Good yet Guilty- Exploring Parental Guilt and Self-forgiveness among Indian parents of Young Children

Good yet Guilty- Exploring Parental Guilt and Self-forgiveness among Indian parents of Young Children | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Good yet Guilty- Exploring Parental Guilt and Self-forgiveness among Indian parents of Young Children Poulami Sengupta, Vidisha Rai, Atasi Mohanty This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-9532360/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Revision Version 1 posted 12 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Parental guilt occurs in response to the perceived violation of ideal standards of parenting, resulting in negative mental health consequences for the parents. Coerced into following the dominant discourses on parenthood which shape the “good mother/father” identity, parents experience feelings of failure at falling short of these standards, leading to guilt about their parenting. A possible way to counter the self-focused negative judgments brought about by guilt is the practice of self-forgiveness. The present study qualitatively explores the experience of parental guilt among Indian parents with young children (aged 6 months to 5 years) and the role of self-forgiveness in mitigating it. Using online semi-structured interviews with twelve participants, the study employs Reflexive Thematic Analysis to identify three themes- “Burden of being Good Parents ”, “Balancing Act” and “Reconciliation with Self beyond Guilt”- describing the origin and experience of guilt, and how self-forgiveness helps parents preserve their sense of wholeness and adequacy in the face of punitive social evaluations. These findings are situated in the socio-cultural context of India where familial ties lie at the forefront and gendered expectations mould the experience of parental guilt among fathers and mothers. The study would help practitioners working with new parents to appropriately locate the guilt they feel in the pressure deliberately designed by external social discourses and practise self-forgiveness to embrace their inevitable imperfections as parents. parental guilt self-forgiveness reflexive thematic analysis Indian parents Introduction Parenthood is socially considered an eventuality in adult life and often a necessity, but its emotional consequences for the adults participating in it have been contentious (Connelly & Kimmel, 2015; Musick et al., 2016; Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2020). It has famously been touted as a “mixed bag” of emotions (Musick et al., 2016, p. 1075) and one such significant emotional outcome is Parental Guilt. It stems from the discrepancy between the current standards of parenting and those of “ideal” parenthood that are internalized and externalized through social norms (Liss et al., 2013). Such guilt is most intensely faced during the early years of parenthood as the couple expands to include the child in their dynamic (Levesque et al., 2020)- parents are yoked with the social norms of being competent parents, the constant advice from medical professionals to ensure optimal development of the baby and even cultural constraints to raise the child true to their heritage. Parental Guilt: Only in Mothers? Parental guilt is a gendered concept entrenched in the difference in cultural expectations from mothers and fathers (Connelly & Kimmel, 2015; Henderson et al., 2016). For mothers, a potent source of guilt is the motherhood myth (Rotkirch & Janhunen, 2010), suggesting that mothers are supposed to be omnipresent in the child's life and grant unconditional care and nurturance; any form of negative thoughts about the child such as anger and aggression, real or imagined absence (or wilful time away) from the child, thoughts of regretting motherhood evoke strong feelings of guilt. The negative thoughts about motherhood are difficult to share with anyone since they defy the expectations of being a “good mother” who enjoys the experience as nothing but natural and joyous (Law et al., 2021). They feel guilty about feeling guilty, interpret it as a personal blemish on their maternal emotions and fear social condemnation for having such thoughts (LeBeau,2013; Liss et al., 2013). While new mothers draw significant emotional support from their interactions with other mothers from the community, they also risk feeling alienated and distressed if their parenting ideals and styles do not live up to or deviate significantly from the standards of the group. Exposure to celebrity mothers who put out embellished stories of achieving massive success both in motherhood and career fuels competition among working mothers who then try to reach these towering goals (Chae, 2015). Motherhood myth has survived the change in times, to integrate the lifestyle of the modern working mother, morphing into the “Supermum” myth (Choi et al., 2005, p. 167) that expects women to be more adaptive to challenges, expanding the number of areas she needs to