The article examines whether adult male and female children of alcoholic and nonalcoholic parents differentially exhibit generational boundary distortions. Individual needs that remain unmet in one generation are experienced as accounts due, leading later in development to the subjective distortion of a relationship as if one's partner or even one's children were his parent. In these systems, parentification thus serves to help stabilize the family and to gratify the needs of fragile and undifferentiated adult figures. Only recently have researchers begun systematically to study parentification, spousification, and parental children. One line of investigation has explored the effects of these processes on the younger generation. In a study descriptive data were used from family therapy sessions with five families and naturalistic observations of a sixth family, in which at least one child was part of a pathological parentification process. It was found that these youngsters had an increased capacity to care for others and a strong sense of accountability within the family. Pathological effects, however, were also found, the most important of which involved impairment of individuation and autonomy.