family life and responsible parenthood essay

Essay on Family Life And Responsible Parenthood

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100 Words Essay on Family Life And Responsible Parenthood

Introduction to family life.

Family life is a shared journey with our loved ones. It’s about living together, sharing happiness, sadness, and learning from each other. It’s also about helping each other grow and become better people. In a family, we learn to love, care, share, and respect others.

Understanding Responsible Parenthood

Responsible parenthood means taking care of your children’s needs. This includes their physical needs like food and shelter, and their emotional needs like love and support. Parents should also teach their children good values and guide them to become good people.

Link Between Family Life and Responsible Parenthood

Responsible parenthood shapes family life. When parents take care of their children’s needs and teach them good values, they create a happy and healthy family environment. This helps the children grow up to be responsible and caring adults.

Importance of Responsible Parenthood

Responsible parenthood is important because it affects the children’s future. If parents do not take care of their children’s needs or teach them good values, the children may grow up to be unhappy or irresponsible adults. But if parents are responsible, the children will likely grow up to be happy and responsible.

250 Words Essay on Family Life And Responsible Parenthood

What is family life.

Family life is the time we spend with our close relatives, such as our parents, siblings, and sometimes our extended family. This time is filled with love, care, and learning. We share our daily experiences, joys, and sorrows with our family. It is in the family that we first learn to talk, to move, and to behave in a certain way.

The Role of Parents

Parents play a crucial role in family life. They are the ones who provide for the family’s basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing. They also give emotional support, guide their children, and teach them right from wrong. Parents are the first teachers in a person’s life.

What is Responsible Parenthood?

Responsible parenthood means that parents do their best to raise their children well. They try to give their kids a good education, teach them good manners, and help them become good people. Responsible parents also make sure their children are healthy and safe. They take care of their children’s needs and guide them as they grow up.

Why is Responsible Parenthood Important?

Responsible parenthood is important because it affects the future of the children and the society they live in. When parents are responsible, they help their children grow into responsible adults. These adults then contribute positively to society. On the other hand, if parents are not responsible, it can lead to problems for the children and the society.

In conclusion, family life and responsible parenthood are closely linked. They both play a big role in shaping the future of children and society. Therefore, it is important for parents to be responsible and for families to spend quality time together.

500 Words Essay on Family Life And Responsible Parenthood

Understanding family life.

Family life is not only about living together under one roof. It is about sharing, caring, and supporting each other in good and bad times. It is about celebrating small moments of joy and overcoming difficulties together.

Parents play a vital role in family life. They are the pillars that hold the family together. They provide us with love, care, and guidance. They teach us about right and wrong. They help us develop our skills and talents. They prepare us for the challenges of life.

Responsible Parenthood

Being a parent is not an easy job. It requires a lot of patience, understanding, and love. Responsible parenthood means taking care of the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of children. It means providing them with a safe and nurturing environment.

Responsible parents guide their children in making good decisions. They teach them about the importance of honesty, kindness, and respect. They help them develop a sense of responsibility and self-discipline.

The Impact of Responsible Parenthood on Family Life

When parents fulfill their responsibilities, children feel loved and secure. They develop a positive attitude towards life. They become confident and responsible individuals. They learn to value relationships and respect others.

In conclusion, family life and responsible parenthood are closely related. They play a crucial role in shaping the future of children. They help them become responsible and caring individuals. They prepare them for the challenges of life. Therefore, it is important for parents to understand their responsibilities and fulfill them with love and care.

Family life and responsible parenthood are not just about fulfilling duties. They are about creating a world full of love, respect, and understanding for our children. They are about making a difference in their lives and helping them become better individuals.

So, let’s cherish our family life and strive to be responsible parents. Let’s create a beautiful world for our children. Let’s make them proud of us. Let’s make the world a better place for them.

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Parenting 101: What is Responsible Parenting?

Mica Valledor

Mica Valledor is an expert shopper and gift-giver, all thanks to being a godmother to five incredible kiddos. She's also a full-time furmom who believes you should treat yourself whenever you deserve it!

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Parenting Matters: Supporting Parents of Children Ages 0-8 (2016)

Chapter: 1 introduction, 1 introduction.

Parents are among the most important people in the lives of young children. 1 From birth, children are learning and rely on mothers and fathers, as well as other caregivers acting in the parenting role, to protect and care for them and to chart a trajectory that promotes their overall well-being. While parents generally are filled with anticipation about their children’s unfolding personalities, many also lack knowledge about how best to provide for them. Becoming a parent is usually a welcomed event, but in some cases, parents’ lives are fraught with problems and uncertainty regarding their ability to ensure their child’s physical, emotional, or economic well-being.

At the same time, this study was fundamentally informed by recognition that the task of ensuring children’s healthy development does not rest solely with parents or families. It lies as well with governments and organizations at the local/community, state, and national levels that provide programs and services to support parents and families. Society benefits socially and economically from providing current and future generations of parents with the support they need to raise healthy and thriving children ( Karoly et al., 2005 ; Lee et al., 2015 ). In short, when parents and other caregivers are able to support young children, children’s lives are enriched, and society is advantaged by their contributions.

To ensure positive experiences for their children, parents draw on the resources of which they are aware or that are at their immediate disposal.

___________________

1 In this report, “parents” refers to the primary caregivers of young children in the home. In addition to biological and adoptive parents, main caregivers may include kinship (e.g., grandparents), foster, and other types of caregivers.

However, these resources may vary in number, availability, and quality at best, and at worst may be offered sporadically or not at all. Resources may be close at hand (e.g., family members), or they may be remote (e.g., government programs). They may be too expensive to access, or they may be substantively inadequate. Whether located in early childhood programs, school-based classrooms, well-child clinics, or family networks, support for parents of young children is critical to enhancing healthy early childhood experiences, promoting positive outcomes for children, and helping parents build strong relationships with their children (see Box 1-1 ).

The parent-child relationship that the parent described in Box 1-1 sought and continues to work toward is central to children’s growth and

development—to their social-emotional and cognitive functioning, school success, and mental and physical health. Experiences during early childhood affect children’s well-being over the course of their lives. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when children’s brains are developing rapidly and when nearly all of their experiences are created and shaped by their parents and by the positive or difficult circumstances in which the parents find themselves. Parents play a significant role in helping children build and refine their knowledge and skills, as well as their learning expectations, beliefs, goals, and coping strategies. Parents introduce children to the social world where they develop understandings of themselves and their place and value in society, understandings that influence their choices and experiences over the life course.

PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY

Over the past several decades, researchers have identified parenting-related knowledge, attitudes, and practices that are associated with improved developmental outcomes for children and around which parenting-related programs, policies, and messaging initiatives can be designed. However, consensus is lacking on the elements of parenting that are most important to promoting child well-being, and what is known about effective parenting has not always been adequately integrated across different service sectors to give all parents the information and support they need. Moreover, knowledge about effective parenting has not been effectively incorporated into policy, which has resulted in a lack of coordinated and targeted efforts aimed at supporting parents.

Several challenges to the implementation of effective parenting practices exist as well. One concerns the scope and complexity of hardships that influence parents’ use of knowledge, about effective parenting, including their ability to translate that knowledge into effective parenting practices and their access to and participation in evidence-based parenting-related programs and services. Many families in the United States are affected by such hardships, which include poverty, parental mental illness and substance use, and violence in the home. A second challenge is inadequate attention to identifying effective strategies for engaging and utilizing the strengths of fathers, discussed later in this chapter and elsewhere in this report. Even more limited is the understanding of how mothers, fathers, and other caregivers together promote their children’s development and analysis of the effects of fathers’ parenting on child outcomes. A third challenge is limited knowledge of exactly how culture and the direct effects of racial discrimination influence childrearing beliefs and practices or children’s development ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000 ). Despite acknowledgment of and attention to the importance of culture in

the field of developmental science, few studies have explored differences in parenting among demographic communities that vary in race and ethnicity, culture, and immigrant experience, among other factors, and the implications for children’s development.

In addition, the issue of poverty persists, with low-income working families being particularly vulnerable to policy and economic shifts. Although these families have benefited in recent years from the expansion of programs and policies aimed at supporting them (discussed further below), the number of children living in deep poverty has increased ( Sherman and Trisi, 2014 ). 2 Moreover, the portrait of America’s parents and children has changed over the past 50 years as a result of shifts in the numbers and origins of immigrants to the United States and in the nation’s racial, ethnic, and cultural composition ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ; Migration Policy Institute, 2016 ). Family structure also has grown increasingly diverse across class, race, and ethnicity, with fewer children now being raised in households with two married parents; more living with same-sex parents; and more living with kinship caregivers, such as grandparents, and in other household arrangements ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ). Lastly, parenting increasingly is being shaped by technology and greater access to information about parenting, some of which is not based in evidence and much of which is only now being studied closely.

The above changes in the nation’s demographic, economic, and technological landscape, discussed in greater detail below, have created new opportunities and challenges with respect to supporting parents of young children. Indeed, funding has increased for some programs designed to support children and families. At the state and federal levels, policy makers recently have funded new initiatives aimed at expanding early childhood education ( Barnett et al., 2015 ). Over the past several years, the number of states offering some form of publicly funded prekindergarten program has risen to 39, and after slight dips during the Great Recession of 2008, within-state funding of these programs has been increasing ( Barnett et al., 2015 ). Furthermore, the 2016 federal budget allocates about $750 million for state-based preschool development grants focused on improved access and better quality of care and an additional $1 billion for Head Start programs ( U.S. Department of Education, 2015 ; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015 ). The federal budget also includes additional funding for the expansion of early childhood home visiting programs ($15 billion over the next 10 years) and increased access to child care for low-income working families ($28 billion over 10 years) ( U.S. Department

2 Deep poverty is defined as household income that is 50 percent or more below the federal poverty level (FPL). In 2015, the FPL for a four-person household was $24,250 ( Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, 2015 ).

of Health and Human Services, 2015 ). Low-income children and families have been aided as well in recent years by increased economic support from government in the form of both cash benefits (e.g., the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit) and noncash benefits (e.g., Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), and millions of children and their families have moved out of poverty as a result ( Sherman and Trisi, 2014 ).

It is against this backdrop of need and opportunity that the Administration for Children and Families, the Bezos Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the U.S. Department of Education, the Foundation for Child Development, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine empanel a committee to conduct a study to examine the state of the science with respect to parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices tied to positive parent-child interactions and child outcomes and strategies for supporting them among parents of young children ages 0-8. The purpose of this study was to provide a roadmap for the future of parenting and family support policies, practices, and research in the United States.

The statement of task for the Committee on Supporting the Parents of Young Children is presented in Box 1-2 . The committee was tasked with describing barriers to and facilitators for strengthening parenting capacity and parents’ participation and retention in salient programs and services. The committee was asked to assess the evidence and then make recommendations whose implementation would promote wide-scale adoption of effective strategies for enabling the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Given the multi- and interdisciplinary nature of the study task, the 18-member committee comprised individuals with an array of expertise, including child development, early childhood education, developmental and educational psychology, child psychiatry, social work, family engagement research, pediatric medicine, public and health policy, health communications, implementation science, law, and economics (see Appendix D for biosketches of the committee members).

WHAT IS PARENTING?

Conceptions of who parents are and what constitute the best conditions for raising children vary widely. From classic anthropological and human development perspectives, parenting often is defined as a primary mechanism of socialization, that is, a primary means of training and preparing children to meet the demands of their environments and take advantage

of opportunities within those environments. As Bornstein (1991, p. 6) explains, the “particular and continuing task of parents and other caregivers is to enculturate children . . . to prepare them for socially accepted physical, economic, and psychological situations that are characteristic of the culture in which they are to survive and thrive.”

Attachment security is a central aspect of development that has been

defined as a child’s sense of confidence that the caregiver is there to meet his or her needs ( Main and Cassidy, 1988 ). All children develop attachments with their parents, but how parents interact with their young children, including the extent to which they respond appropriately and consistently to their children’s needs, particularly in times of distress, influences whether the attachment relationship that develops is secure or insecure. Young chil-

dren who are securely attached to their parents are provided a solid foundation for healthy development, including the establishment of strong peer relationships and the ability to empathize with others ( Bowlby, 1978 ; Chen et al., 2012 ; Holmes, 2006 ; Main and Cassidy, 1988 ; Murphy and Laible, 2013 ). Conversely, young children who do not become securely attached with a primary caregiver (e.g., as a result of maltreatment or separation) may develop insecure behaviors in childhood and potentially suffer other adverse outcomes over the life course, such as mental health disorders and disruption in other social and emotional domains ( Ainsworth and Bell, 1970 ; Bowlby, 2008 ; Schore, 2005 ).

More recently, developmental psychologists and economists have described parents as investing resources in their children in anticipation of promoting the children’s social, economic, and psychological well-being. Kalil and DeLeire (2004) characterize this promotion of children’s healthy development as taking two forms: (1) material, monetary, social, and psychological resources and (2) provision of support, guidance, warmth, and love. Bradley and Corwyn (2004) characterize the goals of these investments as helping children successfully regulate biological, cognitive, and social-emotional functioning.

Parents possess different levels and quality of access to knowledge that can guide the formation of their parenting attitudes and practices. As discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2 , the parenting practices in which parents engage are influenced and informed by their knowledge, including facts and other information relevant to parenting, as well as skills gained through experience or education. Parenting practices also are influenced by attitudes, which in this context refer to parents’ viewpoints, perspectives, reactions, or settled ways of thinking with respect to the roles and importance of parents and parenting in children’s development, as well as parents’ responsibilities. Attitudes may be part of a set of beliefs shared within a cultural group and founded in common experiences, and they often direct the transformation of knowledge into practice.

Parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices are shaped, in part, by parents’ own experiences (including those from their own childhood) and circumstances; expectations and practices learned from others, such as family, friends, and other social networks; and beliefs transferred through cultural and social systems. Parenting also is shaped by the availability of supports within the larger community and provided by institutions, as well as by policies that affect the availability of supportive services.

Along with the multiple sources of parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices and their diversity among parents, it is important to acknowledge the diverse influences on the lives of children. While parents are central to children’ development, other influences, such as relatives, close family friends, teachers, community members, peers, and social institutions, also

contribute to children’s growth and development. Children themselves are perhaps the most essential contributors to their own development. Thus, the science of parenting is framed within the theoretical perspective that parenting unfolds in particular contexts; is embedded in a network of relationships within and outside of the family; and is fluid and continuous, changing over time as children and parents grow and develop.

In addition, it is important to recognize that parenting affects not only children but also parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents’ lives; generate stress or calm; compete for time with work or leisure; and create combinations of any number of emotions, including happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger.

STUDY CONTEXT

As attention to early childhood development has increased over the past 20 years, so, too, has attention to those who care for young children. A recent Institute of Medicine and National Research Council report on the early childhood workforce ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2015 ) illustrates the heightened focus not only on whether young children have opportunities to be exposed to healthy environments and supports but also on the people who provide those supports. Indeed, an important responsibility of parents is identifying those who will care for their children in their absence. Those individuals may include family members and others in parents’ immediate circle, but they increasingly include non-family members who provide care and education in formal and informal settings outside the home, such as schools and home daycare centers.

Throughout its deliberations, the committee considered several questions relevant to its charge: What knowledge and attitudes do parents of young children bring to the task of parenting? How are parents engaged with their young children, and how do the circumstances and behaviors of both parents and children influence the parent-child relationship? What types of support further enhance the natural resources and skills that parents bring to the parenting role? How do parents function and make use of their familial and community resources? What policies and resources at the local, state, and federal levels assist parents? What practices do they expect those resources to reinforce, and from what knowledge and attitudes are those practices derived? On whom or what do they rely in the absence of those resources? What serves as an incentive for participation in parenting programs? How are the issues of parenting different or the same across culture and race? What factors constrain parents’ positive relationships with their children, and what research is needed to advance agendas that can help parents sustain such relationships?

The committee also considered research in the field of neuroscience,

which further supports the foundational role of early experiences in healthy development, with effects across the life course ( Center on the Developing Child, 2007 ; National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2009 ; World Health Organization, 2015 ). During early childhood, the brain undergoes a rapid development that lays the foundation for a child’s lifelong learning capacity and emotional and behavioral health (see Figure 1-1 ). This research has provided a more nuanced understanding of the importance of investments in early childhood and parenting. Moreover, advances in analyses of epigenetic effects on early brain development demonstrate consequences of parenting for neural development at the level of DNA, and suggest indirect consequences of family conditions such as poverty that operate on early child development, in part, through the epigenetic consequences of parenting ( Lipinia and Segretin, 2015 ).

This report comes at a time of flux in public policies aimed at supporting parents and their young children. The cost to parents of supporting their children’s healthy development (e.g., the cost of housing, health care, child care, and education) has increased at rates that in many cases have offset the improvements and increases provided for by public policies. As noted above, for example, the number of children living in deep poverty has grown since the mid-1990s ( Sherman and Trisi, 2014 ). While children represent approximately one-quarter of the country’s population, they make up 32 percent of all the country’s citizens who live in poverty ( Child Trends Databank, 2015a ). About one in every five children in the United States is now growing up in families with incomes below the poverty line, and 9 percent of children live in deep poverty (families with incomes below 50%

of the poverty line) ( Child Trends Databank, 2015a ). The risk of growing up poor continues to be particularly high for children in female-headed households; in 2013, approximately 55 percent of children under age 6 in such households lived at or below the poverty threshold, compared with 10 percent of children in married couple families ( DeNavas-Walt and Proctor, 2014 ). Black and Hispanic children are more likely to live in deep poverty (18 and 13%, respectively) compared with Asian and white children (5% each) ( Child Trends Databank, 2015a ). Also noteworthy is that child care policy, including the recent increases in funding for low-income families, ties child care subsidies to employment. Unemployed parents out of school are not eligible, and job loss results in subsidy loss and, in turn, instability in child care arrangements for young children ( Ha et al., 2012 ).

