Natal Saturn in the 4th house: The Bearer of All Weight

Image: saturn and honey

Saturn in the 4th house typically finds childhood, home and family to be heavy topics. Tangible or intangible adult responsibilities may have been heaped onto you during childhood, and many people with natal 4th house Saturn feel like they were never really a child but more like an adult stuck in a child’s body. Saturn in the 4th house is the quintessential ‘late bloomer’ placement. Saturn in the 4th house is a person who, in a sense, ages in reverse, beginning life feeling older than their body and often feeling much freer later in life.

Saturn in astrology

Saturn is a leaden weight. It holds down, grounds, steadies, and protects. It is practical and not very warm or bright. It has big expectations and big fears. It is associated with fear, depression, anxiety, restriction, hard work and hard lessons; as well as harvest, sustainability, agriculture, and structure.

4th house in astrology

The 4th house sits at the very bottom of the chart and deals with roots of all kinds – family of origin, lineage and ancestry, the deep roots of our psychological programming, childhood experiences – as well as your physical home. The 4th house is like the roots of the tree of your life, and the soil they grow in.

Natal Saturn in the 4th house

Saturn in the 4th house feels like trying to grow an apple tree in a room with no windows. What should be a warm womb often feels more like a cold prison or a heavy weight. Where there should be a mountain spring, there is a desert. Where there should be a home, there is only a house, or perhaps just a tumbleweed blowing in the wind.

Natal Saturn in the 4th house for some people is as simple as having parents who were hard on you, had high standards or expectations for you, or were cautionary tales themselves – fuck-ups who acted as symbolic (or literal) reminders of what can happen to you if you do not achieve and do your best. For others, 4th house Saturn shows up as all kinds of family issues; deep psychological issues, fears and anxieties; having to grow up fast; having to carry a ton of responsibility at a young age (in tangible or intangible ways); or parents who were unkind (or worse), overprotective, did not trust you, or who you could not trust. Trust is a big topic for people with Saturn in the 4th house.

4th house Saturn is rarely an easy placement. There is no “good” place to have Saturn – it’s heavy! But with all of the difficult parts of this placement, it can manifest in more positive ways too, especially if there are more positive planets (Venus and Jupiter in particular) in the 4th house as well. Despite its more challenging qualities, Saturn can also be beautifully protective, practical, and sturdy, so while maybe there were some challenging emotional components to childhood, perhaps your basic needs were always provided for, or maybe your family struggled with money, but there was always plenty of love, etc.

Saturn in the 4th house people were very often molded into adults, one way or another, through overt expectation or by silent force or necessity, before their small body could catch up, and made to carry responsibility that no child could ever successfully carry. This can really fuck up a person’s ability to trust themselves, to take initiative, and to lead; in one way or another, it can feel like you were set up to fail. This has to be recognized, accepted, and healed from. You never could have been asked to carry what you were told or felt you had to, and that should not have been a problem.

Image: Laura Wro

Natal Saturn in the 4th house also has a tendency to feel very, very ashamed of their failures. That shame must be eradicated or it has the potential to run your life. One of the best ways to do so is to talk to your “inner child” (I know you’re likely rolling your eyes because you have never felt like a child, but there is a small child inside of you somewhere, no matter how early on in life they were silenced and hidden away) out loud in ways that are gentle, nurturing, and supportive. A “You are safe now, and I’ll always be here to love you and keep you safe. You have nothing to fear because I will always be here. You don’t have to hide your imperfections in the closet under the stairs. You are allowed to be both seen and flawed at the same time. You’re allowed to try” sort of thing.

The next step in the process may be to actively try to humanize yourself, to allow other people to see that you are actually flawed, in order to reprogram the part of your mind that says “your failures are hideously shameful and must be hidden” to see that, actually, you may be loved for your very human nature, not in spite of it. You do not have to be good at everything right off the bat. You are allowed to try, and ot not do everything perfect the first time, and it may even be safe to do this out in public, despite what your inner Saturn may say.

People with Saturn in the 4th house typically have an unconscious sense that they are solely responsible for and to blame for everything. This is likely because you had to carry so much emotional/psychological weight as a child, because you had to act like an adult when you should have been able to play, and/or because you want to feel like you are always in control.

