Psychological Challenges of Distant Parenting on Mothers: Scoping Review

Abstract

The involvement of parents in the lives of children is of paramount importance. Parents’ responsibility of ensuring the wellbeing of children should be taken into cognisance. Of late, some parents find themselves parenting from a distance as they leave in pursuit of employment. As a result, these parents experienced different challenges. The problem is that most researchers tend to focus on challenges experienced by children and leave out those experienced by parents. Hence, this paper aimed at synthesizing existing literature on the psychological challenges of distant parenting on mothers. In doing so, the researchers used a scoping review. The documents, which were used in the study, were purposively sampled from ScienceDirect and Google Scholar. From the literature, the researchers found that parents experienced stress and guilt as a result of leaving their children behind. Some of the parents experienced loss of connection with their children due to the distance and were stigmatized in the community/societies. It can be concluded that long-distance parenting remains high with severe implications for the lives of parents. The researchers recommend a phenomenological study on the lived experiences of fathers providing care to their distant children.