The Different Dysfunctional Family Roles

What are the roles in a dysfunctional family?

      The dynamics in a dysfunctional family often follow a pattern in which individual family members are given a family role. Common roles in the dysfunctional family include the Hero Child, Scapegoat Child, Lost Child (also known as the Invisible Child), Mascot Child, and the Golden Child. ​

​   Although all of the children are living within the same family, their childhood experiences can be drastically different. All families maintain a balance amongst members to cultivate a sense of security, comfort, and normalcy.

    In dysfunctional families, this sense of balance is accomplished by assigning family roles. The roles help the family to maintain the status quo; even if the family norms are unhealthy and toxic, members are often comfortable with what is familiar. This is why when someone attempts to act outside of their given role, the family can enter into a state of distress as it loses its sense of balance. 

       Some children are given more than one role, other times, children may take turns switching between roles. No matter their role, every child living within the dysfunction experiences toxic shame, and internalizes this shame in a different way.

      Below, I have provided a summary of what a child living within each role might experience, and what therapeutic work might be beneficial for them as they set about healing and recovering from the dysfunction. As you read this, you may see parts of yourself or family members in these descriptions. My hope is that is information helps you to feel validated and understood as you continue down the road to healing.

The Hero Child

     The hero child takes up the responsibility of preserving the family image. Maybe they conclude they’ll be "the perfect child". They’ll get perfect grades, be a star athlete, never break the rules, never bother their parents with any of their needs or feelings.

     These children are often highly independent, achievement oriented, and struggle with perfectionism. The toxic parent might exert extreme pressure on this child and attempt to live vicariously through them. This pressure to perform is highly anxiety inducing for the child, as they are aware that their parent’s ego state is reliant on their ability to achieve.
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      This child was not given permission to make mistakes and to learn from failure, nor were they given the freedom to exercise their own sense of autonomy. They are constantly striving to earn the approval and validation of the toxic parent, hoping they might someday win their parent’s love.

  They might discover they can occasionally earn praise and acknowledgement this way, and their siblings may tend to envy them for their high achieving personality. Inside, this child is suffering from the underlying grief that comes with never being truly known and loved for who they are.

       In the pursuit of earning their parent’s love and taking on the burden of preserving the family image, this child may be convinced they cannot possibly be loved for who they truly are, but only for what they can achieve. In the pursuit of their parent’s approval, they may have adopted their parent’s values, beliefs, opinions, and even interests. They may feel as if their life is not their own-and in many ways, it isn’t.

     Their existence becomes dependent on the endless task of pleasing the toxic parent. The goalposts are always moving, and they find themselves jumping through a series of never-ending hoops. When will I be enough? The destination of finally being seen as worthy of unconditional love is always out of sight, dangled just out of reach.

The Scapegoat Child

     The scapegoat child is overwhelmed by self-blame and shame; they wonder what they did wrong, or what is wrong with them. This child is the family receptacle for the toxic parent’s anger, shame, guilt, and secret feelings of inadequacy.

     The messages this child receives, both spoken and unspoken, are that they are inherently bad, wrong, selfish, incapable, unintelligent, and destined for failure. This is the family black sheep, otherwise known as the family scapegoat.

    They are plagued with the deep-seated awareness that their parent doesn’t love and respond to them the way they observe their siblings being loved. They have chosen to rebel, or they have bought in to the messages the narcissistic, toxic parent imposes on them.

       Some children cast into this role rebel and choose to succeed in spite of the toxic parent. Other children forced into this role buy into the toxic messages and adopt the belief that they are at fault for their parent’s abusive behavior and lack of love, ultimately assuming responsibility for the family dysfunction and the toxic parent’s chronic state of unfulfillment, rage, depression, and discontent.
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      This child fears succeeding, as at their core, they have come to identify with failure. They may fear the narcissistic parent’s retaliation, as their success may aggravate the toxic parent’s core wounds of shame and inadequacy. Self-sabotage can occur on both a conscious or unconscious level. This child senses that on some level, they are unwanted, rejected, shunned, and even hated. This becomes their identity.

