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

Descripción del proyecto

La paternidad en tiempos de crisis ambiental y geopolítica

Los padres de hoy crían a sus hijos en un contexto de crisis ambiental y geopolítica. Los marcos científicos actuales no suelen ser suficientes para comprender y apoyar la crianza de los hijos en estos tiempos de incertidumbre. En el proyecto PARENTALHOPE, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, se desarrollará un modelo basado en los conocimientos de las ciencias del comportamiento sobre la resiliencia de los padres en condiciones adversas, como la guerra o la enfermedad. El modelo plantea que los padres pueden apoyar mejor la crianza de sus hijos cuando reconocen la gravedad de las amenazas para su futuro, toleran la incertidumbre sobre la consecución de sus objetivos y confían en su propia capacidad y en la de los demás para superar los obstáculos. El equipo del proyecto examinará este modelo a escala europea utilizando muestras representativas de países que se enfrentan a diversas amenazas.

Objetivo

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.