Parenting in Times of Global Uncertainty: Understanding and Cultivating Parental Hope

forthcoming

Today’s parents raise their children in times of environmental and geopolitical crises. Current scientific frameworks fall short in understanding and supporting parenting in times of such uncertainty. They are predominantly based on deficit models of adversity and fail to explain why many parents defy what can be predicted from these models. PARENTALHOPE proposes a new model for understanding parenting in times of uncertainty. Building on insights from across the behavioural sciences on parents who show resilient parenting (e.g., in the face of war or illness), the model posits that parents raise children to the best of their abilities if four conditions are met: parents (1) acknowledge the severity of threat to their children’s future and (2) tolerate the uncertainty of whether their goals for their children will be met, while trusting that (3) they themselves and (4) others are able to overcome key barriers to achieve these goals. I posit that these four components together generate an experience of parental hope—a powerful resource that can be cultivated by targeting its underlying psychological levers. I will use my transdisciplinary experience and international network to rigorously test this new model across Europe in representative samples from countries facing different types and levels of threat (i.e., climate change, geopolitical unrest). Moreover, I will crowdsource, forecast, and stringently test interventions to cultivate parental hope in an ambitious international tournament with committed partners in 30 European countries. The proposed project ventures across disciplinary traditions and methodology, balances ecological and internal validity, and includes expertise from in- and outside the scientific community. The pay-off promises to be high: PARENTALHOPE will yield foundational understanding of what allows Europe’s 200 million families to thrive in uncertain times.