       To rebel, some choose to revel in their role as the family scapegoat, and actively seek ways to become the “problem child”. The underlying notion is that negative attention is better than no attention, as negative attention is the closest thing to acknowledgement, connection, and love that they’ve received.

​     The gravity of the pain and exclusion from the family leads many to develop addictions, engage in self-harm, experience suicidality, unsafe sex, eating disorders, and toxic relationships that mirror the beliefs programmed in them from the toxic family dynamics.
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      Should this child choose to seek therapy later in life, recovering their self-esteem and uprooting those negative core beliefs will be the cornerstones of their therapeutic work. Underneath the false messages and maladaptive behaviors, the scapegoat child will ultimately unlock their true identity, often discovering they are a highly independent, resilient, kind-hearted, spirited, and empathetic individual.

The Lost Child (AKA The Invisible Child)

     The other response to family dysfunction is for the child to become highly self-reliant, distant, and unnoticed. This child stuffs their needs, wants, and emotions in an attempt to keep from “rocking the boat”. On some level, they are aware the family is too concerned with orbiting around the main toxic parent’s shifting emotional states and desires. This child is often highly sensitive, observant, imaginative, and attuned to other’s emotional experiences.
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     They often have an ability to anticipate the needs of others that can border into caretaking behaviors, while simultaneously seeking to blend into the background and avoid attracting attention to themselves.

This child has absorbed the message that it isn’t safe to be seen nor heard.

       Some children in this position opt to become the silent caretaker of the family, filling in the gaps others don’t notice need to be filled, anticipating the needs of others and taking the temperature of the emotional environment. Chaotic environments and volatile emotional states terrify and overwhelm their innately sensitive empathic nature, and they often retreat to self-soothe. This child has learned from experience and observation that they can’t rely on their parent to meet their needs.

     They can become highly independent miniature adults, stepping in when needed and yet never imposing their own needs onto the family. Many of these children become parentified children, in which they quietly assume the role of the family caretaker and become the stand-in parent, maid, babysitter, homework tutor, and cook.

        In families where violence and emotional instability are rampant, these children aim to become as invisible as possible-never asking for anything, playing in silence, and tiptoeing across floorboards. This is the child who reads book after book, bonds deeply with animals yet struggles to form relationships with other children, plays video games in another room, or occupies themselves with extracurricular activities to avoid being home or interacting with family members.
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   This child learned early on that relationships are unsafe, anxiety inducing, and emotionally taxing. They have learned that to avoid rejection and pain, they must distance themselves from others. In both childhood and adulthood, they achieve their sense of safety and stability via self-isolation.

     As adults, they may struggle to take up space relationally-to express their thoughts and feelings, to set boundaries, and to ask for what they need. The lost child can struggle with healthy vulnerability, that is, allowing themselves to be seen and known by others.

The Mascot Child

      A child in the mascot role learns that there is positive affirmation in bringing pleasure and amusement to others. They seek to alleviate the family tension and distress by injecting humor and playfulness. On occasion, this coping mechanism serves the mascot as an unconscious survival strategy to evade abuse or punishment from the narcissistic parent by responding with humor.

       The humor can serve as a means of unconsciously relaying to the toxic parent that they’re a nonthreatening presence and brings the parent’s ego defenses down by engaging them with humor. The mascot child may unconsciously assume responsibility for keeping the family unit cohesive, using humor to infuse a sense of interconnectedness and warmth.

       Often, this serves as a coping mechanism that allows them to bury their underlying pain and conceal their own emotions by hiding behind a humorous mask. Deep down, this child may have adopted the belief that they must provide something to receive something; for instance, providing the family with amusement in exchange for recognition and affirmation.

    This child cuts themselves off from their emotions or conceals them internally to cope. Sometimes, they take on an emotionally dismissive posture towards themselves, reducing their capacity to sit with painful feelings and experiences while choosing instead to numb with humor and divert the focus.
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       Many family mascots grow up to experience a great deal of difficulty in being emotionally vulnerable in their relationships with others. They prefer to be the life of the party, while keeping others safely at arm’s length emotionally. Even when faced with difficulties or discussing a painful emotion or memory, these individuals can struggle not to joke, laugh, or smile to make light of what is overwhelming to them.

