Parent–Child Boundary Dissolution and Children’s Psychological Difficulties: A Meta-Analytic Review

What is it about?

Parent-child boundary dissolution is a multidimensional construct defined as the breakdown of boundaries and loss of psychological distinctiveness in the parent–child relationship. It remains unclear whether adopting a multidimensional framework provides developmental and clinical value in predicting youths' developmental outcomes. Moreover, links between patterns of boundary dissolution and youths' adjustment have yet to be quantitatively synthesized. This study identified four patterns of parent-child boundary dissolution (enmeshment, caregiving, disorganization, and coerciveness), and is the first to examine and compare the magnitude of the meta-analytic effects between each pattern of boundary dissolution and youths' internalizing and externalizing symptoms.

Featured Image

Photo by Laura Fuhrman on Unsplash

Photo by Laura Fuhrman on Unsplash

Why is it important?

At a conceptual level, boundary dissolution is a broad construct that crosses multiple literatures. As a result, there is considerable variability across studies in how boundary dissolution is defined and what terminology is used. As research progresses, it will be critical to increase the correspondence between varying conceptual constructs that refer to the same or highly similar phenomena. Toward advancing this goal, we synthesized the developmental, clinical, and family systems literatures and identified four patterns of parent-child boundary dissolution (i.e., enmeshment, caregiving, disorganization, and coerciveness). At a translational level, prior work suggests that each of these patterns of boundary dissolution are a risk factor for youths' psychological difficulties. Determining whether a particular pattern of boundary dissolution is more strongly associated with youths' adjustment will be crucial for developing intervention and prevention priorities to target those most at risk. Thus, this paper presents the first meta-analysis of parent-child boundary dissolution and youths' internalizing and externalizing symptoms with the primary goal of examining how the association between boundary dissolution and adjustment varied across four patterns of boundary dissolution. Each of the four boundary dissolution patterns were associated with internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Meta-analytic effects across patterns significantly varied in magnitude: (a) enmeshment was more strongly associated with externalizing symptoms than the caregiving pattern; (b) enmeshment was more strongly associated with internalizing symptoms than the caregiving pattern; (c) enmeshment was more strongly associated with internalizing symptoms than the coerciveness pattern; and (d) disorganization was more strongly associated with internalizing symptoms than the caregiving pattern.