Actually, today was a good day, so today we're doing all right: Parental perspectives on a dyadic group art therapy intervention for parent and infant wellbeing and attachments

Abstract

In this study we sought to capture the experiences of parents who had attended a parent-infant art therapy group to support their wellbeing and attachment relationships. The groups lasted 12 weeks and had a focus on using shared art making experiences to bring the dyads into positive interactions. 50 parents attended the groups with their children. We asked them to complete surveys at the end of the art therapy group and later followed up a sample of participants for in depth interviews. We analysed both of these using reflexive thematic analysis. Our organisation of themes lays out the difficulties facing parents, what enabled them to take part, the mechanisms of change within the art therapy intervention, and the outcomes parents observed. The analysis evidences the changes parents identified in how they felt themselves and how they felt about their baby, with an important shift to enjoying their role as parents, feeling more confident about their parenting, tuning in to their babies’ cues, and enjoying the emerging personalities of their babies. It highlights the potential of art therapy to support parental wellbeing and parent-infant attachment relationships.