4th house Saturn comes with a lot of self-control. You may have learned early on that you had to be in control because the people around you proved again and again that they could not be trusted to run things properly. Or maybe you didn’t have any say over your own life growing up and now you desperately want the autonomy, control and respect that you never had before. Whatever the cause, it is important to recognize the value of self-control, but also to free yourself from the cage you learned to see as home. Is it possible that there is life outside of it, and that it may even be safe to venture out into the world? Can you develop a sense of trust in yourself or in the world? Do you truly need to be caged in order to be safe?

It may be particularly helpful for people with this placement to familiarize themselves with Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, particularly stages one through three. Please note here that I am an astrologer, not a trained psychologist, and this is not medical advice. This is merely a connection I’ve observed over the course of many years. Please take all of this with a grain of salt and consult a mental health professional if needed!

Natal Saturn in the 4th house & the Stages of Psychosocial Development

Stage 1: Trust vs. Mistrust (approximately from birth until age one or two)

According to Erikson, during stage one we are learning whether or not we are safe in the world. Can you trust that someone will consistently comfort you when you cry? Can you trust that you will always be fed? Can you trust that you will always be held and kept warm?

We cannot form memories that are accessible to the conscious mind until about age two, so this is a very tricky and very subconscious stage of development. Things that happen during this stage seem to go directly into the unconscious mind and into the body.

4th house Saturn may be psychologically rooted here. Maybe your caretakers were not consistent in their ability or willingness to meet your basic needs. Perhaps you never truly feel safe. Maybe you don’t trust people to be there or love or care for you and do not ask others to meet your needs. Maybe you’re disconnected from your own basic needs because you’re not used to having them met. Maybe you have learned to associate having or expressing needs with rejection or abandonment and try to detach yourself from them.

Saturn in the 4th house often stems from childhood experiences that left us feeling that our parents–and thus other people in general–could not be trusted. (Note: Saturn in hard aspect to the moon sometimes has a similar root.) Early in life, 4th house Saturns have often had to go without, emotionally or physically. That can be very damaging to a small child who is not yet capable of meeting their own needs. This sense that we must go without persists into adulthood; without early-life evidence that the outside world is capable of meeting your needs, it can be hard to trust that your needs will ever be met as an adult. Many people with Saturn in the 4th house learn to take care of all of their needs on their own, do not trust others to help or support them, or it simply doesn’t occur to them to allow, expect, or ask others to. It can be uncomfortable to even consider that you have needs to begin with.

It’s important to start experimenting with trust as an adult – trust that you can have what you need now, that others can help support you, and that it is safe to not only have needs but to express them to other people. You can choose to grow trust in other people by selecting people who are willing and able to consistently love you, care for you, and help you meet your needs. Through this process, your Saturn in the 4th house becomes a strong, hardy, supportive structure on which you can build a fruitful life, rather than a shoddy foundation built on fear, ‘going without,’ and mistrust.

Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame/Doubt (approximately from age one or two to three)

Stage 2 is toddlerhood: the “terrible twos”; the tantrums; the endless waterfall of “no;” trying and falling (sometimes literally); trying and succeeding.

This is the age when we discover our autonomy. We are learning to feed, dress and clean ourselves. We are learning to explore the world and our bodies. We begin to form consciously accessible memories and operate from a less instinctual, basic-survival-needs-driven place. If caregivers encourage our autonomy while still remaining close, helping us along, and setting healthy limits, we learn that it is okay to have a will of our own. If our parents discourage autonomy by shaming, under-protecting or overprotecting us, or by doing everything for us, the growth of confidence and inner security is stunted and we may sink into self-doubt.

Saturn in the 4th’s psychological root may lie here, in the experience of seeking autonomy and either learning that it is okay to try (regardless of success!) and to individuate, or that it is shameful to try or to individuate and that you cannot be trusted with autonomy. This is the 4th house Saturn experience of feeling unsure of yourself.

While the first stage of psychosocial development teaches us that others can’t be trusted, the second stage may teach a natal Saturn in the 4th house frequently correlates with a complex experience of learning that you cannot be trusted.

Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt (approximately from age three to seven)

Stage two fades into stage three. This is the age when we learn and refine basic skills, and start doing new things because WE feel like it.

Saturn in the 4th house can cause issues in this phase of growth when it shows up as controlling parents who make you feel fearful of trying things on your own or place too many restrictions on you, or physically or emotionally absent parents who are not there to support you. This is the stage where we learn that it’s okay to do, to take action. If parents aren’t appropriately present and supportive, this can create quite a lot of anxiety around your competence.

4th house Saturn in adulthood

During early adulthood, people with this placement often have a difficult time seeing how capable they really are because of these childhood experiences. Your growing mind could not possibly carry the weight that was put on it during childhood, and the adult part of the brain has a hard time knowing that now you actually can handle things. In other cases, this manifests as difficulty with taking action and knowing that you are free to do so, and that you don’t need anyone’s permission. This placement sometimes imbues its bearer with a deep fear of failure that can be very exhausting. This is especially true if Saturn also opposes your midheaven or any planets in the 10th house, or makes other hard aspects to personal planets.

People with Saturn in the 4th often feel like they were never really children but an adult trapped (and I mean trapped) in a child’s body. People with this placement can be resistant to the idea that they even have an ‘inner child’, because it so often correlates with never really having felt like a child. Rejecting the idea of your inner child is a sign that that inner child is deeply, deeply in need of tender, unconditional love and care.

With this placement (and with difficult Saturn placements in general!), it can be incredibly helpful to speak to your inner child with love and care, perhaps even out loud. Comfort them. Reassure them. Tell them that you are always going to be there for them to love them, support them, and take care of absolutely all of their needs.

4th house Saturn is the quintessential “late bloomer” placement, and I think this is because there is typically so much to bounce back from. Where others may be able to jump right into the next phase of life when they enter adulthood, 4th house Saturn kids have a lot to heal from. Saturn is a millstone, and you have to untie that weight from your neck in order to ever climb the mountains you want to climb. In some cases, you have to untie it in order to even know that there is a part of you that wants to climb any mountains at all.

It is important for people with Saturn in the 4th house to create appropriate boundaries with their families. In some cases they may remain a source of stress and discomfort, and Saturn requires healthy boundaries. It’s important to moderate how much you take on in general, too – not everything is your responsibility, despite what your childhood may have told you. It’s also super beneficial for people with this placement to protect their home and treat it like a sacred temple.

Once you get there, growing up is often a relief for people with Saturn in the 4th house as your outside begins to match your insides, you begin to believe in your own competence, and you learn how to use the emotional resilience you developed during childhood to actually achieve your dreams and create a better world. Saturn in the 4th house can be alchemized from a restrictive prison or burdensome weight into a sturdy foundation; from depleted soil into a rich, beautiful soil that the tree of your life can grow from steadily.

For parents of kids with Saturn in their 4th

Anytime I talk publicly about placements that often indicate a difficult childhood or strained relationship with one’s family, parents of children with those placements have lots of questions and worries.

I understand that this can be a scary thing to think about! No one wants their kid’s childhood to be anything less than ideal. It’s important to remember that though Saturn in the 4th house is often a challenging placement, there are absolutely exceptions. Not everyone with this placement regards their childhood as difficult.

Secondly, you have control here. You have a say in what happens. You have the opportunity to become the beautifully supportive, wise, solid, reliable Saturnian figure rather than embodying the harsh, cold, or distant side of Saturn.

It’s important that you remain aware of both extremes of Saturn and find the perfect balance between those extremes. Be aware that while it is important that your child learns to take care of themselves, they are still kids and all kids need lots of help, even into adulthood. While it’s important that your kid’s basic survival needs are taken care of, they also need gentle, reliable emotional support too. While you of course want to protect your child, you cannot protect or shield them from everything, and by trying to do so, you may be depriving them of important life lessons and opportunities to build sustaining self-trust. And finally, work on your own sense of responsibility. It’s not uncommon for kids with this placement to have been raised by parents who are irresponsible in one way or another. Instead, embrace the responsibility of adulthood, focus on your own long-term future, and be realistic about what life asks of you