A new science of parenthood

Introduction

How does life, how does a person change when one becomes a parent? Are new parents really lost as close friends? Are they actually better listeners because they have learned to put themselves second? Why are some parents caring and attuned to their children's needs when others struggle?

Research Gap

It is surprising that researchers have so far overlooked the transition to parenthood as a driver for social-developmental change and have hardly zoomed in on parenting as social behaviour. Like any other social behaviour, substantial individual differences can be found between parents, but research has neglected various likely determinants.

Objectives of PAR2

PAR2 changes this by:

1. Elucidating whether, indeed, parents develop differently in the social realm compared to people without children.
2. Using the methodological tools of social development research to test why parents differ in the ways they parent.

Methodology

To achieve this, we compare parents and people without children on social-emotional skills and social behaviour using longitudinal cohorts that span multiple decades across adolescence and adulthood (WP1).

Focus Areas

How parenting behaviour—as a unique social behaviour in adulthood—is being shaped under different circumstances and in different people is central in work packages 2-4. We use:

• Longitudinal social networks (WP2)
• Multiple-generation cohorts (WP3)
• Social genome data (WP4)

These tools help us understand the influence of:

1. Family, partner, friends, and other parents
2. Social relationships prior to becoming a parent
3. Own, partner, and child genes on parenting

Innovation in Research

PAR2 significantly innovates research on social development by explicitly conceptualizing parenthood as a crucial transition and parenting as social behaviour. Viewing parenthood as a driver of developmental change and parenting as social behaviour means that PAR2 generates a novel direction in research and will result in significant theoretical and methodological innovation to our understanding of variation in human development.