Parenting Under Adversity: A Critical Analysis and a Future Agenda for Social Work Research and Practice Spanning Domestic and Global Contexts

Children’s healthy development largely depends on the degree of nurturance, teaching, protection, and monitoring they receive from their parents (Ainsworth & Bell, 1970; Bowlby, 1969; Freud & Burlingham, 1943; Winnicott, 1992). Both domestically and globally, parents often perform these tasks within considerable adversities, including child maltreatment, poverty, parental incarceration, and armed conflict. Parents’ roles are often undermined just when they are most essential. Parents may be emotionally and logistically overwhelmed and struggling to cope with individual and family needs. Yet, in the face of challenge, parents also regularly demonstrate strength and capacity, shoring up internal and external resources to promote children’s well-being. These processes illustrate the interdependence of child and parent well-being (Masten, 2015; Walsh, 2007, 2016).

Despite growing literature on parental suffering and resilience, however, there remains an urgent need for social work to critically examine traditional western understandings of what constitutes “optimal” parenting in complex contexts. A critical approach to parenting views it as not simply a biological or psychological process, but also culturally- and context-specific. Furthermore, theoretical and empirical work on parenting must account for added dimensions of adversity, accounting for trauma, oppression, and stigma parents often face, along with how parents may be divested of their power by structural and procedural processes.

This roundtable takes up the challenge of better understanding parenting under adversity, responding to critical and feminist calls for more nuanced discussions (Collins, 1994; Ross, 1995; Ruddick, 1995; Scheper-Hughes, 1992). Drawing from the presenters’ own empirical research and their firm grounding in theory, research, and practice, the roundtable will underscore strengths and gaps in the literature. Guiding questions include: Do parenting practices in adversity differ according to child factors (e.g., age, gender, ability, etc.); type and intensity of adversity; or if a parent has lost a partner to separation, violence, incarceration, or death? How do we acknowledge creative parenting practices in challenging circumstances? Attention will be paid to issues of poverty, stigma, and power as well as the influence of culture on parenting.

The roundtable format will be conversational, focusing on reflection and action surrounding parenting in both global and local contexts. First, we will provide an overview of theoretical and empirical scholarship on parenting within adversity. We will highlight commonalities and differences related to parenting in multiple contexts: political, community, and interpersonal violence; poverty; intergenerational abuse; and involvement in child welfare systems. Presenters will then share findings from two recently completed systematic reviews that consider parenting within war-affected settings. After identifying themes in extant literature, presenters will share empirical findings about parenting within international political violence with data grounded in the experience of mothers and fathers. We then move to a more domestic focus, with other presenters discussing mixed methods research with families involved in the public child welfare system, identifying prevailing theories relevant to parenting under adversity. We will end by developing an agenda for global and local social work research and practice that better reflects the realities of the multi-varied ways parents both suffer and strategize within adversity.