#really hope we'll stop using it as a synonym for spoiled instead of acknowledging it as a trauma

[good-to-drive]

hiiii ur one of my favorite beatles analyzers and i know you have some Knowledge about family systems and ur interested in the psychology of paul... I was wondering if you had any thoughts about paul's role in his household and how that changed after the death of his mom? Often he is described as taking on an "eldest daughter" role ie more domestic work/emotional labor after his mom's death but I'm not sure if that's an accurate description. If you have any thoughts about Paul and Jim's relationship specifically those are also welcome :)) (this post got me thinking and i wanted to send it to you to see if you had any additional thoughts: https://www.tumblr.com/sleeper9/763295193962283008/from-this-ask-you-answered-a-few-days-back).

Answer at your own leisure ofc!

Thank you so much for sending this to me!!! (And thank you for calling me one of your favorite analyzers, that is so kind!) This is all SUPER interesting, because I can honestly say I’ve never thought of being parentified or placed as a Golden Child as gendered traits. 

It does make sense, though, that "oldest daughter syndrome" could be a product of girls being more often parentified and placed on a pedestal during their childhood than boys, though I know these more as phenomena that affect the children of addicts in general, not girls specifically. But that's more about my own cultural touchstones than anything else. It would be so interesting to look at these roles based on gender and who is more likely to be elected to (and accept) such and such a role.

That being said, I do think womanhood/domesticity might be a bit of a red herring here – taking responsibility for a toxic system isn’t an inherently female trait, nor does it have to express as caretaking or domestic responsibility.

(And, a bit off topic, but I generally think the desire to read slightly gender nonconforming cismen as women, or slightly gender nonconforming ciswomen as men, is a bit misguided. They're really best understood as slightly gender nonconforming cis people. Which is its own thing).

If Paul spent his childhood feeling overly responsible for preserving his family system, it would explain his anxiety, his perfectionism, his emotional repression, his need for control and constant validation – I actually talk about that a bit re: self-esteem here. But to my eye what I’m seeing is that Paul was probably a Golden Child, and that's actually something I've been wanting to think a little about, so more (and more and more) thoughts below the cut.

I know this tends to get distorted or misunderstood, but put simply, a Golden Child is the child withing a toxic or tumultuous family system responsible for redirecting the system to a positive in order to avoid potentially destabilizing discussions or conflicts. Admiring and praising the Golden Child distracts everyone from the real problem, the real pain, for long enough to push it into the drawer of things they don’t think about. 

I will also say, though, that this quote from Paul expressing financial anxiety after his mother’s death implies a sense of responsibility for their financial situation. So in terms of actual, practical responsibilities and a more straightforward kind of parentification, that was probably there, too. It wouldn't be incompatible with being a Golden Child -- in fact, it's so common to be a parentified Golden Child that this role is referred to as "The Hero." On the other hand, worrying about money doesn’t seem gendered to me, so I still wouldn’t really project this as a female experience.

As a Golden Child you are never allowed to be in pain, never allowed to be confused or afraid, never allowed to make mistakes, never allowed to bring anything into the family but success and happiness and a certain inherent superiority that can be very isolating. They're the one who’s always praised and admired, but at the expense of being allowed to be a child. They're the one who can’t mess up. Whether because they aren't allowed that luxury or because the system won't recognize their mistakes -- it's hard to say, exactly, but I think it's often both.

I'll reiterate, too, that destabilization of a family system is pure deadly horror to children. The best explanation I know for this is “If the mother abandons the young, they perish.” On a very fundamental, just-coming-out-of-the-caves level, children know that being abandoned is death. That even a slight hint of being abandoned is maybe death. And, within a tumultuous system, every disruption of that system is far more than a hint of abandonment. It’s abandonment breathing down your neck, telling you it’ll be here soon. And, in that way, it’s death creeping at the corners of your childhood, being the monster under your bed in a way that people from a healthy family system will probably never understand. It’s no coincidence that so many people with an addicted parent grow up to have brutal anxiety. 

