A new science of parenthood

Project Information

PAR2

Grant agreement ID: 101087395

DOI

10.3030/101087395

EC signature date 31 July 2023

Start date 1 January 2024

End date 31 December 2028

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 999 035,00

EU contribution

€ 1 999 035,00

Coordinated by

FRIEDRICH-ALEXANDER-UNIVERSITAET ERLANGEN-NUERNBERG
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PAR2 (A new science of parenthood)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2026-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Social development - how we manage emotions, relate to others, behave socially, and experience the quality of our relationships - does not stop after we leave school or enter our first serious romantic relationship. Rather, social development continues throughout adulthood, with major life changes that affect our social roles or require new social behaviours from us, potentially constituting “sensitive developmental periods”. One of the biggest of these changes is becoming a parent, which often requires stronger emotion regulation, heightened sensitivity to others’ needs, and more empathy, while also balancing time between family and time for adult friendships and social life. Yet we still know surprisingly little about how the transition to parenthood reshapes social skills and behaviour, or why parents differ so much from one another in warmth, sensitivity, or harshness toward their offspring. A multi-method life-course approach is needed because parenting affects not only parents’ wellbeing, but also children’s development—and can ripple across generations and society.

PAR2 focusses on two questions: (1) how becoming a parent changes people’s social and emotional skills - like empathy, self-control, and how they relate to others - and (2) why parents differ so much in the way they parent. To do this, the project follows families over time and across generations, and also maps how parents’ friendships and support networks change as they raise children. It uses research methods that have worked well for studying children and adolescents, but applies them to parenthood. By treating parenthood as a key stage in social development, PAR2 aims to uncover new insights into how we keep developing socially throughout adult life.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

PAR2 is structured into four work packages:

PAR2social: Compares parents with non-parents on social-emotional skills and behaviors before and after parenthood to assess the effects of becoming a parent.
PAR2network: Analyzes the influence of social networks, including friends, family, and other parents, on parenting behaviors over time.
PAR2history: Investigates how early life experiences and social relationships impact later parenting behaviors.
PAR2genes: Examines the role of genetics in parenting behaviors, including how parents’ and children’s genetic profiles influence parenting styles.

During the first two years of the project, we focussed on two distinct work packages: WP1 seeks to compare parents and people without children on social-emotional skills and social behaviour to test whether parenthood initiates changes in social development, and WP2 wants to shed light on the role of the social network in explaining individual differences in parenting using longitudinal social network models. WP1 constitutes and extension of TRAILS, a well-known longitudinal cohort study that has followed participants from early adolescence into adulthood. As part of PAR2, we will collect data when participants are 36, many of them have children and we can test whether parenthood has changed or affected people by comparing them to those who did not have children (yet). Data collection will take place throughout 2026. Work Package 2 has advanced substantially in setting up a longitudinal study of parents’ social networks within group-based pregnancy courses. Ethical approval was granted in July 2024, covering repeated measurements during pregnancy and at 3, 6, 12, and 18 months after birth. Questionnaires for all five waves were developed in spring 2024, piloted informally in June 2024 and formally in February 2025, and then refined along with consent materials and the project website. Recruitment of midwifery practices began in March 2025, preparations were completed in April, and the first data collection wave started in May 2025. By October 2025, 18 practices had been contacted, 9 joined, and 30 groups are participating—about 150 (future) mothers and 85 partners—with several groups already progressing to later measurement waves and data collection still ongoing.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

While the project is still in the data collection phase, the study design itself represents an advance beyond the current state of the art in social developmental and parenting research. The combination of longitudinal network data within pregnancy groups and ego-network data for both parents in WP2 enables the examination of social influence and selection processes during the transition to parenthood in unprecedented detail. We also work with polygenic scores to bring molecular genetic methods to parenting research, an area in which genetic information, especially on the molecular level, is as yet uncommon. Finally, WP1 affords us the possibility to collect data at age 36 from participants in a longitudinal cohort study that has been ongoing since participants were 11 years old. To be able to continue this cohort and obtain information on their social development goes far beyond state of the art in developmental psychology. These data are highly valuable not just for PAR2 but for developmentally-oriented researchers from multiple disciplines.