27 Dresses: The Story of the Parentified Child and The Battle for The Authentic Self

How many of us can relate to the Saturday night ritual that started with a trip to Blockbuster and ended with tear-soaked cheeks watching Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks embrace in Central Park at the end of “You’ve Got Mail”? Or maybe it was Rachel McAdams’ iconic shoulder shrug outside of Ryan Gosling’s refurbished southern mansion in “The Notebook”. Just me? Although these films can pose the risk of romanticizing unrealistic representations of love, we can learn a lot from taking a deeper look at some of the complicated characters so many of us have identified with, cared for, and related to over the years. Perhaps they can even offer a case study to help us grow to understand a bit more about ourselves.

Let’s take 27 Dresses for example. The 2008 Anne Fletcher film starting Katherine Heigl goes down as one of the most classic “Rom Coms” of the 2000s. The story follows Jane, a single woman in her mid to late 20s who has found herself a bridesmaid in 27 weddings. For those of us who have navigated, or are currently navigating the wedding circuit, that is a staggering number of weddings to be in! However, if we pause to look a bit more closely at Jane’s story, this role that she plays as perpetual bridesmaid (while maybe slightly exaggerated for cinematic purposes) is deep-rooted in her childhood and is something many of us can relate to.

If we take a closer look, we learn early on in the film that Jane lost her mother at a very young age, leaving her father widowed and her and her younger sister, Tess, motherless. Not long after the loss of her mother we see Jane assume the role of caretaker as she accompanies Tess to the restroom at a family wedding, sparing her father from an awkward responsibility he did not quite know how to handle. During this scene, Jane witnesses the bride in crisis with a ripped bridal gown moments before she was to walk down the aisle. Our nine-year-old protagonist springs into action, sewing the rip up with a ribbon, and is celebrated as hero for saving the day. Jane is rewarded with the honor of walking down the aisle holding the train of the bride’s dress. The camera pans to young Jane absolutely beaming and thus, a perpetual bridesmaid, master crisis manager, and parentified child is born.

Parentification is a term coined by psychiatrist Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, a leading contributor to Family Systems Therapy. What Boszormenyi-Nagy identified was that in order for a family to remain stabilized in times of crisis, children can often assume a parental role, acting as “parent” to themselves, their siblings, or even their own parents. While the family crises can vary from illness to addiction, financial or emotional stress, separation or divorce, or in Jane’s case, the death of a parent, the outcome can look very similar. These situations often produce children who are highly attuned to the needs of others and masters at regulating their external environment. Such children do this by conforming their behaviors to be in service to the needs of others. By stepping into this parental role that has been vacated by the parent through illness, absence, or death, the child is able to maintain familial homeostasis. What does this mean in laymen’s terms? These children learn to keep the family’s shit together, regardless of the personal cost.

Let’s take another look at Jane as the film goes on. We see Jane as a young adult living her life in the service of others, often times neglecting her own wants and needs in the process. This comes to a head when Jane is put in the position of planning her own sister’s wedding to her boss, a man who Jane has happened to love unrequitedly for most of her adult life. This crisis incites some changes in Jane. We see resentment grow towards her sister, causing an internal conflict for Jane to battle. The battle of her parentified identity, whose mantra had always been to put others above self was pitted against Jane’s emerging authentic self with desires, needs, and longings. With the help of the dark horse love interest, the adorable James Marsden, Jane begins to access some of these shadow parts of her authentic self. She learns how to say no, she accesses her anger towards the role that left her own needs and wants unmet, and she starts the painful yet beautiful process of individuation. This erupts in a brutal slideshow scene in which Jane exposes her sister’s enumerable lies resulting the wedding getting called off. In this scene, we see Jane’s darkness explode where she gave herself full permission to put her wants above the golden rule of parentification – to keep the family’s shit together at all costs. Although this is not Jane’s most likeable moment of the film, it is her most human as she separates from the expectation of the role she played for so long and entered into the chapter of a more authentic self.

What can we learn from Jane’s journey? As many parentified children can relate to, the idea of disappointing others not only feels scary, but at times can feel downright intolerable. Our greatest survival skill of anticipating and fulfilling the needs of others provided safety and comfort to our worlds. Unfortunately, this safety and comfort can come at a grave cost, the loss of the authentic self. Jane’s journey shows us that joy, connection, and companionship awaits us when we dare to integrate the darker, authentic, human parts of ourselves and reject the need to be everything to all people. We learn that the world does not crumble when we put ourselves first, or name our needs, or God forbid - say no.

For more on parentification check out the following podcast episodes:

1. Shrink Chicks episode “Growing Up Too Soon: Parentification”

2. Everything Happens “Samantha Irby: I’m Doing My Best (Life Now)