Scapegoats and Systemic Sacrifice
Many family systems with traumatic and challenging histories choose children to carry a heavy, shameful burden as a scapegoat. Often these are children who are most entangled with someone shameful in the past who must be excluded, concealed or punished. The family scapegoat ends up getting criticized, blamed for everything that goes wrong within the family particularly for those past and present family members who will not take responsibility for their own actions and mistakes. Sometimes scapegoats hold the pain and suffering of the family system in the form of physical or mental illness.