i was reading this post, which has some good points, but i wanted to add something about john’s absence and didn’t want to clutter it.
something really important in the dynamic of parentification for me is the weight of john’s absence. because it’s not just that john wasn’t a good parent and dean made up for it in ways that weren’t fair, john was definitely a parent who gave orders and commands to dean in managing the things both practical and emotional that he as the parent should have managed.
in other words, in everything dean did ‘as a substitute parent’ john was very much present. he was a drill sergeant like sam reminded us of, which means that he gave detailed orders about what he wanted done and how he wanted it done. the margins in which dean could move and act both in his relationship with john and in his relationship with sam were extremely limited and micro-managed by john’s drill-sergeant orders.(the fact that sam could in some way carry on with school and extra curricula-activities was a sign that the very limited freedom he had was a) larger than dean’s and b) a result of dean’s rigidly structured life.) of course in that tug-of-war between two other people nothing remained for dean.
what i think is important to remember is that dean had to carry orders about how john wanted things to be run but he did not have any of the authority of a parent.
it isn’t surprising that sam, who really doesn’t get all of this, often conflates dean with john because dean was the executor of john’s order. we know what happened when dean didn’t follow them strictly, but all that sam saw was the person who followed them and enforced them to sam (sometime trying to sweeten the deal sometimes i’m sure with understandable frustration and anger at the entire situation). dean remains sam’s brother – which i will never stop repeating – but because of the very nature of the dynamics of parentification, dean had no authority in carrying on those orders and enforcing them on sam and i imagine it was pretty frustrating for dean, considering the consequences of not doing as john said – remember something wicked one and for all – to have sam contest those orders.
it was of course okay that sam did also because dean was the easier target and the one who allowed more space for sam in which to move versus john’s rigid structure. it’s understandable because he too was a child and that’s how he experienced those situations and dynamics, but this conflation of dean as the executor, with john, the real source of the orders, definitely added another layer of complication to the mess and another layer of distress for dean (and another for sam who probably felt that dean sided with john).
what surprises me is that sam is still unable now, in his 30s to look at their childhood and those dynamics with some kind of even partial clarity and without conflating dean with john. it seems to me that dean has done a lot of intimate work to better understand why it was wrong for himself and for sam, but when sam says that john’s drill sergeant parenting worked on dean – but didn’t work on sam – he shows that he is still lacking any kind of understanding of the issues that color both of their personalities.
THIS!!!
So, as a person who basically was my younger sibs caretaker as a kid there’s a couple things you nailed and a couple you missed. First is – you’re right about the authority thing -the best way to manage that is to get the kid into a routine – only Dean never could, because they had no routine. So he probably encouraged Sam’s interest in school, because it was all the stability he could offer.
When John was around he would constantly disrupt whatever control Dean had over his own life – uprooting them, getting drunk, and ordering Dean around. Dean was constantly on alert and trying to please a parent that could never be pleased. When he wasn’t around, Dean had to survive, keep Sam okay, and try to fulfill whatever orders John had left – because he never knew when John would get back and get angry.
The other thing is that Dean didn’t have the resources an adult has. If something went wrong, he couldn’t get Sam to the hospital without a car. He couldn’t get a job to feed them. He had no control over where they were or what they did. I can tell you from experience that can make you much stricter than a normal parent would be – because you know if something goes wrong, you can’t make it better. But your sibling will just experience that as controlling.
My sibs are in their 30s now. One is close to me. One is not. They’re twins. The one who isn’t close to me said to me in high school that she hated me and has no good memories of me as a kid. That I was constantly fighting with our parents. This is despite the fact that for years I was the one who dressed her for school and got her breakfast, then picked her up from school, made sure she got a snack and time to play, brought her dinner, bathed her, read her stories and put her to bed.
I have theories about why she’s chosen that narrative. It has a lot to do with my parents. She’s chosen to try and remain close to them, unlike myself or my other sib. But she and I are both pretty damaged, if in different ways. It pained me for many years and I kept trying to reach out. But I think I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that sometimes there’s nothing you can do.
Thank you for sharing your experience.
