to think that 'mini-wife' is problematic for exactly the same reasons that 'jailbait' is problematic?

[ArsenicyOldFace]

In that it transfers responsibility from adult men onto female children?

Thankfully one doesn't hear the word 'jailbait' much any more; society has moved on and we now understand the process of grooming etc

The Electra complex might be a less distasteful way of referring to this, if it exists.

If I said either term to my friends they would look at me daft.

When I have seen mini wife used on here (I have never heard it in rl) it is usually accompanied by a description of the child's behaviour.

For example:
She is always sitting on/next to him.
She hangs off of him.
She is always hugging/touching/kissing him.
She gets her own way all the time.
I never get a look in with DH/DP when she is here.
She is involved in all decisions, we do what she wants and she is never told off.

Rarely does mini wife come with a description of what behaviour the parent is exhibiting which is what influences the child. Which is why I dislike the term and feel it blames the child.

Mini wife is a vile term

I don't like the term mini wife as it points to that this 'issue' only happens to girls and it doesn't. Like I posted before , it happens to boys too.

But I can see why it gets used as it's an easier explanation.

Spousification does exist, my mother did it to my brother.

It's clear there is two sides on this debate. DM and SM. DM refusing to agree it exists and DM demanding fir it to be acknowledged. I'm not a SM but have witnessed this first hand.

I totally agree Flossy. Nearly always on here the child is to blame.

YANBU OP. It is an unpleasant, sexist, adversarial term that lends itself too easily to victim blaming.
Eg. "Our house is a nightmare because DSD is a mini wife" vs "Our house is a nightmare because DP parentified DSD and isn't fixing the problem."

Mini wife is an awful term.

It interests me to note that I've never heard it used upon daughters in mother plus father relationships who are 'guilty' of some of the the so-called "mini wife" behaviours mentioned by Flossy.

It's clear there is two sides on this debate. DM and SM. DM refusing to agree it exists and DM demanding fir it to be acknowledged.

Not the case. I am coming at this as both DM and (former) SM.

I don't like the term. Because it's unsavoury and child-blaming but also because it is unhelpful.

Lots of SMs have objected to the term.

This isn't family therapy tho

It's a chat forum

I am SM to 2 and DM to 4 and I object to it.

flossy the term miniwife or spousification?

I'm a DM to 2 and a SM to 1, and I loathe the term "mini wife".

I agree, this term is very unsavoury, and blames the child.

I'm an sm and I despise the term.

Spousification is bad enough and rarely seems to be used in appropriate circumstances. It is all too often used to describe a child who is just being affectionate and possibly over-protective (to the extent that you can tell from a forum post) as a result of feeling insecure.

Just how does someone commit emotional incest anyway? Genuine question.

Mini wife Softly
However I am cautious of using spousification as I think it is very complex and should be used by professionals who can then support them family to repair any damage as appose to arm chair diagnosis.

the family

clash in my brothers case when my mother split up from her dh, the day he left she told my db that he now had to be the man of the house. He was 7/8 She repeated told him, he was her 'big man', she made him extra special meals because he was 'the man of the house' . "You have to behave like this now as your man off the house..." Ect..

She would shout him (wake him up while he was a sleep) to come and get in to her bed because she was lonely and needed some company. She told him about her new boyfriends and he was a shoulder to cry on when they broke up. She would sit there crying about it while he brushed her hair. He worried about her constantly.

When sf moved back in (db df) there was a definite power struggle. Db then became jealous of his df. My mother would take the piss out of sf and db would laugh along with my mother but there was a weird undercurrent. Sf would tell db off then my mother would argue with sf and db and my mother would sit on the same chair ignoring him. I won't even go in to more detail as it's just to creepy. They eventually split up for good and in his teens my brother actually went to live with his df.

When my db eventually got a gf my mother hated them all, making horrible nicknames for them.

Yes it does get banded about alot on here - too much. But it does happen.

