Reversing the roles: Child or caretaker?

During her childhood, Kim often felt she was more of a caretaker than a child. 

Many other child translators — also known as child language brokers — share Kim’s feelings. Child language brokering, the practice where children interpret and mediate communication for their family members, is common in immigrant families worldwide, especially in educational, healthcare, and community settings. 

According to the Nuffield Foundation, between 70% to 90% of children from immigrant backgrounds in the U.S. and U.K. engage in child language brokering, with Latino, Asian, and Eastern European children being the most frequent brokers due to higher bilingual fluency among these populations.

When 8 year old Kim started translating for her parents, she quickly felt a level of responsibility for their well-being, and she tried her best to help them as much as she could. 

Whether it was teaching them how to use the Internet or translating countless paperwork from school, helping her parents with daily tasks became a defining image of Kim’s childhood. 

As years and decades passed, Kim slowly recognized that a role reversal had occurred in her home. 

“Of course, my parents still had more power in the household than my sister and I,” Kim said. “But the fact was I had to lead them through so many parts of their day every day. It was during those moments that I sometimes felt more like a caretaker than a child.”

This “role reversal” is a common occurrence among child language brokers, according to the Journal of Family Issues. However, many child translators experience higher levels of stress, anxiety, and symptoms of depression as they navigate complex, often high-stakes communication.

“When child translators start to take on greater responsibilities within a family, this shift is often referred to as adultification or parentification,” said Majorie Elaine, Ph.D., a professor of Urban Schooling at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Sometimes, kids would share that it became tiring, especially when they have more competing demands on them.”

While Kim would do anything to help her parents, she notes that language brokering can be a burden.

“Naturally, anything can become a burden if you didn’t volunteer for it,” Kim said. “On top of that, when translating in a way that’s caring for a person — in this case, my dad — I didn’t know how much emotion would go into it, because, as his daughter, there’s no way to translate without emotion.”

However, many language brokers feel positive about their experiences of translating for their parents, as it allows them to learn and improve skills such as empathy, decision-making, and emotional processing, according to the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

“While there are some situations in which the parents feel infantilized, that’s not what I found. For the most part, the adults were in charge, but they were looking for the kids’ support,” Elaine said. “I did some studies that followed people over a long period of time, and as they looked back on what they learned from language brokering, many came to see, ‘Actually, I learned a lot from doing that.’”

Reflecting on her childhood, Kim realized that although there had been a role reversal, she felt the importance of supporting family transcended any feelings she had about roles in the first place.

“I didn’t choose this role for myself. But my parents didn’t choose the role of needing help either,” Kim said. “At the end of the day, the roles don’t matter. I am both a daughter and a caretaker, and as a family, all that matters is that we take care of each other.”