And thanks for extrapolating two other important aspect: the lack of resource dean had both on practical terms and emotional terms, and the way they created a stricter surveillance that sam experienced as overbearing control.
add to this the other important aspect: hunting. this secret this family carries and the isolation it creates from other people and lives that ends creating a cult-like experience. that that aspect is so big it needs a) for me to do some reading and b) its own post(s).
a propos of control, a few days ago kripke tweeted about dean and his need of control and how he exercises/exercised in the context of hunting. he was talking about his fear of flying but i believe it is a good indication that dean’s lack of control in all the parts of his life since childhood, plays a role in how he embraced hunting as a way to reassert some very fleeting control.
like you say, dean couldn’t decide where to live, how long to stay in a place, what kind of activities or interests to pursue (he canonically likes music for example and he would have loved to learn to play guitar), all he could do was follow john’s orders, take care of sam (and john) and hunt. and he embraced hunting as a way to reassert some kind of control over his own life and as the only way to get some minimum of validation from john. also as a way to convince himself that he wasn’t missing much compared to other kids his age. he was doing something good, something bigger and helping people not lose what he had lost.
we know that dean now is aware of these issues and he has reframed a lot of those things and experiences in his past.
as for sam choosing that narrative that makes it easier for him to live with (in this case) the memory of his dad, i think it’s an interesting thought. after all thinking that it was dean who allowed john to order him around, imagining that dean liked it, that dean had not a mind of his own, unlike sam who had the strength to rebel, allows him to move some of the rightful rage he feels toward john for his parenting onto dean. to conflate the two of them into a unity, while at the same time lessening john’s position as ‘having done his best’ given the circumstances, while also framing himself as the only victim.
I would add that Sam chooses the narrative that makes it easier for him to live with the memory of how his dad treated his brother. There are so many things indicating that John was physically abusive of Dean in a way he wasn’t of Sam and that while Sam didn’t witness most of it and usually got the ‘sanitised for Sammy’ version of events, Sam can’t have been entirely unaware of it. A lot of the resentment Sam displays towards Dean right from their reunion in the Pilot seems like unacknowledged guilt on Sam’s part for not being able to stop the violence.
i like this observation. the idea of unacknowledged guilt showing as frustration. how it turns into anger at dean for not stopping the violence, for not standing up for himself. it goes back around into, oh so maybe he liked it, so maybe he was okay with it to silence those terrible feelings. that impotence is everything.
(and of course he couldn’t stop it because he was kid.)
but now he keeps lying to himself and the story becomes the truth. when dean faces him with the reality of dean’s experience which you are right is totally different than sam’s experience, sam cannot look at it for what it is, he has a huge blindspot where those dragons live. the only time it comes out without any sanitization for sam without dean downplaying it is when dean’s not himself. last time it was demon dean, right? butwhat he said couldn’t be true, because that was not the real dean.
It’s more than that though – part of Sam’s vision of Dean is colored by how John treated him. For example, at least for me, I often took punishments for my sibs. Either by claiming responsibility for things they did – because I knew I could take it. Or having my parents assume I did something. Or just by getting my sibs out of the way when I could tell one of my parents was going to get pissed no matter what. And that gets codified into family roles. My sibs came to expect that. They viewed me with less respect every time my mother spoke to me with contempt. They assumed that I was the reason for the fighting. I was the problem. I deserved it. –
I thought that I was being good and protective and that I was tough enough to take it. (I was an idiot). That if I was angry – well, that was a sign I really was bad. That if even my parents didn’t love me, that I must be worthless. (Can you see why I identify so much with Dean?) And I think the point about Dean hunting above is ABSOLUTELY right. I’ve been a workaholic for decades. Mostly because work is the only place I know I’m worth something – because they literally PAY me.
