How can having a child with allergies affect family relationships?

There is a growing bank of evidence of how allergies can affect family relationships. Dr. Murray Pushpin at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City and later at Denver's Children's Asthma Hospital observed a telling phenomenon. When hospitalized under optimal conditions, some children improved quickly - what are called "rapid remitters" - only to start wheezing and coughing the minute Mom came to visit. Another study showed that some patients remitted rapidly when the parents took a vacation and the kids stayed at home, supervised by medical personnel. Pushpin coined the word "parentectomy" to describe this inverse link between the child's health and the parent's presence.

We now recognize that families are complex in their relationships. In a family, the "patient" is not the only one who is affected by the illness. Each member of the family plays a role, although the patient is the "star." Thus the basis for the field of family therapy, in which the entire family is treated. Today, with the multiple models for the family unit, a more apt term might be household therapy.

The central theme is that without therapy, other family members function as enablers. By helping the ill person deal with the chronic illness, the others eventually come to define their existence and derive purpose in life from their supporting roles to the patient-star. This is the nature of that well-known phenomenon, codependency.