As noted earlier, this report also comes at a time of rapid change in the demographic composition of the country. This change necessitates new understandings of the norms and values within and among groups, the ways in which recent immigrants transition to life in the United States, and the approaches used by diverse cultural and ethnic communities to engage their children during early childhood and utilize institutions that offer them support in carrying out that role. The United States now has the largest absolute number of immigrants in its history ( Grieco et al., 2012 ; Passel and Cohn, 2012 ; U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 ), and the proportion of foreign-born residents today (13.1%) is nearly as high as it was at the turn of the 20th century ( National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2015 ). As of 2014, 25 percent of children ages 0-5 in the United States had at least one immigrant parent, compared with 13.5 percent in 1990 ( Migration Policy Institute, 2016 ). 3 In many urban centers, such as Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City, the majority of the student body of public schools is first- or second-generation immigrant children ( Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008 ).

Immigrants to the United States vary in their countries of origin, their reception in different communities, and the resources available to them. Researchers increasingly have called attention to the wide variation not only among but also within immigrant groups, including varying premigration histories, familiarity with U.S. institutions and culture, and childrearing

3 Shifting demographics in the United States have resulted in increased pressure for service providers to meet the needs of all children and families in a culturally sensitive manner. In many cases, community-level changes have overwhelmed the capacity of local child care providers and health service workers to respond to the language barriers and cultural parenting practices of the newly arriving immigrant groups, particularly if they have endured trauma. For example, many U.S. communities have worked to address the needs of the growing Hispanic population, but it has been documented that in some cases, eligible Latinos are “less likely to access available social services than other populations” ( Helms et al., 2015 ; Wildsmith et al., 2016 ).

strategies ( Crosnoe, 2006 ; Fuller and García Coll, 2010 ; Galindo and Fuller, 2010 ; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2010 ; Takanishi, 2004 ). Immigrants often bring valuable social and human capital to the United States, including unique competencies and sociocultural strengths. Indeed, many young immigrant children display health and learning outcomes better than those of children of native-born parents in similar socioeconomic positions ( Crosnoe, 2013 ). At the same time, however, children with immigrant parents are more likely than children in native-born families to grow up poor ( Hernandez et al., 2008 , 2012 ; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2015 ; Raphael and Smolensky, 2009 ). Immigrant parents’ efforts to raise healthy children also can be thwarted by barriers to integration that include language, documentation, and discrimination ( Hernandez et al., 2012 ; Yoshikawa, 2011 ).

The increase in the nation’s racial and ethnic diversity over the past several decades, related in part to immigration, is a trend that is expected to continue ( Colby and Ortman, 2015 ; Taylor, 2014 ). Between 2000 and 2010, the percentage of Americans identifying as black, Hispanic, Asian, or “other” increased from 15 percent to 36 percent of the population ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 ). Over this same time, the percentage of non-Hispanic white children under age 10 declined from 60 percent to 52 percent, while the percentage of Hispanic ethnicity (of any race) grew from about 19 percent to 25 percent ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 ); the percentages of black/African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Asian children under age 10 remained relatively steady (at about 15%, 1%, and 4-5%, respectively); and the percentages of children in this age group identifying as two or more races increased from 3 percent to 5 percent ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 ).

The above-noted shifts in the demographic landscape with regard to family structure, including increases in divorce rates and cohabitation, new types of parental relationships, and the involvement of grandparents and other relatives in the raising of children ( Cancian and Reed, 2008 ; Fremstad and Boteach, 2015 ), have implications for how best to support families. Between 1960 and 2014, the percentage of children under age 18 who lived with two married parents (biological, nonbiological, or adoptive) decreased from approximately 85 percent to 64 percent. In 1960, 8 percent of children lived in households headed by single mothers; by 2014, that figure had tripled to about 24 percent ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ; U.S. Census Bureau, 2016 ). Meanwhile, the proportions of children living with only their fathers or with neither parent (with either relatives or non-relatives) have remained relatively steady since the mid-1980s, at about 4 percent (see Figure 1-2 ). Black children are significantly more likely to live in households headed by single mothers and also are more likely to live in households where neither parent is present. In 2014, 34 percent of black

children lived with two parents, compared with 58 percent of Hispanic children, 75 percent of white children, and 85 percent of Asian children ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ).

From 1996 to 2015, the number of cohabiting couples with children rose from 1.2 million to 3.3 million ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ). Moreover, data from the National Health Interview Survey show that in 2013, 30,000 children under age 18 had married same-sex parents and 170,000 had unmarried same-sex parents, and between 1.1 and 2.0 million were being raised by a parent who identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual but was not part of a couple ( Gates, 2014 ).

More families than in years past rely on kinship care (full-time care of children by family members other than parents or other adults with whom children have a family-like relationship). When parents are unable to care for their children because of illness, military deployment, incarceration, child abuse, or other reasons, kinship care can help cultivate familial and community bonds, as well as provide children with a sense of stability and belonging ( Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2012 ; Winokur et al., 2014 ). It is estimated that the number of children in kinship care grew six times the rate of the number of children in the general population over the past decade ( Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2012 ). In 2014, 7 percent of children lived in households headed by grandparents, as compared with 3 percent in 1970 ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ), and as of 2012, about 10 percent of American children lived in a household where a grandparent was present ( Ellis and Simmons, 2014 ). Black children are twice as likely as the overall population of children to live in kinship arrangements, with about 20 percent of black children spending time in kinship care at some point

during their childhood ( Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2012 ). Beyond kinship care, about 400,000 U.S. children under age 18 are in foster care with about one-quarter of these children living with relatives ( Child Trends Databank, 2015c ). Of the total number of children in foster care, 7 percent are under age 1, 33 percent are ages 1-5, and 23 percent are ages 6-10 ( Child Trends Databank, 2015c ). Other information about the structure of American families is more difficult to come by. For example, there is a lack of data with which to assess trends in the number of children who are raised by extended family members through informal arrangements as opposed to through the foster care system.

As noted earlier, fathers, including biological fathers and other male caregivers, have historically been underrepresented in parenting research despite their essential role in the development of young children. Young children with involved and nurturing fathers develop better linguistic and cognitive skills and capacities, including academic readiness, and are more emotionally secure and have better social connections with peers as they get older ( Cabrera and Tamis-LeMonda, 2013 ; Harris and Marmer, 1996 ; Lamb, 2004 ; Pruett, 2000 ; Rosenberg and Wilcox, 2006 ; Yeung et al., 2000 ). Conversely, children with disengaged fathers have been found to be more likely to develop behavioral problems ( Amato and Rivera, 1999 ; Ramchandani et al., 2013 ). With both societal shifts in gender roles and increased attention to fathers’ involvement in childrearing in recent years, fathers have assumed greater roles in the daily activities associated with raising young children, such as preparing and eating meals with them, reading to and playing and talking with them, and helping them with homework ( Bianchi et al., 2007 ; Cabrera et al., 2011 ; Jones and Mosher, 2013 ; Livingston and Parker, 2011 ). In two-parent families, 16 percent of fathers were stay-at-home parents in 2012, compared with 10 percent in 1989; 21 percent of these fathers stayed home specifically to care for their home or family, up from 5 percent in 1989 ( Livingston, 2014 ). At the same time, however, fewer fathers now live with their biological children because of increases in nonmarital childbearing (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015).

In addition, as alluded to earlier, parents of young children face trans-formative changes in technology that can have a strong impact on parenting and family life ( Collier, 2014 ). Research conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that, relative to other household configurations, married parents with children under age 18 use the Internet and cell phones, own computers, and adopt broadband at higher rates ( Duggan and Lenhart, 2015 ). Other types of households, however, such as single-parent and unmarried multiadult households, also show high usage of technology, particularly text messaging and social media ( Smith, 2015 ). Research by the Pew Research Center (2014) shows that many parents—25 percent in

one survey ( Duggan et al., 2015 )—view social media as a useful source of parenting information.

At the same time, however, parents also are saturated with information and faced with the difficulty of distinguishing valid information from fallacies and myths about raising children ( Aubrun and Grady, 2003 ; Center on Media and Human Development, 2014 ; Dworkin et al., 2013 ; Future of Children, 2008 ). Given the number and magnitude of innovations in media and communications technologies, parents may struggle with understanding the optimal use of technology in the lives of their children.

Despite engagement with Internet resources, parents still report turning to family, friends, and physicians more often than to online sources such as Websites, blogs, and social network sites for parenting advice ( Center on Media and Human Development, 2014 ). Although many reports allude to the potentially harmful effects of media and technology, parents generally do not report having many concerns or family conflicts regarding their children’s media use. On the other hand, studies have confirmed parents’ fears about an association between children’s exposure to violence in media and increased anxiety ( Funk, 2005 ), desensitization to violence ( Engelhardt et al., 2011 ), and aggression ( Willoughby et al., 2012 ). And although the relationship between media use and childhood obesity is challenging to disentangle, studies have found that children who spend more time with media are more likely to be overweight than children who do not (see Chapter 2 ) ( Bickham et al., 2013 ; Institute of Medicine, 2011 ; Kaiser Family Foundation, 2004 ).

The benefits of the information age have included reduced barriers to knowledge for both socially advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Yet despite rapidly decreasing costs of many technologies (e.g., smartphones, tablets, and computers), parents of lower socioeconomic position and from racial and ethnic minority groups are less likely to have access to and take advantage of these resources ( Center on Media and Human Development, 2014 ; File and Ryan, 2014 ; Institute of Medicine, 2006 ; Perrin and Duggan, 2015 ; Smith, 2015 ; Viswanath et al., 2012 ). A digital divide also exists between single-parent and two-parent households, as the cost of a computer and monthly Internet service can be more of a financial burden for the former families, which on average have lower household incomes ( Allen and Rainie, 2002 ; Dworkin et al., 2013 ).

STUDY APPROACH

The committee’s approach to its charge consisted of a review of the evidence in the scientific literature and several other information-gathering activities.

Evidence Review

The committee conducted an extensive review of the scientific literature pertaining to the questions raised in its statement of task ( Box 1-2 ). It did not undertake a full review of all parenting-related studies because it was tasked with providing a targeted report that would direct stakeholders to best practices and succinctly capture the state of the science. The committee’s literature review entailed English-language searches of databases including, but not limited to, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Medline, the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science. Additional literature and other resources were identified by committee members and project staff using traditional academic research methods and online searches. The committee focused its review on research published in peer-reviewed journals and books (including individual studies, review articles, and meta-analyses), as well as reports issued by government agencies and other organizations. The committee’s review was concentrated primarily, although not entirely, on research conducted in the United States, occasionally drawing on research from other Western countries (e.g., Germany and Australia), and rarely on research from other countries.

In reviewing the literature and formulating its conclusions and recommendations, the committee considered several, sometimes competing, dimensions of empirical work: internal validity, external validity, practical significance, and issues of implementation, such as scale-up with fidelity ( Duncan et al., 2007 ; McCartney and Rosenthal, 2000 ; Rosenthal and Rosnow, 2007 ).

With regard to internal validity , the committee viewed random-assignment experiments as the primary model for establishing cause- and-effect relationships between variables with manipulable causes (e.g., Rosenthal and Rosnow, 2007 ; Shadish et al., 2001 ). Given the relatively limited body of evidence from experimental studies in the parenting literature, however, the committee also considered findings from quasi-experimental studies (including those using regression discontinuity, instrumental variables, and difference-in-difference techniques based on natural experiments) ( Duncan et al., 2007 ; Foster, 2010 ; McCartney et al., 2006 ) and from observational studies, a method that can be used to test logical propositions inherent to causal inference, rule out potential sources of bias, and assess the sensitivity of results to assumptions regarding study design and measurement. These include longitudinal studies and limited cross-sectional studies. Although quasi- and nonexperimental studies may fail to meet the “gold standard” of randomized controlled trials for causal inference, studies with a variety of internal validity strengths and weaknesses can collectively provide useful evidence on causal influences ( Duncan et al., 2014 ).

When there are different sources of evidence, often with some differences in estimates of the strength of the evidence, the committee used its collective experience to integrate the information and draw reasoned conclusions.

With regard to external validity , the committee attempted to take into account the extent to which findings can be generalized across population groups and situations. This entailed considering the demographic, socioeconomic, and other characteristics of study participants; whether variables were assessed in the real-world contexts in which parents and children live (e.g., in the home, school, community); whether study findings build the knowledge base with regard to both efficacy (i.e., internal validity in highly controlled settings) and effectiveness (i.e., positive net treatment effects in ecologically valid settings); and issues of cultural competence ( Bracht and Glass, 1968 ; Bronfenbrenner, 2009 ; Cook and Campbell, 1979 ; Harrison and List, 2004 ; Lerner et al., 2000 ; Rosenthal and Rosnow, 2007 ; Whaley and Davis, 2007 ). However, the research literature is limited in the extent to which generalizations across population groups and situations are examined.

With regard to practical significance , the committee considered the magnitude of likely causal impacts within both an empirical context (i.e., measurement, design, and method) and an economic context (i.e., benefits relative to costs), and with attention to the salience of outcomes (e.g., how important an outcome is for promoting child well-being) ( Duncan et al., 2007 ; McCartney and Rosenthal, 2000 ). As discussed elsewhere in this report, however, the committee found limited economic evidence with which to draw conclusions about investing in interventions at scale or to weigh the costs and benefits of interventions. (See the discussion of other information-gathering activities below.) Also with respect to practical significance, the committee considered the manipulability of the variables under consideration in real-world contexts, given that the practical significance of study results depend on whether the variables examined are represented or experienced commonly or uncommonly among particular families ( Fabes et al., 2000 ).

Finally, the committee took into account issues of implementation , such as whether interventions can be brought to and sustained at scale ( Durlak and DuPre, 2008 ; Halle et al., 2013 ). Experts in the field of implementation science emphasize not only the evidence behind programs but also the fundamental roles of scale-up, dissemination planning, and program monitoring and evaluation. Scale-up in turn requires attending to the ability to implement adaptive program practices in response to heterogeneous, real-world contexts, while also ensuring fidelity for the potent levers of change or prevention ( Franks and Schroeder, 2013 ). Thus, the committee relied on both evidence on scale-up, dissemination, and sustainability from empirically based programs and practices that have been implemented and

evaluated, and more general principles of implementation science, including considerations of capacity and readiness for scale-up and sustainability at the macro (e.g., current national politics) and micro (e.g., community resources) levels.

The review of the evidence conducted for this study, especially pertaining to strategies that work at the universal, targeted, and intensive levels to strengthen parenting capacity (questions 2 and 3 from the committee’s statement of task [ Box 1-2 ]), also entailed searches of several databases that, applying principles similar to those described above, assess the strength of the evidence for parenting-related programs and practices: the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices (NREPP), supported by SAMHSA; the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare (CEBC), which is funded by the state of California; and Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, which has multiple funding sources. Although each of these databases is unique with respect to its history, sponsors, and objectives (NREPP covers mental health and substance abuse interventions, CEBC is focused on evidence relevant to child welfare, and Blueprints describes programs designed to promote the health and well-being of children), all are recognized nationally and internationally and undergo a rigorous review process.

The basic principles of evaluation and classification and the processes for classification of evidence-based practices are common across NREPP, CEBC, and Blueprints. Each has two top categories—optimal and promising—for programs and practices (see Appendix B ; see also Burkhardt et al., 2015 ; Means et al., 2015 ; Mihalic and Elliot, 2015 ; Soydan et al., 2010 ). Given the relatively modest investment in research on programs for parents and young children, however, the array of programs that are highly rated remains modest. For this reason, the committee considered as programs with the most robust evidence not only those included in the top two categories of Blueprints and CEBC but also those with an average rating of 3 or higher in NREPP. The committee’s literature searches also captured well-supported programs that are excluded from these databases (e.g., because they are recent and/or have not been submitted for review) but have sound theoretical underpinnings and rely on well-recognized intervention and implementation mechanisms.

Other reputable information sources used in producing specific portions of this report were What Works for Health (within the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps Program, a joint effort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin); the What Works Clearinghouse of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Services; and HHS’s Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness (HomVEE) review.

In addition, the committee chose to consider findings from research using methodological approaches that are emerging as a source of innovation and improvement. These approaches are gaining momentum in parent-

ing research and are being developed and funded by the federal government and private philanthropy. Examples are breakthrough series collaborative approaches, such as the Home Visiting Collaborative Innovation and Improvement Network to Reduce Infant Mortality, and designs such as factorial experiments that have been used to address topics relevant to this study.

Other Information-Gathering Activities

The committee held two open public information-gathering sessions to hear from researchers, practitioners, parents, and other stakeholders on topics germane to this study and to supplement the expertise of the committee members (see Appendix A for the agendas of these open sessions). Material from these open sessions is referenced in this report where relevant.

As noted above, the committee’s task included making recommendations related to promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective strategies for supporting parents and the salient knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Cost is an important consideration for the implementation of parenting programs at scale. Therefore, the committee commissioned a paper reviewing the available economic evidence for investing in parenting programs at scale to inform its deliberations on this portion of its charge. Findings and excerpts from this paper are integrated throughout Chapters 3 through 6 . The committee also commissioned a second paper summarizing evidence-based strategies used by health care systems and providers to help parents acquire and sustain knowledge, attitudes, and practices that promote healthy child development. The committee drew heavily on this paper in developing sections of the report on universal/preventive and targeted interventions for parents in health care settings. Lastly, a commissioned paper on evidence-based strategies to support parents of children with mental illness formed the basis for a report section on this population. 4

In addition, the committee conducted two sets of group and individual semistructured interviews with parents participating in family support programs at community-based organizations in Omaha, Nebraska, and Washington, D.C. Parents provided feedback on the strengths they bring to parenting, challenges they face, how services for parents can be improved, and ways they prefer to receive parenting information, among other topics. Excerpts from these interviews are presented throughout this report as “Parent Voices” to provide real-world examples of parents’ experiences and to supplement the discussion of particular concepts and the committee’s findings.

4 The papers commissioned by the committee are in the public access file for the study and can be requested at https://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/ManageRequest.aspx?key=49669 [October 2016].

