Parenting in Face of Health Challenges: Research and Interventions

Health can be considered as a major asset or a special challenge for parenting, as situations such as mental disorders, chronic diseases, or long-term treatments require major changes and adaptations in a family life or, more specifically, in parenting functioning in order to assure children’s needs. Since parenting is an interpersonal process, the health conditions of both children and parents influence it. In addition, the health conditions of parents may also impact the quality of children’s development, being sometimes associated with a higher risk of child abuse and neglect. Gathering and mobilizing adequate internal and external resources (as parenting capacity, skills, or social support) to deal with the health conditions of parents, children, or both are a major concern for many researchers and professionals in health care, as well as in social services, education, or justice.

This Special Issue welcomes submissions from any discipline focused on universal, indicated, or specialized preventive approaches to parenting in the presence of some kind of health challenge, based on conceptual models and interventions with parents (including kinship care, foster parents, and adoptive parents), and their impact on children’s and parents wellbeing. We particularly welcome multidisciplinary approaches, examining  different health conditions in diverse settings (community, schools, health services) and regions of the world. Systematic reviews, pilot studies, case studies, description of innovative practices or impact evaluations of parenting interventions and programs are welcome.

Dr. Dora Isabel Fialho Pereira
Guest Editor

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