own introversion allows him to love that part in both himself and his daughter. Integrating the denied parts enables more flexible, responsive parenting. The parent can now match the child’s energy, not impose rigid standards.

Coherence Therapy & Implicit Memory

Coherence Therapy uses experiential methods to access both early childhood wounds and the adult’s unconscious schemas. Parts relay their stories. Disowned parts gain voice, counteracting inner and outer acting out. Emotionally corrective experiences provide an antidote to entrenched patterns.

For example, a mother constantly criticizes her daughter’s appearance, nitpicking her weight and clothing choices. In therapy, it emerges that the mother’s own mother constantly berated her looks, leading to the development of a “defective” part that felt unlovable. Unconsciously, the mother projects this part onto her daughter, recreating the wounding dynamic. Coherence therapy helps the mother vividly reconnect with memories of her own pain, building empathy for her daughter’s experience.

In another case, a father belittles his son’s interest in art, calling it a “waste of time” and pressuring him to pursue a “practical” career. During a coherence session, the father accesses childhood memories of his own father angrily tearing up his drawings and shaming his creativity. He realizes he internalized this “creative parts are bad” message and is now repeating the cycle. Grieving this early trauma and embracing his artistic parts allows him to support those parts in his son.

Through this process, implicit memory reconsolidates towards secure attachment. Empathy ends the estrangement between parent and child parts, both internally and interpersonally. The compulsion to replay hurtful dynamics dissolves as unmet needs are finally held and heard.

Conclusion

While we cannot change our birth order, we can change how we inhabit parental and child parts. Parts work offers a profound path to transform legacies of trauma into secure attachment and inner attunement. By seeing how our parts dance together, we exit the merry-go-round of intergenerational pain. In waking up to old, destructive patterns, we begin to disrupt them. We author a new story of holding all our parts with compassion—a story of integration that ripples forward through the generations. If you recognize your family dynamics in this article, know that you are not alone and change is possible. A skilled therapist can help you honor your parts, grieve the past, and become a more whole, nurturing parent. It’s never too late to connect with yourself and your children in a deeper way.