The other thing is that the older kid will hide how bad they’re hurting as much as possible. Especially if parents try playing the kids off against each other as a form of control. I bet John did that – “Sam, why can’t you be more like Dean.” But only where Dean couldn’t hear. “Dean. It’s good you can hunt, because you’ll never be smart like Sam.” Dean won’t give John the satisfaction of knowing he got to him. He won’t punish Sam for being better than him. He’ll decide he WANTS Sam to be better than him. To have everything he can’t. He’ll fight for Sam when he won’t for himself. But it will do him damage.
again, thank you for sharing your experience.
i only wanted to remark on the part about the job being a place where dean feels worth. he gets paid in saved lives, in believing he is making the world better one step at time, one scared little kid at time. when he loses that he literally loses everything about himself that helps him stand tall. his pay is in lives saved. and his spiralling in the state we saw him coming to a halt in advanced thanatology was a moment that started not just with mary and cas and crowley death but a long time before.
also what you say about contemp is very relevant to how sam ‘judge’ for lack of better words, dean for not rebelling. how fandom does. why didn’t he stand up to himself? why didn’t he go awyay? he must have liked it.
again thanks for putting so many things in the right perspective for me.
You can also argue that not only could Dean not escape it, he would have thought it was his duty not to escape it. My mom is a pretty bad alcoholic. Always has been and it’s gotten worse since my dad died. As much as she infantizes me and doesn’t acknowledge my right to personal autonomy and is the root of 90 percent of the issues I have now and as much as I want to get the fuck away from her, part of me is afraid that she’s going to drink too much one night or crash her car or fall asleep with a lit cigarette, take your pick.
I’m sure Dean had similar feelings to John. Think about it.
Even after Dean had a license and a car and Sam was away at college, even after Dean was a legal adult he kept contact with John. Shit, the whole damn series starts because John went missing and Dean felt it was his duty to go looking for him. Sure, it was because John was a hunting trip, but how much of that could ben Dean wonder if John was lying in a gutter somewhere?
i think the undercurrent of dean wanting out but feeling as he can’t (due to duty, loyalty and everything you list here) is very much present. isn’t it also the subtext in what the shapeshifter who took dean’s form said about dean? so yeah, the dynamic of this kind of abuse is extremely complicated and wanting it or not, dean being who he was inside it, allowed sam to make the choice to leave easier – not easy, but definitely easier – and made all that harder for dean to ever leave.
and i am very sorry for your personal situation. ❤
I always found it very telling that Sam asks Max in all seriousness, “Why didn’t you just leave?” It shows how little he understands abuse dynamics – obviously due to having mostly been spared from experiencing them directly.
When we talk about parentification and Dean, we usually focus on Dean having to take care of Sam. But parentification isn’t called emotional incest for nothing. Dean also had to fill the role of a spouse for John – offer emotional support and take care of the household. If Sam is to be believed, John could “barely work a toaster”. Someone had to keep him fed. And take care of the family finances. (It’s noteworthy that all of these tasks are traditionally gendered as female – this created a constant conflict for Dean between fulfilling them and living up to John’s standards of masculinity where he had no hope of ever filling even one of these roles to John’s satisfaction, never mind both at once.) As the shapeshifter explained to Sam, Dean feels like “Dad needed me”, like John’s physical and emotional health depended on him. Small children actually need someone to take care of them. But John is an adult. No adult should “need” someone that much.
i didn’t remember that line from nightmare, but i have to say it simply makes evident canon something i always believed about sam’s attitude toward abuse. it stems from his own experience, having had the ‘strenght’ to get away from his family he seems to not get that abusive situations are different. this attitude underlines everything he says and his understanding (or lack thereof) of dean’s experience (he semeed to be starting to understand something about it in season 1 but by season 2 – and will see if my rewatch will confirm it) he makes a drastic step back that has never been really addressed.
anyway,that’s why for example, i wasn’t that surprised to see him blame dean for the fact that john’s drill asergeant routine worked on dean as if there is something fundamentally wrong in dean that made john’s abuse work, as if dean had a defect in his personality that could make john’s abuse effective on dean but not on sam (and on jack at that time). i say this having to accept that sam is being written like this, but also believing that there are no excuses, at this point in canon and with his personal experience, for having never done any emotional work toward trying to understand his own family dynamic better. on the contrary, often with a lot of carelesness and without never being addressed by the narrative, he retraces those dynamics and tries to force dean back into them the few times dean has found the ‘strenght’ to get out.
re. dean fulfilling a lot of ‘spousal needs’ : it has been very evident since the first few episodes. i’m barely at bloody mary on my rewatch and the details of dean taking care of the car, of the laundry, of the money are already very evident and poignant.
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