TERMINOLOGY AND STUDY PARAMETERS

As specified in the statement of task for this study ( Box 1-2 ), the term “parents” refers in this report to those individuals who are the primary caregivers of young children in the home. Therefore, the committee reviewed studies that involved not only biolofical and adoptive parents but also relative/kinship providers (e.g., grandparents), stepparents, foster parents, and other types of caregivers, although research is sparse on unique issues related to nontraditional caregivers. The terms “knowledge,” “attitudes,” and “practices” and the relationships among them were discussed earlier in this chapter, and further detail can be found in Chapter 2 ).

The committee recognized that to a certain degree, ideas about what is considered effective parenting vary across cultures and ecological conditions, including economies, social structures, religious beliefs, and moral values ( Cushman, 1995 ). To address this variation, and in accordance with its charge, the committee examined research on how core parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices differ by specific characteristics of children, parents, and contexts. However, because the research on parenting has traditionally underrepresented several populations (e.g., caregivers other than mothers), the evidence on which the committee could draw to make these comparisons was limited.

The committee interpreted “evidence-based/informed strategies” very broadly as ranging from teaching a specific parenting skill, to manualized parenting programs, to policies that may affect parenting. The term “interventions” is generally used in this report to refer to all types of strategies, while more specific terms (e.g., “program,” “well-child care”) are used to refer to particular types or sets of interventions. Also, recognizing that nearly every facet of society has a role to play in supporting parents and ensuring that children realize their full potential, the committee reviewed not only strategies designed expressly for parents (e.g., parenting skills training) but also, though to a lesser degree, programs and policies not designed specifically for parents that may nevertheless affect an individual’s capacity to parent (e.g., food assistance and housing programs, health care policies).

As noted earlier in this chapter, this report was informed by a life-course perspective on parenting, given evidence from neuroscience and a range of related research that the early years are a critical period in shaping how individuals fare throughout their lives. The committee also aimed to take a strengths/assets-based approach (e.g., to identify strategies that build upon the existing assets of parents), although the extent to which this approach could be applied was limited by the paucity of research examining parenting from this perspective.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

A number of principles guided this study. First, following the ideas of Dunst and Espe-Sherwindt (2016) , the distinction between two types of family-centered practices—relational and participatory—informed the committee’s thinking. Relational practices are those focused primarily on intervening with families using compassion, active and reflective listening, empathy, and other techniques. Participatory practices are those that actively engage families in decision making and aim to improve families’ capabilities. In addition, family-centered practices focused on the context of successful parenting are a key third form of support for parenting. A premise of the committee is that many interventions with the most troubled families and children will require all these types of services—often delivered concurrently over a lengthy period of time.

Second, many programs are designed to serve families at particular risk for problems related to cognitive and social-emotional development, health, and well-being. Early Head Start and Head Start, for example, are means tested and designed for low-income families most of whom are known to face not just one risk factor (low income) but also others that often cluster together (e.g., living in dangerous neighborhoods, exposure to trauma, social isolation, unfamiliarity with the dominant culture or language). Special populations addressed in this report typically are at very high risk because of this exposure to multiple risk factors. Research has shown that children in such families have the poorest outcomes, in some instances reaching a level of toxic stress that seriously impairs their developmental functioning ( Shonkoff and Garner, 2012 ). Of course, in addition to characterizing developmental risk, it is essential to understand the corresponding adaptive processes and protective factors, as it is the balance of risk and protective factors that determines outcomes. In many ways, supporting parents is one way to attempt to change that balance.

From an intervention point of view, several principles are central. First, intervention strategies need to be designed to have measurable effects over time and to be sustainable. Second, it is necessary to focus on the needs of individual families and to tailor interventions to achieve desired outcomes. The importance of personalized approaches is widely acknowledged in medicine, education, and other areas. An observation perhaps best illustrated in the section on parents of children with developmental disabilities in Chapter 5 , although the committee believes this approach applies to many of the programs described in this report. A corresponding core principle of intervention is viewing parents as equal partners, experts in what both they and their children need. It is important as well that multiple kinds of services for families be integrated and coordinated. As illustrated earlier

in Box 1-1 , families may be receiving interventions from multiple sources delivered in different places, making coordination all the more important.

A useful framework for thinking about interventions is described in the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (2009) report Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders among Young People . Prevention interventions encompass mental health promotion: universal prevention, defined as interventions that are valuable for all children; selected prevention, aimed at populations at high risk (such as children whose parents have mental illness); and indicated prevention, focused on children already manifesting symptoms. Treatment interventions include case identification, standard treatment for known disorders, accordance of long-term treatment with the goal of reduction in relapse or occurrence, and aftercare and rehabilitation ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2009 ).

The committee recognizes that engaging and retaining children and families in parenting interventions are critical challenges. A key to promoting such engagement may be cultural relevance. Families representing America’s diverse array of cultures, languages, and experiences are likely to derive the greatest benefit from interventions designed and implemented to allow for flexibility.

Finally, the question of widespread implementation and dissemination of parenting interventions is critically important. Given the cost of testing evidence-based parenting programs, the development of additional programs needs to be built on the work that has been done before. Collectively, interventions also are more likely to achieve a significant level of impact if they incorporate some of the elements of prior interventions. In any case, a focus on the principles of implementation and dissemination clearly is needed. As is discussed in this report, the committee calls for more study and experience with respect to taking programs to scale.

REPORT ORGANIZATION

This report is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 2 examines desired outcomes for children and reviews the existing research on parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices that support positive parent-child interactions and child outcomes. Based on the available research, this chapter identifies a set of core knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Chapter 3 provides a brief overview of some of the major federally funded programs and policies that support parents in the United States. Chapters 4 and 5 describe evidence-based and evidence-informed strategies for supporting parents and enabling the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices, including universal and widely used interventions ( Chapter 4 ) and interventions targeted to parents of children with special needs and parents who themselves face adversities

( Chapter 5 ). Chapter 6 reviews elements of effective programs for strengthening parenting capacity and parents’ participation and retention in effective programs and systems. Chapter 7 describes a national framework for supporting parents of young children. Finally, Chapter 8 presents the committee’s conclusions and recommendations for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective intervention strategies and parenting practices linked to healthy child outcomes, as well as areas for future research.

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Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the family—which includes all primary caregivers—are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger.

Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting.

Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

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Parenting Tasks: Roles, Goals, and Responsibilities

Despite contextual factors and varied goals associated with parenting, roles and responsibilities of parenthood are derived from national and international laws, policies, research, and practice.  Below are well-agreed upon fundamental tasks of parenthood [1] that extend across many cultures:

• Socioemotional support : providing warm and positive responsivity, affection, communication, expectations, affirmations, encouragement, emotional regulation, guidance, discipline, and modeling of appropriate behaviors
• Stimulation/instruction : encouraging achievement and learning through exposure to developmentally-appropriate and culturally-enriching experiences
• Supervision: monitoring whereabouts, communications, activities; collecting information from various sources; maintaining ongoing, reciprocal communications with children
• Structure: facilitating organized environments and activities via routines, rituals, scaffolding, and time management
• Socialization: supporting connections with communities, relatives, friends, peers, and institutions [2]
• Bradley, R. H. (2007). Parenting in the breach. How parents help children cope with developmentally challenging circumstances. Parenting: Science and Practice, 7 (2), 99-148. ↵
• Laukkanan, E., Karppinen, S., Maattaa, K., & Uusiautti, S. (2014). Emphases of parenting in the light of three comparison groups. International Education Studies, 7 (3), 67-77. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ies.v7n3p67 ↵

Parenting and Family Diversity Issues Copyright © 2020 by Diana Lang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How Do Your Parents Share the Responsibilities of Parenting?

By Jeremy Engle

• May 8, 2019

How are parenting responsibilities divided in your home?

Who makes sure the children get up in the morning and are dressed for school? Which parent does the cooking? The cleaning? The lawn mowing? Vacation planning? Who helps with homework and school applications?

Is there equality in your home? Or is there still an unequal division of labor?

In “ What ‘Good’ Dads Get Away With ,” Darcy Lockman writes:

When my husband and I became parents a decade ago, we were not prepared for the ways in which sexism was about to express itself in our relationship. Like me, he was enthralled by our daughters. Like him, I worked outside the home. And yet I was the one who found myself in charge of managing the details of our children’s lives. Too often I’d spend frantic days looking for spring break child care only to hear him ask, “Oh, there’s no school tomorrow?” Or we’d arrive home late with two tired kids, and instead of spearheading their nighttime routine he’d disappear to brush his own teeth. Unless I pointed out these lapses (which he’ll tell you I often did, and I’ll tell you I often did not), he was unaware. We’ve all heard this story before. Thinking about my own relationship, and watching the other couples I knew, I kept wondering: Why is this still happening? The optimistic tale of the modern, involved dad has been greatly exaggerated. The amount of child care men performed rose throughout the 1980s and ’90s, but then began to level off without ever reaching parity. Mothers still shoulder 65 percent of child-care work. In academic journals, family researchers caution that the “culture of fatherhood” has changed more than fathers’ actual behavior. Sociologists attribute the discrepancy between mothers’ expectations and reality to “a largely successful male resistance.” This resistance is not being led by socially conservative men, whose like-minded wives often explicitly agree to take the lead in the home. It is happening, instead, with relatively progressive couples, and it takes many women — who thought their partners had made a prenatal commitment to equal parenting — by surprise. Why are their partners failing to pitch in more?

The Opinion essay continues:

While interviewing working parents for a book on parenthood, I spoke with one dad in Vermont who said: “The expectation among my male friends is still that they will have the life they had before having kids. My dad has never cooked a meal. I’ve strayed from that . But subconsciously, the thing that makes you motivationally step up and do something when you’re not being asked …” he trailed off, and then said: “I have justifications. It’s a cop-out.”

Take love out of the equation and focus on the workplace, and it’s clear how this plays out. Studies show that male employees sit back while their female co-workers perform the tasks that don’t lead to promotion. In a series of lab studies, the economists Lise Vesterlund, Linda Babcock and Maria Recalde and the organizational behaviorist Laurie Weingart found that in coed groups, women are 50 percent more likely than men to volunteer to take on work that no one else wants to do. But in all-male groups, the men volunteer just as readily.

The essay concludes:

All this comes at a cost to women’s well-being, as mothers forgo leisure time, professional ambitions and sleep. Wives who view their household responsibilities “as unjust are more likely to suffer from depression than those who do not,” one study says. When their children are young, employed women (but not men) take a hit to their health as well as to their earnings — and the latter never recovers. Child-care imbalances also tank relationship happiness, especially in the early years of parenthood. Division of labor in the home is one of the most important gender-equity issues of our time. Yet at the current rate of change, MenCare, a group that promotes equal involvement in caregiving, estimates that it will be about 75 more years before men worldwide assume half of the unpaid work that domesticity requires. If anything is going to change, men have to stop resisting. Gendered parenting is kept alive by the unacknowledged power bestowed upon men in a world that values their needs, comforts and desires more than women’s. It’s up to fathers to cop to this, rather than to cop out.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

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Responsible Parenthood: Tips, Advice, and Resources for Effective Parenting

Responsible parenthood: values and resources for effective parenting.

Responsible Parenthood: Values to consider

Responsible parenthood is a crucial aspect of raising children and ensuring their well-being. It involves making informed decisions, being aware of family planning options, and embracing the responsibilities that come with parenting.

Here is some parenting tips and values to consider to help you navigate the journey of responsible parenthood:

Family Planning and Decision-Making

Family planning plays a vital role in responsible parenthood. It allows couples to make informed choices about the number and spacing of their children. By utilizing effective contraception methods, parents can plan their family size based on their financial, emotional, and physical capabilities. Consult with healthcare professionals or family planning clinics to explore the various options available and find the method that suits your needs best.

Parenting Responsibilities

Responsible parenthood encompasses various responsibilities that contribute to the overall well-being of children. It involves providing a safe and nurturing environment, meeting their physical and emotional needs, and promoting their holistic development. Parents should prioritize open communication, active listening, and positive discipline techniques to foster healthy parent-child relationships .

Educational Support

As responsible parents, it is essential to prioritize your child's education. Encourage a love for learning by engaging in educational activities, supporting their schoolwork, and promoting a growth mindset. Stay involved in their academic journey, attend parent-teacher meetings, and communicate with their teachers to ensure their educational needs are met.

Emotional Well-being

Nurturing your child 's emotional well-being is vital for responsible parenthood. Create a positive parenting environment where they feel safe expressing their emotions. Teach them emotional intelligence, empathy, and problem-solving skills to help them navigate life's challenges. Encourage open discussions about feelings and be a source of comfort and understanding for them.

Health and Nutrition

Responsible parenthood involves prioritizing your child's health and nutrition. Ensure they receive regular medical check-ups, vaccinations, and preventive healthcare. Provide a balanced diet rich in nutrients, fruits, and vegetables. Encourage physical activity and limit screen time to promote a healthy lifestyle.

Supporting their dreams

Letting your child navigate the complexities of life is one unrealized fear of parents. As much as we want to steer them every step of the way, it’s best to let them decide and support them in every thing they do. Let their imagination and dreams start young by introducing them to helpful toys .

Resources for Responsible Parenthood

There are numerous resources available to support responsible parenthood. Local community centers, parenting classes , online forums, and books can provide valuable insights, tips, and guidance. Seek support from other parents who share similar values and experiences, as they can offer empathy, advice, and a sense of community.

By embracing responsible parenthood, you lay the foundation for your child's future success and well-being. Remember, it is a journey that requires continuous learning and adaptation. Stay informed, seek support when needed, and enjoy the rewarding experience of raising responsible and caring individuals.

Responsible Parenting: A Test of Character?

• Download the full set of Character and Opportunity Essays (PDF)

Subscribe to the Center for Economic Security and Opportunity Newsletter

Isabel v. sawhill isabel v. sawhill senior fellow emeritus - economic studies , center for economic security and opportunity.

October 22, 2014

In this essay from the Center on Children and Families’ Essay Series on Character and Opportunity , Isabel Sawhill notes that social norms can help to build or reinforce character strengths. Without a new ethic of responsible parenting, Sawhill says social mobility will continue to be limited for those at the bottom.

A well-functioning liberal democracy is based on the everyday practice of civic virtues or what in another context we might call character. Without those virtues, the amount of intervention required to promote social and individual welfare, including upward mobility, would be inefficient, and overly intrusive. Government may require that children be vaccinated or attend school, but unless parents see the need for this and voluntarily cooperate with such requirements, they would not work in practice. Government can establish laws governing taxes or safe driving speeds but it cannot have an auditor for every citizen or a policeman on every corner and it must have the consent of the governed to impose such rules in the first place. Social norms are the private analogue to government rules and regulations. They establish standards of behavior to which most people conform. The punishment for nonconformity is not a fine or a prison sentence but social stigma and loss of respect or affection from significant others.

Although more efficient and less intrusive than government for guiding our behavior, social norms can also be individually stifling, even repressive. In addition, norms that may have once been useful for supporting the collective good may later become outdated and unproductive. But social norms are, in my view, exceedingly powerful shapers of individual behavior. The economist James Duesenberry once said that economics is all about how people make choices and sociology is all about why they don’t have any choices to make. Theories of human behavior need, in my view, to consider both.

As Richard Reeves has noted, some of these civic virtues or traits – what he calls persistence (hard work) and prudence (self-control or deferred gratification) – are more important than others for an individual’s chance of being upwardly mobile. I want to apply these ideas to a topic of great interest to me: unplanned childbearing, and its implications for upward mobility and opportunity.

Many young adults are drifting into early and unplanned childbearing outside of marriage, often before they have completed their education or formed a stable relationship with another adult. Roughly 40 percent of all births now occur outside of marriage and most of these are unplanned. All of the evidence, detailed in my book, Generation Unbound , points to this being detrimental to both the parents and their children’s life prospects. I have argued that what is needed, in this context, is a new ethic of responsible parenting, by which I mean: Not having a child before you and your partner really want a child and are prepared to care for it. With such an ethic in place, the amount of government assistance needed in cases where, through no fault of their own, parents still needed help, would be more affordable, and more acceptable to the taxpaying public. Such cases could include death of a parent, the low wages earned by both parents, the lack of child care to enable them to work, a child with special needs, and so forth.

But it would not include the large number of children who are born to adults who did not want a child (or another child) at a particular stage of their lives.

What’s behind this drifting into relationships and into parenthood without marriage? Some of it is the result of changing social norms. Fifty years ago children born outside of marriage were considered “illegitimate.” Not anymore. Even the term sounds old-fashioned and pejorative. In addition, some young adults may see little or no reason to delay childbearing given their limited economic prospects. But unintended childbearing rates are three or four times as high among the poor as among the middle class: this is hard to reconcile with a purely economic argument. The disadvantaged are not actively choosing to have as many children, or to have them as early in life. Less discussed is another important reason for drifting into parenthood: the simple fact that all of us lack will power and make mistakes; we don’t always end up doing what we intend to do. We don’t reach for a condom in the heat of the moment. We don’t think about the college tuition we are going to have to pay when we have a baby now. More generally, we lack a sense of self-efficacy or control over our lives. In a sample of 103 college women in their twenties, a relatively advantaged group, Paula England and her colleagues found that efficacy has strong effects on contraceptive use, even after controlling for many other variables including the strength of the desire to have children. And in a large survey of American women, 44 percent agreed or strongly agreed that “it doesn’t matter whether you use birth control or not; when it’s you time to get pregnant it will happen.” These findings suggest that a large portion of the population is fatalistic in their attitudes. If character means being more self-directed, more future-oriented, and more willing to control one’s impulses, and if these attributes, in turn, produce more social mobility, these findings are discouraging.

Social norms, I believe, can help to build or reinforce character strengths. The old social norm was “don’t have a child outside of marriage.” That norm was useful but it has now eroded to the point where it has little salience to the youngest generation. The new norm needs to be “don’t have a child until you and your partner are ready to be parents.” A new ethic of responsible parenting (backed up by more affordable and effective forms of birth control) may or may not be feasible. But without it, social mobility will continue to be limited for those at the bottom.

