Playing with the child within: Early parenthood experiences of parents who were out-of-home placed during childhood

Abstract

Experience of out-of-home care (OHC) is associated with life-long vulnerability, and research indicates that parents with experiences of OHC are at higher risk of having their own children placed in out-of-home care. However, research on these parents is limited and lacks a resilience perspective. Here, we focused on parents with OHC experience as children but with custody of their own children (N = 12) and asked where these parents can draw strength in parenting, using a standardized interview with focus on thoughts, feelings, and parenting experiences. Importantly, all content related to OHC experience was disclosed in the context of discussing parental caregiving, without any specific questions asked. We investigated whether caregiving representations associated with the ability to promote security in the child were linked to parents’ attachment scripts, comprising implicit expectations of sensitivity and helpfulness in attachment-related interactions, or reflective functioning, denoting the capacity to take the mental perspective of the child. We coded interviews following standardized coding instructions, for reflective thinking and other important variables that capture strategies for processing relational and emotional themes. Narratives in which the parents had spontaneously made references to their childhood experiences were coded through qualitative content analysis. Results showed that autonomous caregiving representations were associated with the content in parents’ attachment scripts but not their reflective functioning. Themes reveal distinct tendencies in these parents’ caregiving representations: Own adverse childhood experiences were often expressed as separation anxiety or feelings of guilt in relation to parenting. An unmet need for support was common , as were concerns about stigma and vulnerability associated with disseminating information about their background. Nevertheless, parental caregiving involves for those parents motivation to break patterns of adversity, provide sensitive parenting, but also understand, accept oneself and develop.