But in the case of the detained kids at the border, the involuntary separation from their parents—which, as my colleague Olga Khazan wrote last year, can cause some of the same childhood stress-related ailments as parentification—only makes the situation worse.

The children in these border facilities “are not developmentally equipped to deal with the immense task of caring for an infant in any circumstance, least of all these,” Louise Earley, a clinical psychologist and a lecturer at the U.K.’s University of Birmingham who has researched “parentified” children, wrote to me in an email. Not only are these kids simply not mature enough to undertake the immense responsibility of caring for a baby or toddler, they’re also struggling with the trauma of separation from their parents or any other caring adults, she noted. It’s a high-stress situation, “and with no effective support, the prospect that they will inflict unintentional harm or actual harm [on the smaller children in their care] as a result of their frustrations is likely.”

Much has been written over the years about the care that parentified children need later in life to recover psychologically. In 2011, for example, an article published in the Journal of Family Studies recommended that clinicians assess adults who were formerly parentified children with an eye on resolving the feelings of injustice they harbor toward their families. A feeling of unfairness, the article pointed out, could arise from the fact that their care of other family members was not acknowledged, supported, or reciprocated. Certainly, it stands to reason that the kids at the border who have by default ended up in charge of parenting smaller children will grow up with a sense of indignation concerning the time they spent thanklessly parenting other children in dirty detention centers. It’s unclear, however, whether that indignation will be directed at their parents, at the United States or its law enforcement, or elsewhere.

These children have taken on parental duties at an inappropriate age not because their parents or other guardians have been neglectful, but because they were, in many cases, forcefully removed from their parents or guardians by a government aiming to “send a message” to immigrants entering the country. Many of the children being detained came across the border with adults who would care for and comfort these children if only they hadn’t been separated under this policy.

Earley worries about the future effects this bleak situation may have on the children doing the parenting in the border facilities—and she worries about the immediate effects, too. “They will be unable to deal with the sense of responsibility and practical demands and will inevitably fail at the task, thus leaving an immeasurable sense of guilt and self-blame,” she wrote to me. And the effects won’t just wear off after a while, with some adjustment, she added. “Only with stability can psychological recovery begin, and only then in the context of a consistent, caring and responsive adult who can help them to begin to trust in relationships again.”

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