Economic Studies

Center for Economic Security and Opportunity

Jenny Anderson, Rebecca Winthrop

January 7, 2025

Mebrahtom Tesfahunegn

September 5, 2024

Caren Grown, Junjie Ren

August 19, 2024

Public Health Notes

Your partner for better health, responsible parenthood and 10 principles of responsible parenting .

November 8, 2018 Kusum Wagle Ageing and Health 0

Table of Contents

What is responsible parenthood?

• Responsibility parenthood is an ability of parents to detect the need of happiness and desire of children and helping them to become responsible and responsible children.
• It is the shared responsibility of husband and wife to determine and achieve the desired number, spacing, and timing of their children according to their own family life aspirations, and concerns.
• Responsible parenthood doesn’t limit only on fulfilling the demand of children and rearing them up properly but goes beyond that

Qualities of responsible parenthood:

• Marriage should be done at the right age as right age at marriage helps to start a new life and new family in a right time.
• The size of a family should be decided by both parents together.
• Being responsible parents also refers to becoming parents at the right age where both of them are physically and mentally mature to start a family.
• Proper spacing between the births of children is also necessary for health of a mother and child. This also assures that every child receives the attention and care they deserve.

10 principles of the responsible parenting:

1. what you do matters.

• This is one of the most important principles
• Children learn from the parents
• They see, observe, imitate and adapt the behavior of the parents
• One needs to act the same way that they want their children to be

2. You cannot be too loving

• Everybody loves their child
• But the love of parents should never spoil them
• In fact it’s the things like leniency, material possession that spoils them
• Parents need to be careful on that matters

3. Be involved in your child’s life

• It is necessary for parents to be involved in child’s life in both physical way and mental way
• Parents needs to talk to them and also listen them carefully
• Patents should manage to provide at least 15 minutes of undivided attention towards children every day.

4. Adapt your parenting to fit your child

• Parents needs to keep the track and pace with the child’s development
• Parents need to understand the children milestone as per the age

5. Establish and set rules

• Parent need to maintain and regulate the child’s behavior.
• Strict actions and punishment may also be required.
• Parents can set up the rules and make children follow them.
• Rules can simply vary from table rules to curfew rules.

6. Foster your child’s independence

• A responsible parent needs to teach their children self-control and encourage independence.
• Parents should teach them to make responsible decisions and shouldn’t frequently intervene in their choices.

7. Be consistent

• Consistency is the key to disciplines.
• Rules for children shouldn’t change from day to day. This makes the children confuse.
• Before that, the parents need to make sure that the rules made are logical and based on valid reason and are not just imposition of power.

8. Avoid harsh discipline

• Parents should never adopt the harsh way.
• They should never hit a child, under any circumstances.
• This has negative impacts on child.
• Punishment should be mild and used carefully.

9. Explain your rules and decisions

• Good parents have clear expectations
• They communicate this to their children in clear way and explain them as per their age.

10. Treat your child with respect

• Children should be treated with equal respect.
• Their views, opinions should be listened and valued.
• Speak politely.
• Treat him kindly.
• This is the best way to teach them how to treat and respect others.

Necessities of Responsible parenthood:

A) maintain healthy family size.

• Responsible parenting is concerned with the maintaining the desired size of family, maintaining the spacing and having desired family size
• The decision is made based on the health status, social and economic concerns
• This will further help parents in responsibly handling the situation in the future and also prepares them to face challenge
• Children require the support of the parents
• Responsible parenting will help in building the supportive relation between children and parents
• Parents would be able to support their children in every steps of their life

c) Morality

• Children learns from the parents
• They become what their parents are
• Responsible parenting is necessary to teach children the right behavior, culture the healthy habits and morals and also to guide in right direction throughout.
• Encouraging independent thought. It is duty of parents for better controlling over the children.
• Responsible parenting is also necessary to avoid the financial burden and stay prepared.

References and for More Information:

https://passnownow.com/civic-education-responsible-parenthood/

http://www.nzdl.org/gsdlmod?e=d-00000-00—off-0hdl–00-0—-0-10-0—0—0direct-10—4——-0-1l–11-en-50—20-about—00-0-1-00-0–4—-0-0-11-10-0utfZz-8-00&cl=CL1.15&d=HASH1d77a56dc5f042300a664f&gt=1

http://www.karinu.org/sites/default/files/PARENTING%20TIPS_0.pdf

https://www.medicinenet.com/parenting/article.htm#what_are_the_10_principles_of_good_parenting

http://ftisb.org/articles-and-resources/principles-of-effective-parenting/

http://www.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_importance_of_responsible_parenthood_in_national_development

https://www.importantindia.com/24220/parenthood/

https://www.importantindia.com/24126/reasons-why-responsible-parenthood-is-so-important-in-the-society/

https://www.modernghana.com/lifestyle/9178/responsible-parenting.html

• 10 principles of the responsible parenting
• concept of responsible parenthood
• Necessities of Responsible parenthood
• Qualities of responsible parenthood
• What is responsible parenthood
• why is responsible parenthood needed?

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What Is Parenthood? Contemporary Debates about the Family

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Extraordinary changes in patterns of family life—and family law—have dramatically altered the boundaries of parenthood and opened up numerous questions and debates. What is parenthood and why does it matter? How should society define, regulate, and support it? Is parenthood separable from marriage—or couplehood—when society seeks to foster children's well-being? What is the better model of parenthood from the perspective of child outcomes? Intense disagreements over the definition and future of marriage often rest upon conflicting convictions about parenthood. This book asks bold and direct questions about parenthood in contemporary society. The chapters facilitate a dynamic conversation about competing models of parenthood and a sweeping array of topics, including single parenthood, adoption, donor-created families, gay and lesbian parents, transnational parenthood, parent-child attachment, and gender difference and parenthood.

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The Importance of Family (10 Powerful Reasons)

Family is important because it offers emotional support, nurtures a feeling of belonging, encourages educational growth, and fosters cognitive development. A family meets diverse needs throughout the various phases of life, from infancy through old age.

Families serve crucial societal functions, including socialization, values transmission, and social stability. Families can influence a child’s brain development, prospects of success in life, the formation of future relationships, health, and overall life satisfaction.

Table of Contents

What is family?

A family is generally a group of individuals who come together to provide a natural environment for the development of their children and the well-being of the family’s members. The relationships between the family members can be defined in many ways. Here are 4 common ways to define a family.

• Biological or blood relations : Traditionally, a family is defined as a group of blood-related people. This includes parents and their children, siblings, and extended relatives like grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
• Social and cultural definition : Socially and culturally, a family can include individuals who are not necessarily related by blood or law but are bound by emotional ties, care, and support. This can include stepfamilies, godparents, close friends, and others who play a significant role in an individual’s life.
• Legal definition : Legally, a family often includes those related by blood, marriage, or adoption. In the United States, this definition varies by the legal context. For example, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have their own interpretations and definitions of family.
• Personal and Emotional Definition : On a personal level, family can mean different things to different people. For some, it’s about biological connections; for others, it’s about who they share their life with, who cares for them, and who they care for.

What is the importance of family?

Here are 10 reasons why family is important.

Provide emotional support

A good family is a source of emotional support and unconditional love. Adults who received emotional support from their family during childhood are associated with experiencing fewer depressive symptoms, according to a 2004 study published in the American Psychological Association’s “Psychology and Aging” journal.

A healthy family with good parenting is associated with better emotional regulation, self-confidence, mental health, social competence, and resilience. Families can be a source of support in good times and in bad.

Foster belongingness and identity

Families shape an individual’s identity and belonging from a young age. As social creatures, belonging to a group is important for our self-concept. Families provide a sense of social identity, a sense of self, and a feeling that we belong to something larger than ourselves.

Promote education

Families facilitate children’s education by creating learning opportunities, providing intellectual stimulation, and modeling literacy and language skills.

Foster cognitive development and academic performance

Families provide an environment that stimulates cognitive skills, such as problem-solving and critical thinking and supports and encourages academic achievements.

Facilitate socialization

Families play a central role in socializing children and teaching social norms, cultural differences, manners, prosocial behavior, and beliefs. Family members help children understand social relationships and navigate community dynamics.

Maintain physical health

Families instill healthy lifestyles by educating family members about nutrition, exercise, and hygiene. These efforts lay the foundation for children’s long-term physical well-being. Additionally, families provide essential care and support during illness, aiding in recovery and managing health challenges.

Guide moral development

Parents shape their children’s moral development by modeling ethical behavior and teaching right from wrong. Many cultures hold family itself as a fundamental moral value.

Preserve cultural and traditional transmission

Families pass down language, rituals, customs, stories, and belief systems from generation to generation, preserving cultural identity and traditions.

Ensure economic support and security

Families provide material support, including food, clothing, and shelter. This economic support contributes to a sense of security and stability from childhood through older adulthood.

Uphold continuity and legacy

Families preserve cultural heritage and traditions, ensuring these are passed down through generations. A 2015 study conducted by the Manchester Metropolitan University indicated that a family helps individuals gain a sense of continuity by providing a shared history and a link to the past through narratives.

Why do we need a family?

Our families are one of the most important things in our lives. We need a family for different reasons at various stages of our lives.

• When babies are born, they need a family’s care and protection to survive.
• Children need a family’s guidance to learn. They also need a family’s assistance to grow physically and mentally.
• Teenagers need a family’s continued financial and emotional support. They also need a family’s to develop their independent identity.
• Adults need a family’s emotional connection to feel loved and belong.
• Seniors need a family to have a sense of purpose in life.

Is family the most important thing?

Yes, family is the most important thing to many people. In a survey conducted at the University of London in 1995 with 2,000 adult respondents, 31% mentioned relationships with family or relatives as the most important thing in their lives – the highest percentage for any item.

However, family is not the most important thing to everyone. In a 2015 study conducted at Kean University, 43.5% of 354 graduate and undergraduate students were estranged from their families. Reasons for estrangement included disagreement, financial issues, divorce, substance abuse, and abuse.

What is the importance of family in society?

The importance of family in society includes the following 5 factors.

• Socialization : Families instill values, beliefs, and norms in children that support a peaceful, well-functioning society. They teach kids fundamental social skills like language, customs, roles, and norms. They also shape children’s prosocial behaviors like cooperation, respect, and contribution to the community. Well-socialized children grow into productive adult citizens.
• Values transmission : Families are the primary way values such as responsibility, honesty, generosity, etc., are passed down to shape future generations and society.
• Social stability and structure : There is a strong connection between family nurturing and the well-being of society. Family is a basic building block of society, performing an important role in providing structure and stability. Strong family units contribute to a stable social framework, which is essential for the overall functioning and cohesiveness of the community.
• Community engagement and development : Families often participate in community activities and local governance, contributing to developing strong, supportive, and resilient communities.
• Economic support : Families provide economic support for children, the elderly, sick, and unemployed family members, reducing the burden on society. Families also contribute to society through consumption and production.

What is the role of family in child development?

Families play 5 important roles in child development.

• Shape brain development : Family experiences can impact brain development , according to a 2011 research published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. The research reviewed over 50 studies on brain development and found direct evidence that factors such as maltreatment and maternal deprivation during childhood could lead to changes in brain structure, volume, growth, and activities. Early experiences lay the groundwork for developing a healthy brain, emotional regulation, social competence, and resilience. 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02281.x
• Contribute to life success : Researchers have observed that parenting and the family play a crucial role in a child’s life and success in all the societies studied. For instance, a Harvard University study conducted in 1938 tried to determine the secret of raising successful kids. 268 male Harvard students were tracked for 70 years in the Harvard Grant Study, the first of its kind. Their mental and physical health, as well as their successes and failures, was analyzed. A loving family and healthy relationships are strongly linked to a successful and happy life.
• Influence future relationships : According to the attachment theory theorized by psychiatrist John Bowlby and psychologist Mary Ainsworth, family plays an important role in establishing children’s attachment styles. This early attachment influences the child’s emotional development, self-perception, and future relationships.
• Impact health and well-being : Numerous studies have consistently shown that family life is an important aspect of our well-being. A strong family unit characterized by positive, supportive relationships enhances mental and physical health. For example, a 2011 study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison revealed that family structure was significantly linked to teenagers’ behavioral issues, physical health, and emotional health. A supportive family environment fosters a sense of security and belonging, contributing to lower stress levels and improved health outcomes.
• Predict life satisfaction: In a 1980 study conducted at Indiana State University, life satisfaction levels at 4 stages of adult life from early adulthood (ages 22-34) to late adulthood (ages 65 and older) were examined. A strong family life was one of the strongest predictors of life satisfaction at each stage.

Why is family important to you?

Family is important to people in many different ways. Here are 10 potential reasons why family can be important to you.

• Family can offer unconditional love.
• Family gives you strength and support to face difficulties in life.
• Family models good values.
• Family provides companionship and a sense of belonging.
• Family helps you build self-esteem.
• Family provides you with shelter and safety.
• Family teaches you vital lessons in life.
• Family gives you a sense of security and stability.
• Family teaches you moral values.
• Family enhances mental health.

How does family influence your life?

A family influences your life in many different ways. Some influences are positive, while others are negative. From our earliest moments, our families shape our understanding of the world, our beliefs and values, habits and behaviors, and even our personalities.

Our families provide our first social interactions and environments for learning. Parents, siblings, and extended family teach us through their words, actions, encouragement, and discipline. Growing up, we observe how our families communicate, solve problems, express emotions, and relate to one another and the outside world. Consciously and unconsciously, we integrate much of what we learn from our families into our ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.

The family relationships and dynamics we experience can impact our self-esteem, mental health, worldviews, communication patterns, decision-making, relationships outside the family, and more. Healthy, loving family bonds often lead to positive development and outcomes later in life. Dysfunctional family environments can negatively shape us, too.

Our families leave lasting imprints on who we become as individuals. Their influences remain with us as we mature and start our own families, determining what values, behaviors, and environments we pass on to our children. For better and worse, our families shape our lives through the lessons they teach us and the models they provide.

Why should we help our family?

We should help our families because families provide not just basic needs for children but also emotional needs. A loved one can be a source of strength during hard times. By being there for family when they need us, we reciprocate this love and care they have provided us. When we support family members,  we reinforce our relationships and embody the family values of love, responsibility, generosity, and a sense of community.

How do families develop strong foundations?

To develop strong foundations, here are 4 ways to promote a strong sense of family.

• Invest in family support: Families provide not just basic needs for children but also emotional needs. A loved one can be a source of strength during hard times. Showing children unconditional love is one of the best ways to create a support system. It is their safe haven, so they know they can always come home.
• Improve communication : Open communication is critical to building close connections. Good communication means everyone should be able to speak up, including children. They can have open discussions and share their thoughts honestly and respectfully. Happy, healthy family dynamics rely on respecting each other’s thoughts and feelings and compromising when necessary. Each family member feels connected and is part of something bigger than themselves. 
• Cherish family dinner time : A 2006 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health highlighted its significance in the positive development of teenagers. This extensive study surveyed 99,462 high school students across the United States and discovered a notable positive correlation between regular family dinners and essential aspects such as commitment to learning, the development of positive values, social competencies, and a positive sense of identity. Conversely, it found that these family meals were inversely associated with high-risk behaviors, including substance use, sexual activity, depression, suicidal tendencies, antisocial behaviors, and violence.
• Prioritize quality time together : The value of family time lies not just in its quantity but significantly in its quality. Quality time goes beyond just engaging in enjoyable activities; it encompasses being present and supportive during your child’s challenging moments and actively participating in their life. These meaningful interactions are what constitute true quality time.

Do I need a family to be happy?

No, you don’t need a family to be happy. True happiness can come from within through personal fulfillment, self-discovery, achieving competence, a sense of purpose, and healthy relationships. What brings fulfillment varies significantly among individuals.

In addition, having a family does not automatically equate to happiness. For instance, children in abusive family environments often do not have a happy childhood . 

Similarly, parenthood doesn’t guarantee happiness. A study by the Berlin Social Science Center 2014 found that new parents were generally less happy than their childless counterparts.

Is it OK not to have a family?

Yes, it is OK not to have a family. In 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau found that married-couple households without children under 18 were more common than married-couple households with children. Not everyone feels compelled to have children or establish a traditional family structure.

Your happiness and love for your life are what matter most. If not having a family aligns with your happiness and life goals, it’s the right path for you. There is no need to conform to societal norms or feel pressured to do what everyone else does. Prioritize what brings you fulfillment and joy.

References For Importance of Family

• 1. Bennett J. Narrating family histories: Negotiating identity and belonging through tropes of nostalgia and authenticity. Current Sociology . Published online April 20, 2015:449-465. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392115578984
• 2. Bowling A. What things are important in people’s lives? A survey of the public’s judgements to inform scales of health related quality of life. Social Science & Medicine . Published online November 1995:1447-1462. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(95)00113-l
• 3. Conti RP. Family Estrangement: Establishing a Prevalence Rate. JPBS . Published online 2015. doi:https://doi.org/10.15640/jpbs.v3n2a4
• 4. Woodhams V, de Lusignan S, Mughal S, et al. Triumph of hope over experience: learning from interventions to reduce avoidable hospital admissions identified through an Academic Health and Social Care Network. BMC Health Serv Res . Published online June 10, 2012. doi:https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-12-153
• 5. Ainsworth MDS. The Bowlby-Ainsworth attachment theory. Behav Brain Sci . Published online September 1978:436-438. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x00075828
• 6. Langton CE, Berger LM. Family Structure and Adolescent Physical Health, Behavior, and Emotional Well-Being. Social Service Review . Published online September 2011:323-357. doi:https://doi.org/10.1086/661922
• 7. Elgar FJ, Craig W, Trites SJ. Family Dinners, Communication, and Mental Health in Canadian Adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health . Published online April 2013:433-438. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2012.07.012
• 8. Medley ML. Life Satisfaction across Four Stages of Adult Life. Int J Aging Hum Dev . Published online October 1980:193-209. doi:https://doi.org/10.2190/d4lg-aljq-8850-gydv
• 9. Fulkerson JA, Story M, Mellin A, Leffert N, Neumark-Sztainer D, French SA. Family Dinner Meal Frequency and Adolescent Development: Relationships with Developmental Assets and High-Risk Behaviors. Journal of Adolescent Health . Published online September 2006:337-345. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2005.12.026
• 10. Pollmann‐Schult M. Parenthood and Life Satisfaction: Why Don’t Children Make People Happy? J of Marriage and Family . Published online March 4, 2014:319-336. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12095
• 11. . Married Couple Households Made Up Most of Family Households. United States Census Bureau. Published 2023. https://doi.org/https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/family-households-still-the-majority.html

Disclaimer: The content of this article is intended for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider for medical concerns.