It's never ever the child fault. Ever. But people do need to name it.

However I am cautious of using spousification as I think it is very complex and should be used by professionals who can then support them family to repair any damage as appose to arm chair diagnosis

In an ideal world that would be great but in reality it's not going to happen. How many MILs get called narcissists,or exh sociopaths, on here? Once its in someone's vocabulary it's going to be used. Wisely or not.

As I said I am cautious about using it.

Just how does someone commit emotional incest anyway?

As I said in my last post, it is used when a parents need for an intimate emotional partner are satisfied by a child.

So it depends on the needs of the parent as to how that manifests itself - for some, it is the emotional needed be admired - a mother may seek their sons approval of their appearance or choice of clothing (do I look younger/slimmer/sexier in these jeans?) or a father may seek his daughters admiration of his strength.
Often the parent will fulfil a need for intimate conversation with a child - divulging inappropriate details of interactions with other adults, sharing intimate details that friends have shared and similar. This often happens between mothers and daughters - it's not exclusively x-gender. Mothers may seek to 'replace' a husband with a son youre the man of the house now - placing responsibility for the male protector role on the child.

And in many cases, the parents relationship with the child fulfils the parents need for physical affection. NOT sexually motivated but the human need for physical contact with another that is fulfilled by an intimate emotional partner. In emotional incest, A child may be expected to give mummy a hug after a bad day at work, whether or not the child wants physical interaction at that point, and a daughter may be invited to lay her head on Dads lap while watching TV. On their own, nothing to be concerned about, if they are child led but when the purpose and outcome is the fulfilling of a parents emotional need rather than the needs of the child, a cause for concern.

It's often why SMs get a hard time when they describe the situation; the dynamic is not about the actions between parent and child but the motive behind it. A child who is in an emotionally incestuous relationship with their parent will be motivated by a desire to meet that parents emotional needs in order to win their parents approval or (in extreme cases) avoid their parents anger.
So to a casual observer, the actions appear innocent, but to someone more familiar with the parent and child, the motives are more apparent, and it does appear that the child is initiating at least in part, the interaction.

Softly, that sounds awful.

I'm not denying it occurs and has very painful consequences, more objecting to the way it's thrown into any situation particularly in the sp boards - usually with a fair degree of child-blaming too.

If I may make an analogy, it's like on the relationship boards where a bloke is being a bit of a twerp and someone sooner or later decides he probably has ASD.

In both cases, the terms are often bandied about by people who may be very much misinformed and it isn't helpful to people who actually are in such situations.

X -posts with softly - it must be really hard for you to remember it, but I think it's amazing how "text book" your description of their behaviour is - it's obviously quite accurately documented.

wakeycakey thanks for explaining, that's interesting. It's not a concept I've come across before (although I still think they could've come up with a nicer name for it)

This was the first link that came up when I googled mini-wife: [[https://www.facebook.com/miniwifesyndrome
miniwifesyndrome]]

But seeing as how we're all grown ups here, it seems daft to get so hung up on a term.

The reason that it's not 'daft' to get hung up on a term should be obvious. There are terms that we don't use these days that used to be part of normal, everyday speech. They were stopped because there were offensive and damaging. We don't use them now. This phrase is another that should be consigned to the 'out of date' bin.

Those who have experienced the above can quickly identify with "mini wife" and know exactly what each other means. Most women are good and sensible an don't need to spell out the intention of their every word.

That phrase only applies to 50% of the population, the females, so what is the 'go to' phrase for the other half? There isn't one, so the argument that people need and quick, easily recognised phrase doesn't really hold up.

Talking of emotional incest, this reasoning would suggest that 'spousification' is abuse of the child by the adult, provided that the child is too young to consent.

When the child is too young to consent, incest may also be child abuse. But between two consenting adults, incest (emotional or physical) is not abuse. Both parties are considered equally responsible.

So when women, and it is usually women, post on mn about what they see, I think it's important that posters point out to them that the child is being abused.