The Golden Child

      The Golden Child, like the Hero Child, is often envied by their siblings. Unlike the Hero Child, however, the Golden Child is placed on a pedestal by the narcissistic parent and doesn’t have to strive for approval or affirmation. The toxic parent projects all of their own perceived positive qualities onto the Golden Child. To the narcissistic parent, this child represents all of their hopes, dreams, successes, and positive attributes.

      This child is the toxic parent’s “mini me” or the “favorite”.

  The Golden Child experiences conflicting messages between the narcissistic parent’s unwavering praise and devotion and the external world outside the dysfunctional family dynamics. In adulthood, they may be disappointed to discover that their bosses, coworkers, friends, and partners don’t provide them with the same level of praise and leeway that they were provided with growing up.

   In reality, the Golden Child was emotionally smothered and often infantilized by their parent, who wanted to ensure the Golden Child would be reliant on them. Emotionally, their development has been stunted at a childhood level.

      The Golden Child has been given a false self through which they receive recognition and praise, and with this comes the unspoken message that they must operate from this false self to extract the affirmation they have become accustomed to.

      To maintain their position on the pedestal, the Golden Child will act in conjunction with the toxic parent, following their lead to bully, ostracize, and slander the other family members, particularly the Scapegoat Child. If the Golden Child does not make the difficult decision to individuate, these dynamics can continue long into adulthood, sometimes lasting a lifetime.

     As they continue to operate from this false self, they become increasingly distanced from who they authentically are, carrying with them a hidden inner conflict that generates unconscious shame. They respond to this shame by further burying their authentic self and by projecting the shame onto others.

      The Golden Child runs the risk of becoming narcissistic themselves in the process, as they are often highly reliant on maintaining this false self and are enmeshed with the narcissistic parent.

    As an adult, the Golden Child might be unfamiliar with considering other’s needs and feelings in their relationships, viewing relationships instead from a lens of receiving rather than reciprocity. Coping with setbacks, constructive criticism, and not being perceived by others as somehow “special” and set apart can be painfully difficult for the Golden Child. Some adult Golden Children engage in illicit behaviors and are surprised to discover that in adulthood they are no longer the exception to the rules. It’s also not unusual for the Golden Child to remain passively reliant on or entitled to their parent for financial support long into adulthood.

     However, not all Golden Children are cut from the same cloth, and it’s important to remember that as children in dysfunctional families, we have no power over the role our parents cast us into.

     The Golden Child is faced with a difficult decision. They can maintain their position on the toxic parent’s pedestal, or they can begin to break away from their parent’s enmeshment and start to develop their authentic self. Waking up to the reality of the family dysfunction will challenge every message they’ve ever received about who they are from the narcissistic parent, and they will have to face the reality that they’re not immune from imperfection, fault, or life’s consequences.

​     They will also have to accept that their siblings likely had an entirely different childhood experience, and that if they wish to salvage their relationships with their siblings, they will need to be receptive to viewing the family from a different vantage point that will likely conflict with their own lived experience.  

Why does the narcissistic parent assign family roles?

      Assigning these roles gives the abusive parent a sense of control over the family dynamics and allows them to pit family members against each other. No child has power over what role they are given.

     The toxic parent’s own deep-seated trauma is the deciding factor, as they project their own insecurities, inequities, attributes, and lived experiences onto their children.

      The family is the narcissistic parent’s stage on which they enact their inner turmoil and trauma, using each individual family member as a means to do so. This effectively erases the autonomy and humanity of every member of the family in the eyes of the toxic parent, as the focus of the family orbits around their desires, emotions, and unhealed pain.

    Every child possesses their own unique personality, strengths, and struggles. The abusive parent’s internal wounds are continually bumping up against these, much of the time on an unconscious level.
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      The way the toxic parent treats each child has nothing to do with the child, and everything to do with the toxic parent’s unresolved trauma and ego wounds.