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Parenthood and Well-Being: A Decade in Review

Kei nomaguchi.

Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University, 231 Williams Hall, Bowling Green, OH 43403

Melissa A. Milkie

Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 725 Spadina Ave., Toronto, ON M5S 2J4 Canada

Understanding social aspects of parental well-being is vital, because parents’ welfare has implications not only for parents themselves but also for child development, fertility, and the overall health of a society. This article provides a critical review of scholarship on parenthood and well-being in advanced economies published from 2010 to 2019. It focuses on the role of social, economic, cultural, and institutional contexts of parenting in influencing adult well-being. We identify major themes, achievements, and challenges and organize the review around the demands-rewards perspective and two theoretical frameworks: the stress process model and life course perspectives. The analysis shows that rising economic insecurities and inequalities and a diffusion of intensive parenting ideology were major social contexts of parenting in the 2010s. Scholarship linking parenting contexts and parental well-being illuminated how stressors related to providing and caring for children could unjustly burden some parents, especially mothers, those with fewer socioeconomic resources, and those with marginalized statuses. In that vein, researchers continued to emphasize how stressors diverged by parents’ socioeconomic status, gender, and partnership status, with new attention to strains experienced by racial/ethnic minority, immigrant, and LGBTQ parents. Scholars’ comparisons of parents’ positions in various countries expanded, enhancing knowledge regarding specific policy supports that allow parents to thrive. Articulating future research within a stress process model framework, we showed vibrant theoretical pathways, including conceptualizing potential parental social supports at multiple levels, attending to the intersection of multiple social locations of parents, and renewing attention to local contextual factors and parenting life stages.

A common saying—that being a parent is the most difficult and the most rewarding job in the world—resonates with many people. Parents shoulder a myriad of challenging responsibilities in raising the next generation over a long stretch of their adulthoods, but having children also provides adults with a sense of purpose and meaning in life ( Musick, Meier, & Flood, 2016 ; Nelson, Kushlev, & Lyubomirsky, 2014 ; Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2017 ). Parental well-being has implications for child well-being, fertility, and society more broadly. Parenting strains, defined as felt difficulties with the demands and conflicts within the parenting role, and poor parental well-being can have significant implications for children’s developmental outcomes ( Mackler et al., 2015 ; Turney, 2011 ). Moreover, a decline in subjective well-being after a first birth decreases the odds of having subsequent births ( Margolis & Myrskylä, 2015 ). Thus, investigating social patterns in how parenthood and parenting affect adults’ well-being is imperative in order to create supports that allow parents to thrive. In this review, “parenthood” refers to being a parent versus remaining childless. “Parenting” refers to what parents do in terms of raising, supporting, and socializing children throughout their lives. We define “well-being” broadly to include subjective well-being (e.g., life satisfaction, life meaning, loneliness), emotional health (e.g., anger, guilt), mental health (e.g., depression, anxiety), and physical heath.

During the 2010s, research on parenthood, parenting, and well-being produced a rich, diverse body of work, attesting to the importance of understanding this central adult role. The decade started in the aftermath of the Great Recession when people in advanced economies were reminded of the harsh reality of economic insecurity, economic inequalities, and thus uncertainties regarding children’s futures ( Cooper, 2014 ). The recognition of the diffusion and deepening of intensive parenting norms, seemingly accelerated by the rise of economic insecurities ( Lan, 2018 ; Nelson, 2010 ; Ramey & Ramey, 2010 ), spurred researchers to investigate parental well-being, as mothers and fathers appeared to be under pressure. The decade saw an increase in cross-national studies and work by European scholars on parental well-being, many of which were motivated by understanding reasons for low fertility (e.g., Aassve, Mencarini, & Sironi, 2015 ). These studies found that whether parents were less happy and more depressed than non-parents depended on social contexts, including the types and level of support that the nation provides to help raise children (e.g., Glass, Simon, & Andersson, 2016 ). Research continued to emphasize diverse experiences of parenting strains by gender, social class, and marital/partnership status, with expanded attention to other major social statuses such as race-ethnicity, immigrant status, and LGBTQ identities (e.g., Goldberg & Smith, 2013 ). And understanding the variations in parenting strains and parental well-being by child age went beyond the dichotomy of minor versus adult children (e.g., Meier et al., 2018 ; Nomaguchi, 2012 a ; Simon & Caputo, 2019 ).

This review focuses on studies that examined the role of social, economic, cultural, and institutional contexts in shaping parenting strains and the well-being of parents. We reviewed hundreds of scholarly works published as peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and book chapters from 2010 to 2019. Most studies focused on North America, a few Western European countries and Australia, due to the nature of the works reviewed. Because of space restrictions, the present review is highly selective, centering on major themes in the past decade’s research. We begin with highlighting economic and cultural contexts of parenting in the 2010s and how these trends relate to scholarship on parental well-being. We then review studies that examined variations in parenting strain and the well-being of parents by major social statuses and life stages based on our demands-rewards perspective, as well as two theoretical frameworks: the stress process model (SPM) and life course perspectives. Finally, we provide critique and future research directions.

CHANGING NORMS OF PARENTING

Parenting research during the 2010s pointed to a diffusion of intensive parenting ( Faircloth 2014 ; Hays, 1996 ), a cultural backdrop of the era. Intensive parenting is a child-centered approach that demands great parental time, financial, and emotional investments in childrearing ( Hays, 1996 ). Hays argued that though a child-centered approach already appeared in childrearing advice around World War II (e.g., Benjamin Spock), the emphasis on a parent’s constant involvement became more extensive during the 1980s (e.g., Berry Brazelton and Penlope Leach). Intensive parenting, also called sensitive or responsive parenting ( Belsky, Lerner, & Spanier, 1984 ), posits that a caregiver’s—or a mother’s, as Hays (1996) pointed to its gendered nature—consistent involvement, her emotional and verbal responsiveness, and her provisions of age-appropriate stimulations that are uniquely tailored to each child are essential for a child’s healthy development. An important aspect of intensive parenting, which can undermine parents’ well-being, is its assumption of parental determinism— that individual parents’ actions to cultivate children’s abilities and skills determine children’s developmental and educational outcomes ( Faircloth, 2014 ; Milkie & Warner, 2014 ; Villalobos, 2014 ). Another key feature of the ideology is that children are seen as innocent and vulnerable; and parents are held accountable for protecting their children from any potential harms that undermine their adequate development ( Nelson, 2010 ). These two assumptions make parents—especially mothers—feel as if they must attend to minute details of a child’s physical, social, emotional and cognitive development to the point of exhaustion ( Villalobos, 2014 ; Wall, 2018 ).

Studies in the 2010s recognized that the ideology of intensive parenting and its practice expanded further from the 1990s to the present ( Faircloth, 2014 ; Nelson, 2010 ; Ramey & Ramey, 2010 ). In recent decades, the increases in income inequality and competition in the labor market have made adults feel insecure about children’s futures ( Cooper, 2014 ). The rise of economic insecurity for the next generation have reflected in Americans’ changing values for children: A study using the General Social Survey found that from the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s, an increasing proportion of Americans emphasized that hard work is an important trait for children to prepare themselves for life ( Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2019 ). In earlier decades, although Hays (1996) saw it across the class spectrum, intensive parenting was often considered more of a norm among more economically privileged parents ( Lareau, 2011 ). Lareau’s ethnography of families with third-grade children in the 1990s, identified the practice of concerted cultivation—a childrearing approach wherein parents painstakingly and methodically cultivated children’s talents, academics, and futures—used predominantly by the more educated and affluent. A growing number of studies in the past decade, however, suggest that intensive parenting ideology has been diffused across social class ( Dotti Sani & Treas, 2016 ; Elliott, Powell, & Brenton, 2015 ; Ishizuka, 2019 ; Putnam, 2015 ), although its practice takes different forms and its implications for parental strain and well-being differ by social class.

For middle-class and affluent parents, rising global competition and income inequalities have made them worry that their children could tumble down the social class ladder ( Lan, 2018 ; Nelson, 2010 ). An increase in the perceived economic return to attaining degrees from selective universities has driven parents to invest time and money to cultivate their children’s talents and skills to build up children’s extracurricular resumes ( Doepke & Zilibotti, 2019 ; Ramey & Ramey, 2010 ). Indeed whereas the rise of intensive parenting is evident in research findings that mothers’ and fathers’ time in childcare increased from the 1980s to the mid-2000s ( Bianchi, 2011 ), the increase was most prominent among the highly-educated ( Altintas, 2016 ; Dotti Sani & Treas, 2016 ). U.S. parents’ increase in child-related spending in recent decades is also concentrated in higher-income households ( Kornrich & Furstenburg, 2013 ; Schneider, Hastings, & LaBriola, 2018 ). While researchers have rightly voiced concerns about the increasing class disparities in parental investments for the reproduction of social class inequalities ( Calarco, 2014 ; Putnam, 2015 ), ironically, intensified parental investments among the affluent are in part prompted by their perceptions of uncertainty about their children’s securing middle- or upper-middle-class status.

Parents with fewer economic resources emphasize the importance of “being there” and making sacrifices to meet their children’s needs ( Edin & Nelson, 2013 ; Elliott, Powell, & Brenton, 2015 ). They are worried about their children’s safety ( Nomaguchi & Brown, 2011 ) and recognize it as their responsibility to protect their children from harmful influences ( Elliott & Aseltine, 2013 ). Parents express desire to place their children in extracurricular activities to keep their children safe and busy, yet face financial constraints to have their children particulate in quality programs ( Elliott & Aseltine, 2013 ). More ominously, the notion of children’s innocence evolved into the idea that the state—local child protective services—must intervene to punish “neglectful” parents to protect “innocent” children ( Elliott & Bowen, 2018 ). The increasing surveillance by the state has made parents with lower economic resources, especially mothers who are on public assistance or formerly incarcerated, feel the need to guard themselves from the risk of being judged as neglectful parents, wherein they could receive a dire sanction of losing custody of the child ( Desmond, 2016 ; Elliott & Bowen, 2018 ; Gurusami, 2018 ).

Still, to what extent intensive parenting is the framework for mothers’ decisions and emotions across all social groups continues to be debated. For example, Dow’s (2019) study of African-American mothers shows that the ideology surrounding childcare is mother-focused but includes expectations that kin and community are a key part of raising children. In contrast, Elliott and colleagues ( Elliott, Powell, & Brenton, 2015 ; Elliott & Reed, 2019 ) emphasize that low-income Black mothers feel pressure from having sole responsibility for protecting children from making unwise decisions and getting into trouble, make various efforts to monitor or teach their children, and blame themselves when children cannot succeed. More research, which examines aspects of intensive parenting ideology and its felt pressures on parents by race/ethnicity and other social statuses as well as region, is warranted.

The scholarly discourse elucidating intensive parenting norms indicates that parenting is more stressful today than in prior decades. A couple of studies examined changes in parental well-being over the past several decades. One study, using U.S. national surveys collected in 1976 and 2002 respectively, found that mothers in the early 2000s, despite perceiving better neighborhood quality and better health of their children, reported feeling more exhausted from raising children than mothers in the mid-1970s ( Nomaguchi & Fettro, 2018 ). Another study, using the 1981 to 2008 European Values Survey (EVS), showed that the positive effects of parental status on life satisfaction decreased during this period ( Ugur, 2019 ). Several studies, using convenience samples, examined the effects of intensive parenting beliefs on mothers’ well-being and found that mothers who believe in or enact intensive parenting ideologies were more likely to report feeling anxious, guilty, stressed, and depressed (e.g., Gunderson & Barrett, 2017 ; Liss et al., 2013 ; Rizzo, Schiffrin, & Liss, 2013 ). Yet, concepts and measures of intensive parenting ideology varied widely across these studies. Moreover, it may be problematic if researchers included items tapping parenting exhaustion in a measure of intensive parenting ideology (e.g., Liss et al., 2013 ) to examine its link to parents’ mental health. Although Hays (1996) indicated emotionally exhausting as one of the features of intensive parenting, this is a possible consequence of intensive parenting ideology that should be examined as an outcome.

THE STRESS PROCESS MODEL: THE DEMANDS AND REWARDS OF PARENTING

Many scholars conceptualize parenting strain and parental well-being using a framework that we call the demands-rewards perspective . Parenthood brings both demands and rewards to adult lives ( Nelson, Kushlev, & Lyubomirsky, 2014 ; Nomaguchi, 2012a ; Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2017 ). Demands refer to the aspects of parenting that require sustained physical, mental, and financial investments and effort. Rewards refer to the aspects of parenting that facilitate achievement of parenting goals or stimulate personal growth and self-concept. As Musick, Meier, and Flood (2016) put it, parenting is a “mixed bag” with joyful, meaningful, and rewarding experiences interwoven with frustrating challenges and exhausting workloads of care. Although it is difficult to compare parents’ lives with non-parents’, in part because of data limitations, the demands-rewards perspective potentially provides pathways to a more complete analysis. For example, recent studies examined the effects of parenthood on aspects of healthy living, such as body weight ( Umberson et al., 2011 ), men’s body mass ( Syrda, 2017 ), health behaviors such as diet and exercise ( Reczek et al., 2014 ), alcohol use ( Paradis, 2011 ; Simon & Caputo, 2019 ), and health check-ups ( Anezaki & Hashimoto, 2018 ). Using the demands-rewards perspective on parenthood and well-being is illuminating—it shows how scholarship in this area collectively pointed to the paradox that parenthood promotes healthy life style orientations through paying more attention to diet and reducing risk-taking behaviors, whereas the demands of parenting curtail parents’ time to take care of themselves.

Researchers concur that the balance sheet between demands and rewards varies across social statuses and life course contexts, as the demands of parenting as well as the resources available for parents to use to cope with the demands are distributed unevenly across social statuses and life stages ( Musick, Meier, & Flood, 2016 ; Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2017 ; Simon & Caputo, 2019 ). Moreover, the resources for parents vary across countries with diverse social policy contexts, with parents faring better when supports from the state aid them in raising children ( Glass, Simon, & Andersson, 2016 ). Understanding unequal distributions of parenting demands and rewards, as well as parenting resources, across these contexts is one of the key purposes of research in this area. Specific findings can inform policy makers about challenges and needs of parents that may differ across various social and life contexts ( Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2017 ).

Aligned with our perspective, the SPM provides an insightful framework for assessing differences in the nature and the level of strains, defined as individuals’ perceived difficulties in satisfying demands, and resources derived from various social and institutional contexts ( Pearlin, 1989 ; 1999 ; Pearlin & Bierman, 2013 ). The SPM regards stress as a process, which includes three core components—stressors, resources, and stress outcomes ( Pearlin, 1989 ). Stressors , defined as sources of stress, generally appear in two forms: major life events and more chronic problems. Chronic stressors are often rooted in social roles, which are called role strains, including parenting strain, marital/partner strain, and work strain. Other major chronic strains are indirectly tied to social roles, such as financial strain, time strain, and neighborhood stressors. Resources involve coping, defined as a behavioral or cognitive response to a stressor that helps to prevent or allay the harm otherwise caused by the stressor, social support, defined as the satisfying of one’s needs through the actions of others, and personal resources, such as mastery, defined as individuals’ self-perception of their ability to control the demands that confront them. Resources may suppress or prevent, interact with, or mediate the effects of stressors on well-being outcomes. Thus, even at the same level of exposure to stressors, whether these stressors lead to poorer well-being varies, depending on the availability and deployment of resources. Although the SPM focuses on individual-level resources like self-efficacy and felt social support ( Milkie, 2010 ), we consider the supports that states, workplaces, or other institutions provide to help raise children as key resources that help reduce burdens of parenting, as we will discuss in a later section (e.g., Glass, Simon, & Andersson, 2016 ). Stress outcomes include mental health, physical health, and subjective well-being.

Two other concepts in the SPM are also relevant in the present review. First, the effects of stressors originating in the parenting role on stress outcomes depend on the extent to which stressors proliferate into other life domains ( Pearlin, 1999 ). That is, parenthood not only generates stressors that derive directly from parenting and the parent-child relationship, but also can exacerbate problems or produces new stressors, most centrally financial strain, time strains, and conflicts with partners, which may result in poorer health and less subjective well-being of parents compared to non-parents (e.g., Pollmann-Schult, 2014 ). Second, a crucial part of the SPM is that every component of the stress process is conditioned by social statuses , such as social class, gender and sexuality, marital status, race/ethnicity, and immigration status ( Pearlin & Bierman, 2013 ). In the following section, we discuss selected types of parenting role strains examined in the past decade’s body of research.

