When my firstborn was four months old and finally starting to sleep longer, I felt the early taste of victory. Even in my sleepless haze, her giggles were contagious: everything was going to be ok.

Then, a friend came to visit. She brought her slightly older children and casually mentioned that teething was next. I fell into a melancholic slump, a looming realization: “Parenting will always be hard”.

The sleepless nights are followed by teething, then temper tantrums, potty training, night terrors, frustration, disappointment, puberty, rejection, and heartbreak. The unrelenting reality of parenting.

Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general, issued a warning and an accompanying essay: Parents are overworked and under-supported. The parents I know are not surprised.

Perhaps the narrative about parenting for happiness has finally collapsed. Our collective narrative around parenting merits an edit. Parenting is about hope, not happiness.

Parenting is not the fastest path to happiness. It cuts down sleep quality, exercise time (and personal hygiene), and often shrinks the social circle. Deciding to have children knowing the challenges ahead requires a commitment to hope.

By hope, I do not mean a simple longing for a promotion or a full night’s sleep. Those are optimistic predictions. An optimistic parent gets squashed quickly—a few sleepless nights did it for me—but there is a deeper kind of hope that parents can cultivate. 

Hopeful parenting

My research team scoured scientific databases for studies on parenting and hope. We screened thousands of entries and found 45 empirical studies published since 2010. Carefully analyzing this corpus, we came to two conclusions:

Most of those studies defined hope as a goal and the ability to create multiple paths to that goal. Thus, when one path gets squashed, people find a new way forward.

In my experience, parenting requires a lot of path scrambling and rearranging.

Hopeful parents were less overprotective, less punitive, more involved with their children, more self-compassionate, less stressed about parenting, and less narcissistic.

The most consistent finding across all the studies we examined is that hopeful parents were well-supported by their communities and more satisfied—even in tough realities. Across studies, those with the least support were the most unhopeful. 

Hope through adversity

Perhaps most surprising is this research disproportionately came from outside of industrialized, affluent Western countries. Nearly all of the studies on hope and parents were in contexts of adversity: raising children with chronic illness, experiencing recurrent hospitalizations, generational poverty, or grief. 

Just as courage is mustered in danger, hope makes sense in adversity. Hardship requires people to anchor their hope into something stronger than happiness or expectations of comfort and success. 

Immigrants in the United States have more children than native-born. Their lives are not easier or cheaper, yet immigrants have hope that the next generation might have a better life in their new reality.

Hope makes more sense in a collectivist context, where there is a network to catch you when you fail (or grow old). Hope is also a religious virtue. In spiritual communities, children are seen as having eternal value and an active role in redeeming reality. Perhaps that is why there are disproportionately more studies on hopeful parenting outside of the individualistic West. 

In my own research, we studied women who were parenting in harsh conditions – high rates of HIV and unemployment in South Africa. Yet, parents who were hopeful were most likely to respond sensitively to their children. And hope was strongly connected to their support system.

Choosing to hope

In our study, we defined hope from a virtue perspective. The decision to hope because it is the best thing for others. For example, a parents’ decision to read to their children is made out of a hope for their future (not personal gain). Indeed, hopeful parents read to their children more. 

Parents cannot afford to lose the virtue of hope. Not a naïve hope that things will be ok, but a commitment to avoid despair. The decision to act as if daily parenting sacrifices matter in the long run. 

Here is how you can take advantage of this research and inculcate hope in your home.

Reevaluate expectations of parenting and consider goals that are less vulnerable to circumstances outside of your control. Hopes for a child to earn a prestigious degree or athletic notoriety, are prime examples. Parenting should not be about advancing a sense of accomplishment or a personal brand. Spare children from living parents’ vicarious lives.

If parental hope is based on a child’s accomplishments or happiness, it will be easily discouraged by economic downturns, developmental delays, or chronic illness. 

If parental hope is disconnected from the challenge of childhood tantrums or chronic pain, it is too fragile. Hope is built through adversity – thus applicable to tired parents filled with self-doubt. Perseverance solidifies hope, proving the ability to withstand pain and exhaustion for the greater good. 

Hope over happiness

I now sleep much better than I did when I had a newborn, but parenting now is a different kind of hard, and my self-doubt has only grown. I simultaneously worry that I’m being too harsh and too soft. Yet, I am most confident in the decisions that I make that are not based on happiness—my children’s or mine. 

When I focus on happiness, I am more likely to try to circumvent discomfort by over-accommodating and under-preparing my children. Parenting for happiness is a shortcut to an elusive mood. 

Researching hopeful parents who are facing great challenges has inspired me to parent out of a long-range hope. Hope about investing in someone’s life. 

Choosing to prioritize reading, chores, and kind words is not about happiness. I am most hopeful about my children’s future when I see them coping with disappointment, persevering through discomfort, and forgiving each other.

My children bring me joy even though I cannot guarantee their happiness or my own. I don’t think everything will always be okay, but I consciously choose hope over despair. I hope my children will do the same.

Kendra Thomas is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Hope College, a mother of two, and researches adolescents’ perceptions of justice and how hope develops over time. 

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