Identificación de la parentalización en estudiantes universitarios

Abstract

This research was conducted in the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Cuenca. It aimed to identify the parentification of psychology students from the University. Parentification is the distortion of boundaries between subsystems of the family, where children assume roles and responsibilities that are usually reserved for adults. Other studies express the influence of parentification in the future of personal and social relationships of individuals, even causing possible psychological disorders. The research was a quantitative methodology at an exploratory-descriptive level. The parentification inventory of Lisa Hooper validated in 2009 was applied, it was identified in a sample conformed by 546 college students, the manifestation of three factors involved in parentification: focused on parents, focused on brothers and the perception of benefits. Among the main results are that all the investigated students have some degree of parentification in their childhood, standing out a 72.2% with a median degree of parentification according to the general scale. Being the perceived benefits the most representative factor, which means that most of them do not feel they have been affected by having performed roles that did not correspond to them during their childhood. This study is a first step in exploring the construct parentification in the Ecuadorian university environment throughout a Spanish version of the instrument used, culturally adapted and validated for this context.