Invited symposia
Title:
Regretting the Decision to Have Children: Prevalence, Causes, and Consequences
Chair:
Konrad Piotrowski, PhD, SWPS University, Poland, https://english.swps.pl/konrad-piotrowski
Professor Konrad Piotrowski is a psychologist, specializing in developmental psychology, in particular psychology of adolescence and early adulthood. He researches psychological aspects of parenthood, perfectionism, and personality development. Recently, he has been focusing on personality determinants of parental burnout and a regret of having children.
Brief description:
Parenthood regret, defined as a persistent and profound wish that one had not become a parent, is an emerging area of research that challenges traditional narratives of unconditional parental fulfillment. Despite its significance, the phenomenon has received very limited empirical attention, resulting in a fragmented understanding of its prevalence, causes, and consequences. The birth of a first child, followed by subsequent children, presents individuals with one of the most paramount developmental tasks: assuming the role of a parent and fulfilling this responsibility over many years. While parenthood often fosters a sense of purpose in life for many individuals (Nelson et al., 2014), recent studies increasingly underscore that in contemporary, particularly highly developed countries, parenthood is becoming a burden and even a source of suffering for many people (Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2020). Investigations into parental burnout have revealed that as many as 10% of parents in developed countries, particularly women, experience this syndrome at profoundly elevated levels (Roskam et al., 2021), with up to 30% of parents being at risk of burnout (Piotrowski, 2023). Studies on parental burnout have recently spurred research into another facet of parental challenges: regretting the decision to have children. Several important publications on this subject have emerged in recent years (Bodin, 2023; Meil et al., 2023; Piotrowski, 2021; Piotrowski, Mikolajczak, & Roskam, 2023), revealing that as many as 15% of people may regret their choice to become parents and that parental regret can have serious consequences for the entire family system. Regretful parents often have traumatic experiences from their own childhood and a negative view of parenthood (Piotrowski, Naude et al., 2023), they are strongly burned out and at risk of depression (Piotrowski, Mikolajczak, & Roskam, 2023), and they grapple with a sense of identity loss (Donath, 2015). During the symposium, a team of researchers will present the results of recent studies, including longitudinal and cross-cultural research, and present the latest findings in parenthood regret investigations.
Title:
Centering Majority World in Developmental Science
Chair:
Dr. Vaishali Raval, Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, USA
Dr. Vaishali Raval is professor of psychology and affiliate of global and intercultural studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, USA where she has been a faculty member for 17 years. She received a PhD in clinical developmental psychology from University of Windsor and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cultural psychology and human development at the University of Chicago. She is a cultural clinical developmental psychologist committed to internationalizing psychological science through her research, teaching, and service. Her program of research focuses on cultural and contextual foundations of parenting, with a focus on emotion processes and how they relate to child and adolescent mental health outcomes, contextual understanding of psychopathology, and culturally informed mental health training and intervention approaches, primarily in India, with some research in China, Malaysia, Singapore, and South Korea. She currently serves as the chair of the international committee of the Society for Research in Child Development, and chair of the U.S. National Committee for Psychological Sciences, a committee of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She also promotes internationalization through her role as the associate editor of Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, and Journal of Research on Adolescence. Her mentorship was recently recognized by Henry David International Mentoring Award from the American Psychological Association Division 52.