Parental Self-Efficacy and Parenting through Adversity

This review examines the relationship between life adversities, parental well-being, parental self-efficacy, and social support as potential factors mediating parent-child relationships and children’s outcomes. Generally, research on adversity has focused on children’s experiences and the long-term impact of adversity on development and health trajectories. More recently, a focus on resilience and growth after adversity has received increasing attention. Existing literature has identified how parents can best support their children through adverse events and suggested parenting programs that emphasize skill-building to parent children who have experienced adversity. Yet often overlooked is the critical impact of adverse events on the parent and how this may interfere with the cultivation of an environment of support and increase stigmatization due to unmet parenting expectations. While parenting occurs in context, it is often judged based upon societal expectations of childrearing practices and optimal outcomes with little understanding of the factors that contribute to parenting behaviors. The experience of adversity has the potential to impact parental sense of competence and parenting practices. However, parental self-efficacy and social supports can play mediating role in the experience of adversity and parenting stress. The integration of these contextual factors allows for the development of expectations that are best suited to meet the needs of vulnerable family systems.

Racist Babies? Resisting Whiteness in Parenting

Whiteness has evolved in the way that mostly white parents teach their children to embrace and normalize it. Whereas within the United States previously, white families employed explicitly racist tactics to maintain whiteness in their children, today white, neoliberal families have adapted their whiteness to be more implicit and socially acceptable. This chapter draws on literature and narrative inquiry to describe how whiteness is passed down, generation by generation. The author looks particularly at white, neoliberal, and color evasive families of today to deconstruct these myths. The author closes by offering strategies and examples for parents who want to raise critically conscious and socially just children and grow these traits within themselves as well.