Parenting Role Strain

Drawing on role strain theory, the SPM originally identified four types of parenting role strain, or chronic stressors rooted in the parenting role: role overload, interpersonal conflict, role captivity, and inter-role conflict ( Pearlin, 1989 ). Parenting role overload , defined as the perception that the amount of child care demands exceeds the individual’s capacity, is often measured as respondents’ perceptions of feeling overwhelmed (e.g., “Being a parent is harder than I thought it would be.”) ( Luthar & Ciciolla, 2016 ). Parent-child relationship conflict is a strong stressor that affects parents’ mental health negatively ( Gunderson & Barrett, 2017 ; Luther & Ciciolla, 2016 ; Reczek & Zhang, 2016 ). On the flip side, underscoring a demands-rewards perspective, close parent-child relationships act as “rewards” which enhance parents’ well-being ( Nomaguchi, 2012a ). Parenting role captivity , or parenting role restriction, refers to the extent to which people feel stuck because of parenting responsibilities (e.g., “I feel as if I am trapped in the parenting role”) ( Beernink et al., 2012 ; Nomaguchi & Brown, 2011 ). Future work could examine the level of thriving in parenting identities, which may provide rewarding experiences for many adults. Similar to Abidin’s (1995) parenting stress index, parenting strain scales in national surveys, such as the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study (FFCWS), the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), and the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH), combine items that tap into these three types of strain. Finally, inter-role conflict , especially work-parenting conflict , is a major challenge for today’s parents, which many studies in the 2010s examined, as we will discuss in the section on the contexts of job characteristics and work-family integration.

Besides the conventional forms of stressors, research has advanced through examining unique stressors that parents experience today. One example is time deficits with children , which refers to parents’ appraisals of not spending enough time with children, a form of parenting role strain that is pervasive in contemporary North America ( Milkie, Nomaguchi, & Schieman, 2019 ). In the intensive parenting era, parental time with children is considered precious, and perhaps necessary to foster close parent-child relationships and children’s proper development ( Milkie, Nomaguchi, & Denny, 2015 ). Parents enjoy spending time with children, reporting feeling happier when they are with children than when they are without them ( Musick, Meier, & Flood, 2016 ). Time spent with children in fun or enrichment activities is positively related to parents’ sense of work-family balance ( Milkie et al., 2010 ), less work-family conflict ( Nomaguchi, 2012 b ), and better emotional well-being ( Offer, 2014 ). Spending more days per week singing songs, reading or telling stories, or playing together with preschool children is related to less parenting strain for both fathers and mothers ( Nomaguchi & Johnson, 2016 ) and fewer depressive symptoms for fathers ( Kotila & Kamp Dush, 2013 ). As intensive parenting ideology has escalated, the standard for the amount of parental time with children has become high ( Milkie & Warner, 2014 ). Many employed parents find it difficult to achieve the ideal. Using the 2011 Canadian Work, Stress, and Health Study, Milkie, Nomaguchi, and Schieman (2019) found that almost half of employed mothers and fathers felt as if their time with children was not enough, which in turn related to parents’ sleep problems, anger, and psychological distress. Future research that addresses new types of parenting strain that emerge in changing social and cultural contexts is needed.

PARENTING MINOR CHILDREN IN SOCIAL CONTEXT

Consistent with the SPM’s emphasis, research in the past decade demonstrated that parenting strains and the well-being of parents vary by social, economic, and national contexts. We articulate broad themes, which include: (a) parenting children with special needs, (b) parenting in combination with paid jobs, especially those with pernicious characteristics and (c) challenges related to parents’ key social statuses. Considering social statuses, research advanced through investigating divergent challenges that parents with various social status positions face, especially parents with racial/ethnic minority status, immigrants, and parents who are LGBTQ, while continuing to examine variations by gender and marital/partnership status. In addition, an important area of research has emerged on (d) national contexts influencing parental well-being.

Children with Special Needs

Parenting strain is greater when child care demands are higher. One line of research that advanced in the past decade focused on challenges of raising children with special health care needs or emotional and behavioral problems. Arranging and providing care for children with special health care needs imposes time burdens ( Miller, Nugent, & Russell, 2015 ) as well as financial costs ( Stabile & Allin, 2012 ) far beyond the time and money required by raising healthy children. Primary caregivers (often mothers) of children with special needs tend to reduce or stop paid work activities, which, in addition to children’s health care costs, places these families into a lifelong financial deprivation. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the Children of the NLSY79, Houle and Berger (2017) found that mothers whose children had a disabling condition by age 4 were more likely than those whose children did not have disability to have unsecured debts (i.e., debts that are owed to banks, stores, hospitals, and other institutions and are not tied to an asset) that they were unable to repay for decades following the birth of a child with a disability.

Social stigma, referring to people’s adverse reactions that often involve stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination, is another major stressor that parents raising children with physical disabilities or mental disorders must endure daily during encounters with medical professionals, school officials, neighbors, strangers, and friends ( Farkas et al., 2019 ). In response to other people’s stigmatizing attitudes, parents tend to blame themselves for their children’s conditions and isolate themselves and their family from social interactions ( Moses, 2010 ). Having a child with emotional problems or aggressive behaviors increases mothers’ parenting strain ( Vaughan et al., 2013 ), in part because it increases mothers’ social isolation and role captivity ( Beernink et al., 2012 ) and it affects the mother-child relationship negatively ( Krahé et al., 2015 ). Support from family members helps reduce mothers’ self-blame and parenting strain ( Lutz et al., 2012 ; Moses, 2010 ). Yet, because not everyone has resourceful family members who can help, scholars should investigate how institutional resources in medical or health care services, or educational facilities, can help reduce burdens of raising children with special needs.

Researchers might expand the investigation of financial, time, and psychological demands of raising children with special needs to variations by various social statuses. For example, while much research focuses on mothers, Hartley and colleagues (2012) focused on the psychological well-being of fathers of adolescent or young adult children with disabilities. A marriage/partnership is more fragile when children have special needs ( Kvist et al., 2013 ). The burdens of caring for children with special needs may differ depending on whether there is a supportive spouse/partner who shares them. Disparities in the diagnosis and care for children with special needs by race/ethnicity and immigration status have been documented ( Coker, Rodriguez, & Flores, 2010 ). More research is needed to understand differences in the effects of children’s special needs on parents by race/ethnicity and immigration status.

Job Characteristics, Attitudes toward Maternal Employment, and Work-Family Integration

In general, employed mothers and fathers with minor children report less parenting strain than their non-employed counterparts ( Buehler & O’Brien, 2011 ; Meier et al., 2016 ; Nomaguchi & Brown, 2011 ; Nomaguchi & Johnson 2016 ), perhaps because of material, social, and psychological resources that employment may provide. The positive effects of employment depend on job characteristics, however. Long work hours make it difficult for parents to fulfill parenting responsibilities, and increase parents’ feelings of time deficits with children, which relates to poorer mental health ( Milkie, Nomaguchi, & Schieman, 2019 ; Roxburgh, 2012 ). Workplace policies can make a difference, however. In general, schedule control is a key job resource that helps parents integrate work and family responsibilities ( Kelly et al., 2014 ). Employed parents with schedule control report more time spent with children ( Lee et al., 2017 ; Milkie, Nomaguchi, & Schieman, 2019 ), lower parenting strain ( Nomaguchi & Johnson, 2016 ), and better well-being ( Lee et al., 2017 ) than those without schedule control.

Socioeconomic status (SES) differences in issues of work-family stress cannot be ignored. For low-wage workers, schedule control is rare ( Bianchi, 2011 ). Even worse, in the 24-hour economy, low-wage workers in the service sector increasingly are placed on unpredictable work schedules, which is difficult for parents who must arrange childcare ( Carrillo et al., 2017 ). Indeed, child care arrangements are a central factor influencing parents’ work-family integration. Parents are concerned about the quality of child care arrangements, and if they have to choose a particular arrangement for its convenience or price, rather than its quality, it affects their mental health negatively ( Gordon et al., 2011 ). Child care instability is stressful even if back-up care is available ( Pilarz & Hill, 2017 ), perhaps because of hassles in making last-minute changes. Even after children become school age, how to supervise children when they are not in school but parents are at work continues to be an issue, especially when parents work long hours ( Barnett et al., 2010 ), and presumably when they have no schedule control. More research is needed to investigate the role of after school care in lessening strain of employed parents.

For parents with professional jobs, who often have some schedule control, a main issue is blurred work-nonwork boundaries via work emails and other electronic notifications that allow job-related tasks to spill into family time, which make them feel pressure to be always available and attending to paid work around the clock ( Bianchi, 2011 ). In the face of dual pressures of the ideal worker norm and intensive parenting ideology, employed parents with professional careers use various individual coping strategies, including prioritizing family time, scaling back paid work or non-paid work obligations, blocking out paid work or non-paid work time, and moving paid work time around ( Moen et al., 2013 ). As Moen and colleagues (2013) noted, however, individuals’ options are limited by the structural conditions and culture of their jobs and workplaces, underscoring the need for understanding the role of institutional and state resources in influencing parental strains and well-being.

For mothers, cultural beliefs regarding maternal employment are also relevant to the pressures that they face and thus their emotional health ( Collins, 2019 ). Intensive mothering is in conflict with ideal worker norms, pushing many mothers to make difficult choices and often sacrifice careers ( Orgad, 2019 ) or feel much guilt ( Collins, 2019 ). Yet Christopher (2012) showed how some employed mothers actively respond to cultural pressures by reframing the meaning of a “good mother” and a “good worker” to fit their situations, illuminating how “extensive mothering” meant being in charge of children’s lives and well-being while delegating some care to others. Similarly, Dow (2016) argues that African-American middle-class mothers’ “integrated mothering” ideologies were based in beliefs that mothers should be employed and extended family and community members could provide good care for children. This ideology supported mothers’ abilities to work and raise children with less angst. Yet for mothers who wished to stay home with children, tensions arose due to concern of their being viewed by others in their community as taking an “easy” route ( Dow, 2016 ).

Social Class—Parenting with Limited Economic Resources

Men and women with lower SES generally value children and parenthood highly ( Edin & Nelson, 2013 ). Mothers without college degrees are more likely than mothers with college degrees to report that parenting young children has brought them new life meaning ( Nomaguchi & Brown, 2011 ). Yet, parents with lower SES experience many tribulations in raising children that higher-income families do not ( Cooper, 2014 ). Among men and women in impoverished areas, pregnancy sometimes occurs before relationships are established ( Edin & Nelson, 2013 ). Couples who spent a limited length of time with each other before becoming parents are more likely to report a decline in relationship satisfaction after childbirth ( Trillingsgaard et al., 2014 ). Research in the 2010s highlighted the issue of living conditions and housing insecurity for parents with low-wage jobs, including home clutter ( Thornock et al., 2013 ) and fears about children’s outdoor play ( Kimbro & Schachter, 2011 ). Children make it harder to rent a home and increase the risk of being evicted in part because landlords see children as troublesome ( Desmond, 2016 ); and parenting while homeless is very challenging ( Alleyne-Green et al., 2019 ). In addition to structural barriers to providing healthy housing and food for their children, cultural ideals that set unrealistically high standards to reach, such as for mothers to make tailored home-cooked meals from scratch for their families, can make low-income mothers feel depressed ( Bowen, Brown, & Elliott, 2019 ).

In the U.S., mass incarceration has made parenting in impoverished areas even more difficult. Using data from the FFCWS, Wildman et al. (2012) found that fathers’ recent incarceration increased mothers’ risk of experiencing major depressive symptoms and life dissatisfaction even after economic hardship and relationship instabilities were controlled for. Formerly incarcerated fathers face a vicious cycle of material challenges that prevent them from seeing their children because of child support arrears, which make these fathers frustrated, discouraged, and depressed ( Haney, 2018 ). Gurusami (2018) found that formerly incarcerated mothers, who faced various obstacles in resuming daily parenting, were under constant pressure to prove to state agencies—social workers and parole or probation officers—that they were fit to have custody of their children. Stringer and Barnes (2012) found that regular contact with their children through letter writing and phone calls helps imprisoned mothers maintain positive views about their role as a parent. More research should investigate parenting strain while in prison, and what helps alleviate it.

Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration

Researchers in the 2010s made strides in documenting racial/ethnic minority parents’ unique challenges with raising their children in a society where racial prejudice remains entrenched. Using the 1998–99 ECLS-K, Nomaguchi and House (2013) found that Black mothers experienced elevated parenting strain from kindergarten to third grade, while White, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American mothers did not. Several qualitative studies documented that as their children get older, Black parents, regardless of SES, became increasingly concerned about their children’s encounters with racial biases by police officers, school personnel, or other people in the community ( Elliott & Aseltine, 2013 ; Dow, 2019 ; Warner, 2010 ). These studies highlight that Black parents actively respond to these fears and protect their children from potential threats through various strategies, such as drilling them about how to interact with police officers, monitoring their children’s friends, and carefully selecting school or extracurricular environments ( Elliott & Aseltine, 2013 ). However, this vigilance work takes energy ( Dow, 2019 ) and may influence the well-being of Black parents. Types of parenting challenges of Black children may differ by SES. For example, middle-class Black parents may face the difficult trade-off of choosing academically better schools that are predominantly White environments where their children may be marginalized ( Allers, 2019 ), whereas working-class Black parents may face the dilemma between letting their children choose friends and their concern about their children’s neighborhood peers being bad influences ( Elliott & Aseltine, 2013 ). We need more research that examines how the intersection of race and class shapes parenting experiences.

Given the unique role of immigration status in influencing parenting as well as mental health ( Diaz & Niño, 2019 ), we urge researchers to disentangle the effects of immigration status from the effects of race/ethnicity. A couple of studies using the 2003 NSCH and the 1998–1999 ECLS-K, respectively, found that foreign-born Hispanic and Asian mothers are more likely than U.S. native-born counterparts to report higher parenting strain ( Yu & Singh, 2012 ), largely because of an authoritarian parenting style (which is related to greater parenting strain in part because it is more likely to create parent-child conflict than an authoritative style), low English proficiency, and, for Latinx mothers, lower family income ( Nomaguchi & House, 2013 ). In contrast, there is little difference in parenting strain across U.S-born Hispanic, Asian, and non-Hispanic White mothers ( Nomaguchi & House, 2013 ). Legal status and neighborhood contexts shape strains of immigrant parents. Using the 2000 Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, Noah and Landale (2018) found that among Mexican-origin mothers, parenting strain was higher among undocumented immigrant mothers than U.S. born or naturalized/documented immigrant mothers. The percentage of foreign-born residents in the neighborhood, which did not affect U.S.-born mothers and was associated with less parenting strain for naturalized or documented mothers, was linked to greater parenting strain for undocumented mothers. This may be because of the fear that the geographic area with a higher concentration of immigrants could be targeted by Immigration Control Enforcement (ICE). Undocumented immigrant parents feel constrained in performing simple parenting activities such as taking their children to school, parks, or trips because lack of driver’s licenses and fear of the police limit their mobility ( Cardoso et al., 2018 ). Recent changes in immigration policies, such as deportation, family separation, and uncertainties related to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and anti-immigrant sentiment spurred by the Trump administration in the U.S., call for further research.

Hays (1996) called the ideology of sensitive parenting intensive mothering , underscoring gendered aspects of this parenting ideology. More than 20 years later, research suggests that the stressors and the well-being of parents remain gendered in several ways. Mothers feel more time pressure than fathers during the transition to parenthood ( Ruppanner et al., 2019 ). Mothers spend more hours multitasking than fathers, and mothers’ multitasking activities are more likely than fathers’ to involve housework and childcare and are more likely to be related to negative emotions, distress, and work-family conflict ( Offer & Schneider, 2011 ). Mothers, but not fathers, experience greater parenting strain when partners work long hours ( Craig & Brown, 2017 ), perhaps because mothers still serve their families even when working long hours, which protects fathers from experiencing parenting strains. Studies using data from the American Time Use Study (ATUS) suggest that when spending time with children, mothers are less happy, more stressed, and more fatigued compared with fathers ( Connelly & Kimmel, 2015 ; Musick, Meier, & Flood, 2016 ). Finally, mothers and fathers differ in the types of parenting strains that challenge their mental health. For example, fathers’ happiness is compromised by financial strain, whereas mothers’ happiness is compromised by time demands of parenting ( Pollmann-Schult, 2014 ) and forging careers successfully ( Orgad, 2019 ).

Yet, there are some indications that the gender gap in parenting strains and rewards has shrunk. Fathers report that becoming a father is a transformative experience which makes them reorient their world views, values, relationships, and perceptions of work ( Daly, Ashbourne, & Brown, 2013 ). Employed fathers’ felt work-family conflict has increased to the level of employed mothers’ ( Galinsky, Aumann, & Bond, 2013 ), perhaps because more fathers today than in the past feel the need to modify their work hours to be responsive to family needs, but still find it difficult to confront the ideal worker norm ( Kelly et al., 2010 ). Both employed fathers and mothers desire to spend more time with children, and when they are unable to do so it affects their well-being negatively ( Milkie, Nomaguchi, & Schieman, 2019 ). Working-class fathers in the FFCWS feel more parenting strain when their job is not flexible enough to allow them to care for their children, just as working-class mothers do ( Nomaguchi & Johnson, 2016 ).

Past research has made advances in examining gender differences in time with children, types of physical parenting tasks, and their influences on parental well-being. We know less about gender divisions of non-physical parenting activities, such as planning and managing children’s needs, and to what extent such invisible parenting activities may become a strain that affects adults’ well-being. Using a convenience sample of middle-class couples with young children, Daminger (2019) found that cognitive labor, referring to mental activities such as anticipating needs, making decisions, and overseeing family logistics, was disproportionally done by mothers, and cognitive labor could be stressful especially when it was unnoticed and unappreciated. Among couples where men were the primary caregivers and women were the primary breadwinners, Doucet (2015) found that gender divisions of non-physical parenting activities were more fluid and situated in specific relationship, community, and life stage contexts. Future research that examines how non-physical parenting activities are related to parenting strains and rewards and whether such associations vary by gender will advance our understanding of the role of gender in the association between parenting and adult well-being.

