Parentification and the Impostor Phenomenon: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

This article examines the hypothesis that individuals who were parentified as children are more likely to report impostor feelings in adulthood. A sample of 213 graduate students were given the Parentification Questionnaire (Sessions & Jurkovic, 1986 Sessions, M. W. 1986. Influence of parentification on professional role choice and interpersonal style. Dissertation Abstracts International, 47: 5066 [Google Scholar]) and Clance's Impostor Phenomenon Scale (Clance, 1985 Clance, P. R. 1985. The impostor phenomenon: Overcoming the fear that haunts your success, Atlanta, GA: Peachtree Publishers. [Google Scholar]). Results indicated that parentification and the impostor phenomenon are moderately correlated (r = .37). No significant gender differences were found for either construct. With regard to racial/ethnic differences, no significant differences were found in parentification scores; however, Caucasians endorsed significantly higher impostor phenomenon scores than African Americans. The results suggest that the impostor phenomenon can be explained, in part, as a significant long-term effect of childhood parentification.