When Boundaries Shift: What the Research and Clinical Practice Show

In families navigating infidelity, the impact on children is not only shaped by what is said or not said, but by the shifts that occur more quietly within the family.

Changes in emotional connection, roles, and boundaries can unfold without clear awareness, yet still influence how children experience safety and stability.

From a structural family therapy perspective, one of the most important impacts of infidelity is how it shifts family boundaries.

Negash & Morgan (2016), in A Family Affair: Examining the Impact of Parental Infidelity on Children Using a Structural Family Therapy Framework, describe two common parental responses. Both are understandable.

Both are protective. And both, when unaddressed, can create risk for children.

What we also understand—through both research and clinical practice—is that the trauma of betrayal can make it incredibly difficult for parents to clearly separate their adult pain from their parenting role.

Even the most thoughtful parents can find themselves navigating this without a clear reference point.

This is where the work of Professor Joshua Coleman becomes particularly relevant. Professor Coleman highlights that when parents are navigating distress, loss, or relational rupture, there can be an increased pull toward children for emotional closeness or stability. While this can feel like bonding connection in the moment, it can unintentionally shift the child into a role that meets the parent’s emotional needs, rather than the child being supported in their own.

In this context, enmeshment is not created by intent.

It emerges through unmet adult needs, blurred boundaries, and the absence of clear relational structure.

From a clinical standpoint, the task is not to remove children from awareness entirely, but to ensure that what they do feel and observe is held safely, and made sense of in a way that protects their role as a child within the family.