Marital/Partnership Status

Marital or partnership status affects parenting experiences greatly. The relationship of parenthood status with happiness is less positive for single s than partnered adults ( Angeles, 2010 ; Aassve, Goisis, & Sironi, 2012 ; Meier et al., 2016 ; Ugur, 2019 ). Single parenting is related to more work-family conflict ( Nomaguchi, 2012b ), greater parenting strain ( Nomaguchi & House, 2013 ), and more sadness, stress, and fatigue while spending time with children ( Meier et al., 2016 ) than partnered parenting. These single parenthood penalties can be reduced if institutional support for raising children to all parents is available, however. Pollmann-Schult (2018) found that among 24 European countries, generous financial benefits for children, child care provisions for children under age 3, and higher levels of gender equality were related to a smaller life satisfaction gap between single and partnered mothers. In the U.S., where mother-father relationships are fragile while repartnering rates are high, the focus of research has shifted from single parenthood to family instability, or the number of relationship transitions, as a factor that increases parenting strain ( Beck, Copper, McLanahan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2010 ; Halpern-Meekin & Turney, 2016 ). Despite the increases in cohabiting parents ( Sassler & Lichter, 2020 ), few studies have examined differences in parenting strain and parental well-being between cohabiting and married parents. In the U.S., where cohabitors are more likely than the married to be economically disadvantaged ( Sassler & Lichter, 2020 ), cohabiting parents’ greater parenting strains at the descriptive level appear to be largely accounted for economic disadvantages and relationship strains ( Nomaguchi & Johnson, 2016 ). In Europe, differences in life satisfaction between cohabiting and married parents vary across countries, depending on social norms regarding childbearing outside of marriage (Stavrova & Fetchenhauer, 2014).

As divorced parents increasingly share physical custody of their children, how coparenting after divorce affects parental well-being is of great interest. Co-parenting ex-couples typically feel that their relationship is contentious ( Markham & Coleman, 2012 ); still, fathers’ involvement in children’s lives and share of parental responsibilities lighten mothers’ parenting strain after separation ( Nomaguchi, Brown, & Layman, 2017 ). Joint physical custody reduces mothers’ sense of time pressure, compared with sole physical custody, while it does not increase fathers’ time pressure ( Van der Heijden et al., 2016 ). We do not know much about how parents adjust to their new roles as divorced parents, especially when they do not live with their children ( Troilo & Coleman, 2012 ). Parenting stepchildren may be more stressful than parenting biological children in part because there are no institutionalized rules about the roles of stepparents and stepchildren ( Raley & Sweeney, 2020 ). One common stressor for stepparents is that children reject stepparents’ parental authority ( Ganong, Coleman, & Jamison, 2011 ). Shapiro and Stewart (2011) found that stepmothers were more likely than biological mothers to report parenting strain and depressive symptoms, largely because of their children’s negativity toward them. Other research found that mothers living with stepchildren were more likely than those who had no stepchildren living in the household to report feeling that the division of childcare with their partner was unfair ( Guzzo et al., 2019 ), suggesting that coparenting strain may be greater for stepmothers than biological mothers. Some research has investigated the effects of family complexity—i.e., partners live with various combinations of shared biological, half-biological, and/or step children while also having other children outside the home—on parents’ depression (e.g., Pace & Shafer, 2015 ; Turney & Carlson, 2011 ). The challenge is how to allocate respondents to mutually exclusive groups when there are so many different types of parents. It is also crucial to isolate the effects of parenting strain from other compounded strains, particularly strains from relationship turbulence, which are known predictors of poor mental health ( Umberson & Thomeer, 2020 ).

LGBTQ Parents

The movement toward legalization of same-sex marriage and increased acceptance of LGBTQ families has helped spur research assessing the lives of sexual minorities who wanted to become or were parents. For gay and lesbian adults wishing to raise children through adoption or using other means such as insemination, the process can be stressful because of discrimination and fraught within legal and medical systems that render certain decisions infeasible ( Frost et al., 2017 ; Goldberg & Scheib, 2015 ; Karpman et al., 2018 ; Vinjamuri, 2015 ). Many LGBTQ individuals have had children in prior heterosexual relationships or through becoming partners with someone who is already raising children ( Gates, 2011 ). Due to discriminatory policies, and because heteronormativity remains strong in parenting roles, negotiating co-parental identities can be a complex task ( Padavic & Butterfield, 2011 ) and unique strains arise. For example, how receptive workplaces and supervisors were to LGBTQ families mattered for how work-related stressors affect parents ( Goldberg & Smith, 2013 ) and parents had to determine whether and how insurance covered a stepchild within the same-sex partnership ( Frost et al., 2017 ). Vigilance is necessary—gay parents faced pressures to consider finding and moving to the “right” neighborhood prior to having children in order to reduce discrimination ( Goldberg, Downing & Moyer, 2012 ). Gay parents’ decision making depends on other intersecting social statuses, such as gender, social class, and race/ethnicity ( Moore, 2011 ). In choosing schools for children, for example, White urban gay male parents focused on available financial resources, whereas Black lower-income lesbian mothers centered decisions around racial-ethnic diversity ( Goldberg et al., 2018 ). Unique combinations of social statuses, including how their family was formed (through unions, adoption, or insemination), were also linked to how LGBTQ parents were marginalized and resisted negative discourses ( Carroll, 2018 ). Research on the diversity of experiences within the population of LGBTQ parents will continue to be important in the coming years ( Reczek, 2020 ).

National Contexts

The past decade saw a growing body of research using cross-national data to examine the role of the support that societies provide to help raise children, such as expansive work-family policies, quality child care provision, and child tax allowances, in reducing burdens of parenting ( Aassve, Mencarini, & Sironi, 2015 ; Glass, Simon, & Andersson, 2016 ; Margolis & Myrskylä, 2011 ; Ugur, 2019 ). For example, among men and women aged 20 to 50 in 19 European countries from the European Social Survey (ESS), Aassve, Mencarini, and Sironi (2015) found that although fathers were happier than non-fathers regardless of institutional contexts, mothers were happier than non-mothers when institutional support for parents raising children was available, such as higher rates of child care provisions for children under 3 years of age; when women’s representation in policy making was higher; and when the overall measure of development was higher. Examining 22 counties including the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, Israel, and 18 European countries, Glass, Simon, and Andersson (2016) showed that the gap in happiness between parents living with at least one child and nonparents (i.e., all other adults) varied across countries, with parents reporting less happiness than nonparents in 14 countries, while parents reporting more happiness in 8 countries. The U.S. stood out in the size of the difference between the happiness of parents, who were worse off, compared with non-parents. This gap was in part because of the lack of policies that can make workers’ lives easier—for example, the U.S. has little paid vacation time from work and little public early childhood education compared with the other developed countries analyzed. Although there is a concern that social programs that lend support for childrearing may decrease the well-being of non-parents ( Ono & Lee, 2013 ), Glass, Simon, and Andersson (2016) found that the work-family policies they examined were related to greater happiness among both parents and non-parents in all countries. Collins (2019) conducted in-depth interviews with middle-class mothers in Sweden, the former East and West Germany, Italy, and the U.S. She argues that strong work-family policies are important for mothers’ well-being, but transformations in cultural values like gender equality in childrearing also would help mothers feel content with the way they integrate paid work and parenting responsibilities.

A LIFE COURSE PERSPECTIVE

A life course perspective is another major framework important in parenthood, parenting, and well-being research ( Umberson, Pudurovska, & Reczek, 2010 ). We note that the historical time period is highly relevant to the types of parenting strains experienced. As we discussed earlier, the current intensive parenting culture amid economic insecurities are relevant to parents’ experiences of strain in the 2010s. Further, the idea of linked lives gives researchers a framework to see how increases in economic insecurity among young adults at the national level influence aging parents’ economic well-being and mental health through their adult children’s struggles with maintaining independent living or romantic partnerships ( Kalmijn & De Graaf, 2012 ; Maroto, 2017 ). Consistent with the perspective’s concern with the consequences of an early life event or transition to later experiences , research suggests that early parenting experiences have lasting influences on parents’ well-being throughout mid- to later life. For instance, Williams and colleagues (2011) found that women who had a first birth outside of marriage had worse self-reported health at age 40 than women who had a first birth within marriage. The number of troubles that children had during adolescence (e.g., substance use, troubles at school) can have a long reach, even into elderly parents’ psychological well-being ( Milkie, Norris, & Bierman, 2011 ). Using the concept of the timing of events , researchers have shown that “off-time” transitions to parenthood, either early or late, have adverse effects on women’s mental health at age 40 ( Carlson, 2011 ). Lee and Ryff (2016) found that early childbearing was related to an early onset of heart problems using the 1995 Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) survey. In contrast, using the NLSY79, Williams and colleagues (2015) found that a first birth in the early 20s was related to worse self-reported health, whereas a first birth prior to age 20 was not related to health after controlling for marital status at childbirth, suggesting the importance of considering the intersection of timing and contextual factors of childbearing in influencing adult well-being. Future research using life course perspectives should elucidate the process and possible protective factors for the effects of early life events on the well-being of parents and children later in the life course. For example, Williams and Finch (2019) found that the detrimental effects of nonmarital childbearing on women’s health we mentioned above were in fact largely explained by earlier experiences—adverse childhood experiences—which led to both nonmarital childbearing and poor health. Finally, the emphasis on age-graded life patterns underscores that parenting stains and rewards take different forms across different life stages. Below, we review major research themes and findings from the past decade in three life stages: (a) the transition to parenthood, (b) minor children’s developmental stages, and (c) parenting adult children.

The Transition to Parenthood

Research in the 2010s made strides in scrutinizing how adult well-being changes during the transition to parenthood using longitudinal data collected in different countries. Studies using the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) ( Myrskylä & Margolis, 2014 ) and the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey ( Matysiak, Mencarini, & Vignoli, 2016 ) found that pregnancy and a first birth were related to increases in life satisfaction for both men and women, but two years later life satisfaction declined to the pre-pregnancy level. A similar pattern was found for a second birth, but life satisfaction levels returned to pre-pregnancy levels faster. Using the SOEP, Pollmann-Schult (2014) found that parenthood was related to increased life satisfaction only after controlling for increases in time demands and financial pressure, underscoring the demands-rewards perspective of parenthood. Gender differences were found in these studies. Women were more likely than men to experience larger increases and drops around a first birth in life satisfaction ( Myrskylä & Margolis, 2014 ) and mental health ( Ruppanner et al., 2019 ) and more likely to experience a decline in life satisfaction to below the pre-pregnancy levels a few years after a second or third birth ( Matysiak, Mencarini, & Vignoli, 2016 ). Using the HILDA, Ruppanner and colleagues (2019) found that women showed greater increases in time pressure than fathers during the transition to parenthood and after a second birth. With Swiss panel data, Roeters, Mandemakers, and Voorpostel (2016) found that becoming a parent was associated with better mental health for women but not for men.

Other contexts shape how the transition to parenthood influences adult well-being. Births following unintended pregnancy may be more stressful than planned births, because adjustments are more difficult ( Kavanaugh et al., 2017 ). Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), Su (2012) found that unintended parenthood was related to an increase in depressive symptoms among men and a decrease in happiness among women. As Style (2019) noted, partners may disagree with each other on birth intentions and thus it is important to consider the effects of couple-level dynamics of birth intentions on individual well-being. Time spent in leisure activities before parenthood is related to a smaller gain or a decline in life satisfaction after becoming a parent ( Roeters, Mandemakers, & Voorpostel, 2016 ). Older parents—those who postponed parenthood—were more likely than younger ones to experience an increase in life satisfaction around the time of childbirth ( Myrskylä & Margolis, 2014 ). The decline in life satisfaction was greater when parents felt more work-family conflict ( Matysiak, Mencarini, & Vignoli, 2016 ). Some studies have shown family-friendly policies that help parents to reduce time pressure or financial pressure can moderate the adverse effects of the transition to parenthood on mental health. Hewitt, Strazdins, and Martin (2017) found that mothers who gave birth after the introduction of the 2011 Australian Government paid parental leave (PPL) scheme reported better physical and mental health one year after childbirth than mothers who gave birth before the PPL did. Among working-class parents with infants, Perry-Jenkins et al. (2017) found that the availability of schedule flexibility was related to fewer depressive symptoms for mothers, although for fathers, greater financial support for child care costs were related to fewer depressive symptoms.

Research continues to show that the arrival of a child affects mother-father relationship quality. One shortcoming of prior research was the lack of comparison with change in relationship quality among childless couples, which made it unclear whether any change in relationship quality was due to the transition to parenthood or due to the duration of the relationship. Using the BHPS, Keizer and Schenk (2012) found a U-shaped pattern of relationship satisfaction for parents: it decreased sharply after the transition to parenthood but started to rise about seven years after to the pre-parenthood level, whereas relationship satisfaction among childless couples changed little for men and decreased gradually for women over time. A sense of unfairness with the division of household labor and child care within their partnerships, and a decline in time together alone may be key reasons for the decline in relationship quality among parents ( Dew & Wilcox, 2011 ; Schieman, Ruppanner, & Milkie, 2018 ). Fathers’ taking paternity leave, which presumably helps to reduce the sense of unfairness with the division of labor, was positively associated with both parents’ reports of relationship satisfaction; and length of paternity leave was positively associated with mothers’ (but not fathers’) reports of relationship satisfaction ( Petts & Knoester, 2018 ). Gender differences in the effects of the transition to parenthood on perceived relationship quality were mixed ( Don & Michelson, 2014 ; Holmes, Sasaki, & Hazen, 2013 ; Keizer & Schenk, 2012 ), which could be attributed to differences in sample characteristics.

Children’s Developmental Stage

Parenting lasts throughout adult life, while tasks of parenting and expectations in the parent-child relationship change significantly across life stages, along with types of parenting strain. Although earlier research tended to emphasize that having younger children is stressful, more recent studies have shown that parents’ well-being may be better when children are very young than when children are elementary-, middle-, or high-school ages. Indeed, physical care of young children is labor intensive and demanding; and parents with younger minor children sleep less than parents with older minor children ( Hagen et al, 2013 ). Employed mothers feel more work-family conflict when children are infants or toddlers than when children are in third or fifth grade, in part because mothers with very young children feel less support in the workplace ( Nomaguchi & Fettro, 2019 ). Yet, caring for very young children is related to greater self-esteem, self-efficacy, and less depression than caring for preschoolers ( Myrskylä & Margolis, 2014 ; Pollmann-Schult, 2014 ) as well as school-age and teenage children ( Nomaguchi, 2012a ), in part because many parents see the quality of relationships with their children is more satisfactory when their children are younger than when their children are school-age or teenage ( Nomaguchi, 2012a ). Luthar and Ciciolla (2016) suggest that although mothers’ sense of parenting role overload is highest when children are preschoolers, mothers’ parenting satisfaction is lowest when children are in middle school, when children’s rejection, negativity, and maladjustment are relatively high. Similarly, parents report that caring for infants is more meaningful than caring for children ages 4 to 11 whereas caring for adolescents is most stressful ( Meier et al., 2018 ); and both mothers and fathers with teenagers report less happiness than mothers and fathers with infants or toddlers while spending time with children ( Meier et al., 2018 ). Although some of these studies used longitudinal data ( Myrskylä & Margolis, 2014 ; Nomaguchi & Fettro, 2018 ; Pollmann-Schult, 2014 ), other studies used cross-sectional data. We urge researchers to include parental strain questions in large-scale longitudinal data collections.

Parenting Adult Children

Research in earlier decades emphasized that adult children bring more resources than strains to parents and thus foster better well-being of parents ( Umberson, Pudrovska, & Reczek, 2010 ). Research in the 2010s suggests that this is a question that merits reexamination. Given the transformation of the labor market, which now requires college degrees for decent jobs, it takes longer for young people to achieve economic independence than in the past ( Danziger & Ratner, 2010 ). These changes in the economic climate have stretched the years of active parenting, which can produce burdens for mid-life and aging parents ( Newman, 2012 ). Using data from the MIDUS, Simon and Caputo (2019) found that already in the mid-1990s, parents with children aged 18 to 29 did not seem to fare better than parents with younger children in various well-being outcomes (e.g., depression, anxiety, life satisfaction, and self-rated physical health). Research using more recent data that examine the well-being of parents with young adults compared to parents with younger children is needed.

Some middle- and upper-middle class parents, sometimes termed “helicopter parents” feel obliged to continue to invest instrumentally and emotionally to ensure children’s academic and social success throughout the young adult years. Helicopter parents typically refer to parents who are overly protective of their young adult children, mostly college students, providing substantial emotional and instrumental support to them ( Reed et al., 2016 ). Studies have examined the effects of helicopter parenting on adult children’s well-being, mostly using convenience samples of college students (e.g., LeMoyne & Buchanan, 2011 ; Padilla-Walker & Nelson, 2012 ); yet, the effects of helicopter parenting adult children on parental well-being are not well investigated. Using a convenience sample, Fingerman et al. (2012a) found that providing intense emotional and practical support to adult children was related to parents’ poorer life satisfaction only when parents felt that their adult children needed more support than others of similar age. As in the case of intensive parenting, concepts and measures of helicopter parenting vary across studies, from children’s reports of their parents’ interventions with interpersonal problems, their parents’ making important decisions for them, or their parents’ emotional control, to parents’ reports of the degree of their emotional or financial help for their young adult children. Researchers should be clear what aspects of parenting they are measuring and how they differ from or are similar to other studies.

Even after children are well into adulthood, parents serve as a safety net for adult children who experience economic difficulties or other setbacks ( Swartz et al., 2011 ). Parents in the 2000s gave more support to their adult children than their counterparts in earlier years ( Kahn, Goldscheider, & Garcia-Manglano, 2013 ). Parents often welcome adult children moving into their home to deal with economic insecurity ( Kahn, Goldscheider, & Garcia-Manglano, 2013 ), yet co-residence with adult children may have negative implications for parents’ well-being. Maroto (2017) found that co-residence with adult children decreases parents’ assets and savings. Tosi and Grundy (2018) found that adult children’s return to an “empty nest” home is related to a decline in parents’ quality of life, especially when adult children are unemployed.

