Working as co-editors and with our colleagues on this Handbook during the context of the global pandemic of 2019–2020 was certainly unanticipated and unlike any challenges we have ever known. As parents, we gained new appreciation for our research on how parenting shapes child development even as we struggled to use this knowledge within our own homes and lives. Future generations will have to uncover the role of the Covid-19 pandemic on parenting approaches and impacts on children around the globe. For now, we can honestly say we are both relieved and thrilled to share this work with our community of scholars to advance the goals of science and practice.
We also know that new possibilities are emerging for topics that we have not yet sufficiently addressed, such as how the features of the pandemic including social distancing, separation and isolation, remote learning, compromised health care and access to vaccines, and social connectedness through technology, create a unique and important context through which to view parenting and child development during this time. Just as the years after the Great Depression and the Great Recession provided a window to study impacts on cohorts of children, the pandemic too will likely become one of those historical turning points where shifts in thinking about parental influences will occur and influence our field for the better.
In this Handbook, we have captured the appealing range of topics related to parenting while encouraging our authors to use a culturally and developmentally grounded approach with a pointed consideration of how their work may link to practice or policy implications. In Part 1 of the Handbook, Foundations of Parenting, we begin with chapters that provide theories and research that cut across age groups and topics, including a history of parenting science, the biology of parenting and attachment, parenting and brain development, and parenting and culture. In this section we also include chapters on parenting behaviors and strategies that influence development across childhood including discipline and punishment, emotion socialization, and parenting and children’s cognitive and language development. These chapters set the stage for Part II, which is organized by developmental age/stage, Parenting across Development: Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Influences. In this section, we begin with a chapter on prenatal bonding and the transition to parenting, and end with a chapter on emerging adulthood. These two chapters bookend chapters on infancy and early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence. Importantly, these chapters bring to light how parenting differs across children’s development, emphasizing how parents and children change and grow together over time.
The chapters within Part III, on Parental Factors that Impact Parenting, provide a deeper examination of the variation within families and contexts that helps to shape the experiences and relationships within a family. Authors explore a range of topics including parents with mental health challenges, the specific contributions of fathers as parents, and the important context of race and ethnicity. In keeping with our goals for identifying gaps, we see there is much work to be done in considering how parents (including fathers) make positive contributions to children’s development, and how programs and policies can facilitate their success in child-rearing. We learn that parents’ experiences with discrimination and barriers to accessing parenting supports remain an important challenge for researchers to address with their work.
The chapters within Part IV, on Child Factors that Impact Parenting, are a look at specific circumstances impacting children that can require parents to develop particular skills or accommodations to match the unique circumstances of their children. Here, we see an applied lens in examining the issues involved in raising children with disabilities, children with psychological disorders, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and anxiety and depression. We also address more general situations, including children with histories of adversity and children who identify as LGBTQ+. These chapters offer a deeper understanding of parenting in context and how children and parental transactions over time are a powerful influence on child development.
Finally, Part V, Parent Education, Intervention, and Policy, is a collection of chapters authored by researchers who are working vigorously on issues of intervention, prevention, and policy to create needed supports for parents and families. Examples include a vast array of topics from family engagement in education, immigration policy, employment for parents and access to child care supports, technology supports for parents, and parenting interventions for preventing adolescent risky behavior. Given the number of challenges faced by parents across the development of a child (or more than one), such interventions tested with rigorous scientific methods and approaches that are brought to scale are another deep challenge for the field to continue to work on in earnest.
Upon completion of this project, it was not hard for us to see where we might head next. We applaud our authors’ work, for they have pointed us to many future directions and gaps that must be at the center of our parenting research agenda. These include a true embrace of the biopsychosocial model and how our methods can better capture the lasting influences of parenting practices, while also capturing the moment-to-moment exchanges that build these pathways. We encouraged our authors to draw out possible implications for practice and policy, taking into account the state of the science on the optimal solutions or promising strategies. We see ample room for research on how and when parents serve as advocates and protectors for their children’s rights and healthy development, particularly in the context of discrimination and bias within systems that intend to serve children’s needs. Finally, many areas of the parenting research remain constrained by lack of diversity within the populations of study, and we need more conversations about how to move more rapidly beyond WEIRD (White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) samples into global, interconnected, and cross-cultural work to develop a complete picture of parenting. Only this will permit us to fully shape practices and policies that can be more responsive and supportive of the needs of our most underserved families, such that we can achieve greater equity in child outcomes.
