This paper undertakes detailed examination of Halim Mahmoudi’s graphic novel, Little Mama, positioning it as significant fictional testimony to the profound impact of childhood trauma, specifically systemic neglect and its effects on familial dynamics. The analysis demonstrates how such trauma fundamentally disrupts conventional parent-child relationships, often resulting in children being compelled to assume conventional adult parental responsibilities. Drawing upon key concepts from clinical psychology, including parentification, defined by Hooper (2018) as instrumental and emotional role reversal within families, this paper argues that trauma hinders the psychological and physical development of child abuse survivors. The narrative’s focal point is the characterisation of Brenda, the protagonist, revealing a specific form of inverse parenting, where children are forced to become emotional caregivers and protectors of their parental abusers, at the expense of self-welfare. Furthermore, the analysis draws on Phillip Tew’s (2004) concept of ‘traumatological’ to examine how personal psychological damage intersects with systemic inequalities, revealing the engagement of trauma narratives with broader sociopolitical structures that perpetuate cycles of abuse. This framework, alongside Hillary Chute’s (Graphic Women: life narrative and contemporary comics, Columbia University Press, 2010) analysis of embodied trauma in comics, illuminates how Little Mama offers a powerful critique of societal failures to protect vulnerable families and children while exposing complex intergenerational cycles of trauma perpetuated by systemic oppression.