I have experienced many happy moments as a parent: amazement at a toddler’s first steps, pride over a child’s accomplishments, satisfaction when I navigated a parenting challenge well. I’ve also experienced heartache and doubt: fear when doctors thought my eldest had leukemia (she didn’t), exhaustion and self-recriminations when my youngest broke his arm (twice), embarrassment when my middle child didn’t sleep through the night until she was 22 months old.
For many of us, parenting is a kaleidoscope of emotions. We expect it to bring us happiness and we may be surprised by how often we feel less than thrilled by the day-to-day aspects of raising children. Then we wonder if we are ‘good’ or even ‘good enough’ parents because we’re not happy every step of the way.
Psychology professor Kendra Thomas wants to help us reframe our thinking. She and her team reviewed almost 50 recent studies focused on parenting and found that being a good parent has more to do with being hopeful than being happy. That’s because hopefulness is a skill, and the characteristics that support hopefulness also support positive parenting.
Hopeful parents set goals and creatively navigate whatever speedbumps they encounter. Like everyone else, they struggle with adversity, but they also keep their eyes on the prize. This perspective means that hopefulness can help us bounce back more quickly and find ways to reimagine pathways to the future we desire for our children and family. Hopefulness also can prompt us to invite our kids to notice and try out a variety of ways to achieve their own goals.
When parents focus on hope rather than happiness, they recognize that some unhappiness is inevitable. That means we can give ourselves permission to experience discomfort rather than trying vainly to escape it. We no longer focus on accommodating a child’s desires to ‘keep the peace’ or teaching kids to ‘fit in’ so others won’t criticize them. Instead, we try to live according to our principles and manage our real emotions.
Thomas’s research team also found that parents who practice hope are less stressed and overprotective than other parents. They view positive and negative experiences as opportunities for engagement and learning rather than referenda on their own or their family’s happiness. When we embrace hope, we can model for our children a more judgement-free perspective, where second chances and new possibilities abound. We can also show them how to embrace change when it’s needed to achieve larger goals.
Another significant finding from the research review is that hopeful parents function best with the strong support of their communities. Hope can be hard to hang onto, particularly when societal or personal challenges (e.g. racism, classism, job loss, developmental delays, illness) threaten wellbeing. Identifying others who share our commitment to hope can carry us and our kids through difficult times. So can finding groups with whom to practice mindfulness, meditation, prayer, movement, or other emotional regulation approaches that we find meaningful.
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