I do feel like a lot of Golden Child traits are present in Paul's adult behavior -- the sort of "flagship" traits of a Golden Child are anxiety and depression, perfectionism, people-pleasing, control issues, fear of failure, workaholism, a deep need for admiration, and being incredibly, almost inhumanly good at suppressing any vulnerable, honest confrontation.

It's also interesting how Paul seemed to actually reenact this role within The Beatles, to thrive on praise, attention, and perhaps a slight sense of being a martyr, while also struggling with control, possibly because he felt responsible for things outside of his control. And it was never his job to be a truth-teller/squeaky wheel -- one of the biggest things that struck me after Get Back was how deeply he relied on suppressing vulnerability, his and others', to maintain homeostasis.

It’s also a good time to mention that we’re elected to our roles within a system, but we also choose them. If Paul was forced to be a Golden Child, he also wanted to be a Golden Child. So in the question of nature vs nurture, it’s very much both. You’re “elected” to the role, not as a conscious choice but as a sort of collective desire to perceive you this way, but you still have to “accept” the role (also subconsciously). 

People choose to accept because playing that role reduces the overall stress level of the system, and as adults they often have it marked very deeply in them that playing this role is how they’re going to survive. They’ve adapted to rely on the things that it provides, because that’s what they had. On an emotional level, that’s why people reenact their childhood roles as adults – not just because they don’t know anything else, but because it feels essential for their survival, and on an emotional level it maybe kind of is (although you can always change – this is psychology, not fate!)

I also think his dependence on praise -- not just preference for it -- is underexamined. A lifetime of constant adulation makes you expect adulation, and then demand it. This is the guy who said in 100 years people will listen to his music the way we listen to Mozart. And I do think people often believe these things because they have to.

So when people talk about how Paul didn’t seem to resent this role in his adult life, what they’re describing is very normal and expected, especially for someone who might still often feel like he’s inside that toxic system (as most of us do). It’s very true that Paul thrived on additional responsibility, constant praise, feeling like a martyr for things he chose. As much as framing a Golden Child as a spoiled child is disgusting behavior, framing a Golden Child as fully innocent of the toxicity of the system is a deep misunderstanding of human relationships in general. Paul made his choices, and he likely made them that way because it tended to get him what he wanted. They were a way to get his needs met. But it’s so naive to think this means he never suffered or struggled with those wanted things. 

I also want to add that society’s (reddit’s?) current conversation around Golden Children is pretty fucked up. The Golden Child experience might even be up there with narcissism as a brutal, life-changing trauma that has been repurposed to an insult. Which tells us a lot about how our society views people who had a difficult childhood.

To be clear, a maladaptive schema like being a former Golden Child can express in very ugly ways, many/most of them unintentional. The people subjected to the toxicity of any system a Golden Child is a part of, any system forced to structure itself around praise and reinforcement of that ego, aren’t wrong for feeling misused or even brutalized by it. Sometimes this is the kind of pain that splatters like paint onto everyone who tries to love you, and that can be just as bad, or sometimes worse, than what you yourself are experiencing.

I like the expression, “It isn’t your fault, but it is your responsibility.” Pain is a heavy thing to hold, and to cope with that in a healthy way is a responsibility all The Beatles failed (and they were ALL responsible for the toxic Beatle system, by the way – it was largely structured to meet John and Paul’s needs, but it was everyone’s responsibility to uphold it and they all did.) But the fact that they were holding that pain in the first place was never their fault, even if they sometimes failed to handle it with grace. Even if they weren't very good victims, and created other victims, and those victims weren't very good either.

I don’t like when people use Paul’s pain as a way to minimize how he hurt other people. A binaried mentality that sees experiencing and causing pain as incompatible is incredibly toxic in regards to mental health, and basically precludes the capacity for compassion. Paul was (and probably still is) a very difficult man.

But he’s also very normal. Very expected. Very human and real in a way that ought to make his kindness, his courage, his dedication, his endless well of love for his family more meaningful, not less. We can continue to see those things in him – and ourselves – even after reality has set in. Because that’s also reality.