Underscoring the linked lives concept, adult children’s life course transitions that are socially desirable, such as educational attainment, union formation, and parenthood, are generally related to parents’ better mental and physical health ( Kalmijn & De Graaf, 2012 ). Parents typically provide childcare and household chore assistance to children who became parents ( Bucx, Van Wel, & Knijin, 2012 ). Caring for grandchildren is related to better cognitive functioning of aging parents ( Arpino & Bordone, 2014 ) and increases the odds of receiving support from adult children later on ( Geurts et al., 2012 ), although its effects on the quality of parent-child relationship are not always positive ( Tanskanen, 2017 ). In contrast, various setbacks that adult children experience in life affect parents’ well-being. Kalmijn and De Graaf (2012) found that children’s breakups with partners were related to more frequent depressive symptoms for parents, especially mothers. Barr and colleagues (2018) found that African-American young adults’ challenges during the transition to adulthood, such as unemployment, romantic relationship problems, and arrests, were related to parents’ poor mental and physical health. Reczek and Zhang (2016) found that regardless of actual setbacks in adult children’s lives, parents’ feelings of dissatisfaction with how their children turned out were related to parents’ poor psychological well-being, suggesting the significance of parents’ perceptions of how adult children are doing in influencing their mental health. Despite the increase in awareness of substance use problems as a public health issue, we know little about the strains of parents whose adult children suffer from substance abuse problems. A Swedish qualitative study found that parents in this situation suffered from fear that their children might die of an overdose, struggled with getting support for their children from social and medical services, observed stigma toward their drug-addicted children, and felt guilty and ashamed for being a “failed” parent ( Richert, Johnson, & Svensson, 2018 ).

FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

In this section, we employ a critical stress process approach to select several promising future research directions in order to advance knowledge and inform policy makers to support parents. The SPM focuses on identifying pathways among stressors, resources, and stress outcomes, with social statuses influencing the entire process. We argue that the conceptualization of stressors should be expanded. In addition to the structural stressors created by workplaces and economic conditions as well as the strains inherent in everyday lives with children, cultural pressures should be theorized and measured more fully using a stress process approach ( McLeod, 2012 ). As mentioned earlier, more rigorous conceptualization and empirical research on the effects of intensive parenting culture on parental well-being are needed. Intensive parenting is a multifaceted concept, including the norms of parental determinism (i.e., the belief that how children will turn out depends largely on parenting), gendered beliefs about childcare, views of the sacredness of the child, and an investing mentally, financially and emotionally in children’s academics and talents in order to attempt to secure their futures ( Milkie & Warner, 2014 ). It appears not only as practices ( Lareau, 2011 ), beliefs ( Ishizuka, 2019 ), or identities ( Faircloth, 2014 ) of individual parents, but also as a dominant ideology ( Faircloth, 2014 ; Hays, 1996 ) that has been shaping social policies ( Elliot & Brown, 2018 ). These differences should be carefully articulated when researchers theorize, measure, and analyze the concept of intensive parenting ( Milkie & Warner, 2014 ). Questions that the next decade’s researchers might address include when and how intensive parenting beliefs or efforts, or “overinvolvement” may be linked to lower well-being of parents and how these patterns vary by parents’ social statuses.

For resources protecting well-being, as we articulated in this review, the SPM should be expanded to incorporate meso- and macro-level resources rather than just focused on individual-level ones. In addition to employer resources, workplace cultures, and state policies, a major institutional context that deserves more attention when assessing parenting resources as well as challenges is education. What functions of school and characteristics of teachers can help or hinder parental well-being? For employed parents, school hours, breaks and holidays, as well as special events are hard to coordinate with their work schedules. U.S. schools have been emphasizing the importance of parental involvement for children’s academic success ( Epstein et al., 2018 ). While research has shown that parental involvement in school—predominantly by affluent parents—facilitates reproduction of SES inequalities ( Calarco, 2014 ), less is known about the possibility that such school policies reinforce the emphasis of parental responsibility and place pressures on parents. In the U.S., parents deal with fallout from the increase in high-profile mass school shootings. How do increasing concerns about school safety and security affect parents? For example, research has shown that the use of security measures (e.g., metal detectors) within schools to improve student safety make parents more wary of potential threats to children’s safety at school ( Mowen & Freng, 2019 ). How do differential disciplinary and surveillance practices at school by SES and race/ethnicity ( Welch & Payne, 2010 ) affect parenting strains and well-being differently? How are parenting inequalities and well-being exacerbated by school segregation, funding mechanisms, and parallel systems of private and public schooling? Many important research questions in this realm deserve attention.

Similarly, we argue that more knowledge regarding the role of resources that local communities provide to help raise children in reducing parenting strains is needed. Neighborhoods for parents vary widely, and they can be both resources and detriment to parents’ wellbeing. More focus on how built environments can help create community and trust of fellow parents in the neighborhood is an area ripe for research. Learning how neighborhood groups, as well as mothers’ groups, day cares, religious organizations, and others can provide a safety network of nearby others who support parents instrumentally and emotionally during the many smaller and larger challenges of raising children, is vital ( Small, 2009 ). Specific resources that are salient to parents may vary by children’s developmental stage as well as social status. For example, for parents with young children, the availability of affordable, quality child care centers and family daycare homes may help reduce work-family conflict ( Young, 2019 ). For parents with school-age children, the availability of enrichment programs as well as the quality of schools in the local school district may be of importance. Local contexts may be especially relevant for minority parents in that some may expose them or protect them from specific stressors such as discrimination directed toward themselves and/or their children ( Dow, 2019 ). For example, the U.S. legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015 has changed the legal landscape that surrounds gay parents. Yet, social acceptance remains varied by region of residence. Examining LGBTQ parents’ experiences and well-being across geographic contexts is crucial ( Stone, 2018 ).

Moreover, although past research is clear that, consistent with the SPM’s major emphasis, challenges in parenting are not the same across different social status positions, future scholarship should continue to investigate complex intersections of social status, as indicated in earlier sections on race/ethnicity as well as LGBTQ status. Studies that examined variation in parenting strains by social class or race/ethnicity reviewed earlier focused on mothers, leaving the intersectionality among race, class, and gender less examined. Gender is a central axis of childrearing, and yet child-based national surveys, which provide rich information about children, parent-child relationships, and parenting, typically ask questions only for one “primary parent” who tends to be the child’s mother (e.g., ECLS-K, NSCH). More focus on fathers’ relationships with children and the effects of intensive parenting culture and practices on fathers (e.g., Shirani, Henwood, & Coltart, 2012 ), and whether such patterns vary by social class, can advance the field.

Aligned with a life course approach, future research should focus more on the well-being of parents with middle-school and adolescent children. The influences of electronic device use among parents and children alike on parenting strain, parent-child relationships, and parental well-being should be further investigated ( Fingerman, Huo, & Birditt, 2020 ; Nelson, 2010 ). Although work-family policy debates tend to focus on parental leave upon the birth or adoption of a child, issues of work-family conflict for parents may continue all the way through children’s high school years, as adolescents have key events that parents are expected to attend, and still need supervision, rides to school or extracurricular activities, and support in arranging and attending doctor, dentist, and other appointments. Investigating work-family strains among parents with pre-teen or teenage children and what could help support parents’ complex time, energy and emotional commitments to older offspring is warranted.

Parenthood, once embarked upon, lasts for all the remaining years of an adult’s life. Research in the 2010s indicates that children’s young adulthood can be challenging for parents, and may be exacerbated by uncertain economic conditions facing offspring. Research on grandparents providing regular care around the new birth of a child to their employed adult children, living in a multigenerational household, and being the guardian of grandchildren are all vital areas of research in understanding intergenerational relations and its links to parents’ well-being. Because of the increases in cohabitation, non-marital childbearing, divorce, and repartnering, family contexts of adults in mid- to later-life today are different from those in earlier generations ( Brown & Lin, 2012 ). The effects of parenthood on adult well-being in later life might have changed accordingly.

How multiple family member dynamics influence parenting strains and well-being is another question that has been less-often examined, largely because of data limitations. For example, while a majority of parents have multiple children, most studies ask parents about one focal child or any children, but rarely ask about each of all the children they have. When parents have a mixture of children with various successes and problems, how does it affect parents’ well-being? Is the old adage—parents are only as happy as their least happy child—correct? Fingerman and colleagues (2012 b ) found that having at least one adult child who had problems was related to parents’ poorer well-being measured as a scale combining life satisfaction and depression; and that parents who had multiple children with problems reported even worse well-being. Data collection of each child’s major life events and problems is critical to better understand the effects of adult children’s lives on parental well-being.

Finally, we point out major methodological advances and challenges. Research on parents’ well-being demands appropriate comparison groups, and complexities abound ( Deaton & Stone, 2014 ). When comparing “parents” with “non-parents,” researchers should pay careful attention to how “non-parents” are defined. Research defines “parents” in various ways including the number of children under 18 living in the household (e.g., Herbst & Ifcher, 2016 ), the number of children of any age living in the household (e.g., Angeles, 2010 ; Aassve, Mencarini, & Sironi, 2015 ; Glass, Simon, & Andersson, 2016 ), and the number of children respondents have regardless of age and residential status (e.g., Margolis & Myrskylä, 2011 ; Nelson et al., 2013 ; Ugur, 2019 ). Because parenting demands vary by child age and residential status, “parents” should be defined carefully according to the purpose of study (e.g., Umberson et al., 2011 ). The key question here is who should be the appropriate comparison group of “non-parents.” People who have never had children consist of at least two groups—those in their 20s and early 30s, many of whom will have children in subsequent years and those in their 50s or older who will very likely never have children. These two groups are very different not only in age, but also in economic conditions, both of which relate to mental health. To help solve this problem, some research limits the analytical sample to those who are aged under 50 (e.g., Aassve, Mencarini, & Sironi, 2015 ). Another question is whether parents with adult children, whether they live in or outside of the household, should be combined with the childless as the reference group (e.g., Herbst & Ifcher, 2016 ). Given the research finding that parents with young adult children report more strains and worse well-being than younger children for parents ( Simon & Caputo, 2019 ), researchers may need to make a careful decision as to whether this group of parents should be included in non-parents which serves as a reference group for parents. In terms of a theoretical expansion, the demands-rewards perspective calls on scholars to assess rewards as well as demands or challenges of parenting in a nuanced way. Indeed, some resources that serve to protect parents from strains such as overload—like social connections to other parents in a neighborhood—may also serve to build rewards for parents, such as increasing life satisfaction. Similarly, we expect that some social policies might not only act to alleviate strains of parenting, but also serve to increase rewards of the parental role. For example, policies enhancing quality pre-school education may endure children thrive in school, thereby increase parents’ pride in children’s achievements.

Although policy makers and the public emphasize the responsibility of parents for managing risks to and opportunities for their children’s future life chances, they tend to overlook the importance of parental well-being for children’s developmental outcomes. Research on parenthood, parenting, and well-being is crucial to generate knowledge of parenting experiences—the tremendous work and many challenges of raising the next generation—that may inform policy making about what helps parents to meet financial, time, and emotional demands of raising children while having other obligations such as paid work. Cross-national studies in the past decade suggest that parents enjoy better well-being in societies where they are provided more policy and institutional supports to raise the next generation of citizens. Research in the next decade should continue to pay attention to variations in parenting strains and rewards across social locations and life stages, as well as across different countries, and its link to the well-being of parents and children, as constraints and solutions for them may vary across these contexts. Parents supported by their local communities, workplaces, and states are able to raise healthier children, and thus help to create a better future.

Acknowledgement:

We thank Justina Beard, Leanne Confer, Marshal Fettro, and Cassandra Thompson for their research assistance. This research is supported by the Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, which has core funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (P2CHD050959).

Contributor Information

Kei Nomaguchi, Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University, 231 Williams Hall, Bowling Green, OH 43403.

Melissa A. Milkie, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 725 Spadina Ave., Toronto, ON M5S 2J4 Canada.

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4 years ago

By Ben Hotelling, MS, Associate Dean of Student Success at Kettering College

As someone who was raised in Lebanon, Ohio, on an old pig farm, I’ve always known the value of hard work. After high school, I pursued my passion for culinary arts, only to discover that the long hours on my feet weren’t quite what I envisioned for my future. Eventually, I found my true calling in higher education and joined the Kettering College family after completing my undergraduate degree. I haven’t looked back since.

In 2015, I earned my Master of Science in Higher Education Leadership from Wright State University, and today, 12 years later, I serve as the associate dean of Student Success and dean of students. For the past five years, my focus has been on creating an environment where students feel valued, heard, and supported throughout their time at Kettering College. There’s nothing more rewarding than knowing the students by name, hearing about their experiences inside and outside of the classroom, and helping them achieve their goals. I truly believe that students are the heart of our college, and they’re where I devote my time and energy.

However, balancing my professional life with raising four little girls and a marriage is no easy task. It’s a challenge that requires careful thought, intention, and a lot of flexibility. Here’s how I navigate this delicate balancing act.

Managing Time with Intention

Time management is tricky. It’s something we all struggle with at different stages of life, whether as a student, new graduate, or seasoned professional. And when you add a family and children into the mix, it becomes even more complex. Over the years, I’ve realized that life moves fast, and the world doesn’t stop, even when you need to take a break.

That’s why I strive to be intentional with my time. I make it a point to wake up early, before the rest of the house, to get myself ready for the day. One of my favorite parts of the morning is waking up my four girls, spending those brief moments with each of them, and talking about the day ahead. Afterward, I head downstairs to make their breakfast—a small but meaningful routine that allows me to connect with them.

I’m also dedicated to family dinners. Growing up, we didn’t always have that, so I make it a priority to be home in time to prepare and share a meal with my family. Every Friday night, we have something called “Fancy Friday,” where we use our nice plates (remember I have four kids, so we traditionally use paper plates and I am lucky if they even use utensils), we dim the lights, light some candles, and have a special meal together. It’s a cherished tradition that allows us to pause and simply enjoy each other’s company.

Being present with my family is something I value deeply, so if you see an email from me late at night, it’s because I’ve waited until the house is quiet and the kids are asleep to get back to work.

Prioritizing Health and Wellness

Staying physically and mentally healthy is essential when you’re balancing so many roles. For me, walking is one of the key habits that helps me stay grounded. Whether it’s walking through the halls of Kettering College, taking the extra steps outside on the way to the Cancer Pavilion to get my morning iced coffee, or around my neighborhood after the kids go to bed, this gives me a chance to clear my head and refocus.

During these walks, I often find myself reflecting on my spiritual health as well. It’s a time for quiet reflection and sometimes prayer, which helps me not only release stress but also feel connected to something greater than myself. This practice contributes to my sense of overall well-being and helps me maintain perspective during busy or challenging days.

While exercise comes and goes in my routine, I’ve learned to embrace walking as a reliable form of both movement and mental clarity. It’s not always about having a perfect fitness routine but finding small moments throughout the day to prioritize my well-being.

Navigating Work-Life Boundaries

This is probably one of the toughest parts of my job. As dean of students, students often reach out to me with urgent needs, and it’s hard to disconnect completely when you know someone might need your help. I work hard to put my phone away when I’m at home, but it’s something I can always improve on. As I stated earlier, I often log back into my email late at night to ensure that no student questions go unanswered before I go to bed.

Compartmentalizing work and home life is important, but it’s not always easy. Like many parents, I see my own children in the students I serve, especially when they’re going through difficult times. It’s a daily challenge to be fully present for both my students and my family, but it’s something I strive for.

The Importance of a Strong Support System

Your support system is everything. My family, especially my wife, has been my rock throughout my career. We’ve been married for 12 years, and she has always encouraged me to be the best version of myself. My daughters, too, are a big part of my support system. When I pick them up and give them a big hug, it brings me a sense of calm and perspective, helping me reset and refocus on what truly matters.

I’m also fortunate to have an amazing team at work. The people in the Student Success and Student Affairs departments feel like family. We all care deeply about our students and knowing that I’m surrounded by colleagues who share my passion for student success makes the work we do even more fulfilling. Additionally, my faith plays a significant role in how I approach both my work and family life, giving me strength and resilience when things feel overwhelming . It’s a guiding force that helps me stay grounded and reminds me of my purpose.

Lessons in Balance

Over the years, I’ve learned many major life lessons, but for this article I’ll share this: You don’t let the most important things fall. When you’re juggling 5 or 10 things at once, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But I’ve come to realize that if I prioritize what truly matters — my family, health, and spirituality—the rest can wait. Emails can be answered tomorrow, the lawn can get mowed tomorrow, and the dishes can be done after the kids are in bed.

Balance, to me, is about being adaptable. It’s not about giving equal time to everything but being present where it matters most. Whether that’s in a meeting at work or sitting down to “Fancy Friday” at home, success is when I feel like I’m fully showing up in each role without sacrificing one part of my life for another.

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What is Responsible Parenthood?

Responsible parenthood concerns the consideration of the factors or conditions, which have a bearing on family size. When considering physical, economic, psychological and sociological factors, couples are responsible to God, to themselves, to their families and to society, in that order. Natural Family Planning assists couples in making generous and responsible decisions regarding family size.

NFP is personalized. Every woman learns how to understand her own body and its cycles, through one or more simple biological signs. With her husband, the two of them discuss and record their observations, gaining an awareness of and new appreciation for their shared fertility. If a couple wants to conceive, they have intercourse on fertile days. If they need to postpone pregnancy, they wait until the infertile times. The average woman is fertile from 8-12 days a month.

Responsible parenthood involves self-mastery and an understanding, as well as a proper ordering, of one’s drives or passions. Natural Family Planning fosters self-control and helps couples accept more fully the responsibility God gives with regard to procreation.

Catholic Church teaching does not say that a couple must intend to have a child in each and every marriage act. Should intercourse take place during the fertile time, when conception is possible, the couple must respect this possibility and must not frustrate it through contraceptive measures. The life-giving potential of the marital act must not be deliberately removed. With the use of Natural Family Planning, unlike contraception, nothing is done before, during or after the martial act to render the act sterile, incomplete or to prevent implantation of a fertilized ovum.

Understandings of Responsible Parenthood Among University Educated: 'Listening to Our Conscience is a Very Demanding Vocation'

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