excel. Despite being first studied among mothers, recent research shows that parental guilt also prevails among fathers as they move from emotionally distant resource providers to more nurturant caregivers, especially during their transition into parenthood for the first time (Levesque et al., 2020, Lewington et al., 2021). Fathers struggle to balance the traditional masculine role of unconditionally prioritizing work over family with the modern fatherhood needs of giving sufficient time to childcare. Such work-family guilt makes them feel they have committed a moral transgression by their inability to balance their work and family responsibilities in a manner that adheres to their personal norms (Borelli et al., 2017; Foucreault et al., 2023). It is heightened in dual-earner couples, where the parents feel they must delegate their parental tasks due to work commitments, leading to perceptions of lower life satisfaction (Fourecreault et al., 2023; Martinez et al., 2011). Work-family guilt is also significantly high among working women, especially mothers of toddlers battling the highly potent mothering stereotypes activated at that age (Borelli et al., 2017). Their choice of leaving the baby to go outside for work is socially frowned upon and interpreted as a lack of complete submission to the motherhood duties, often leading them to a compromise through a part-time job which lowers a sense of conflict and preserves the overall well-being of the mother (Buehler & O’Brien, 2011; MacLean et al., 2021). Interestingly, the degree of engagement with the child that decides whether parents should feel guilty is often based on an “interiorized norm” (Fourcreault et al., 2023, p. 1072) rather than the objective frequency, indicating the exaggerated, punishing standards of perfection parents hold themselves to. Most studies linked parental guilt with adverse mental health outcomes, including depression (Kim et al., 2011), low self-efficacy and anxiety among mothers (Henderson et al., 2016), and lower life satisfaction for both parents (Aarntzen et al., 2019; Fourcreault et al., 2023). However, Cho and Allen (2012) highlighted the adaptive functions of guilt as it motivated greater involvement in recreational and educational activities with children, perhaps to repair the perceived damages and lessen the guilt. Considering this bipolarity, Constantinou et al. (2021) put guilt in a spectrum, such that at lower levels it could encourage greater investment in the parenting role but at higher levels, it becomes counter-productive to both parents’ and child’s health. Indian Context: Notions of Ideal Parenting Parental guilt, rooted in notions of what constitutes good motherhood or fatherhood, is sensitive to variations across countries, cultures and races (Gauthier et al., 2021; Helman et al., 2019; Taylor, 2011), while retaining some core uniform characteristics. Most scholarship on the experience of parental guilt derives from studies on parents from the US, Europe and Australia where most of the participants are middle-to-upper class White people, living in nuclear families (Borelli et al., 2017; Foucreault et al., 2023; LeBeau, 2013). The socio-cultural context of India differs in its custom of living together with the extended family, often multiple generations under the same roof and subsequently sharing both the mirth and misery of childrearing with other members of the family (Tuli et al., 2022). Nurturing the child becomes a collective, community affair and voices beyond those of the parents need to be weighed in making decisions about the child’s well-being. The present paper delves into understanding how these cultural characteristics in India affect the experience of parental guilt and strategies used to manage it. We first discuss the notions of fatherhood and motherhood in India, followed by an introduction to the role of self-forgiveness in parental guilt, and finally we describe the details of our study. The Provider Father In the Indian context, the tasks of and expectations from mothers and fathers differ vastly, although with changing economic times, urban migration resulting in nuclear families and greater participation of women in the labour force, this distinction is gradually narrowing (Sriram & Navalkar, 2012). Unlike their earlier duty of only resource-provision for the family, fathers now see their roles expanding into more emotionally suffused domains such as being a caretaker, playmate, friend, mentor and role model (Gupta & Srivastava, 2021; Sriram & Navalkar, 2012). In contrast to Western cultures where fatherhood is associated with training the child to become an adult ready for the world (Seward & Rush, 2015), Asian cultures had long designated the father as the patriarch of the family, precluding any emotional involvement with the child; they were expected to grow up more autonomously. In recent times, significant changes have taken place in the ideological and practical aspects of fatherhood in India, particularly in the urban, middle-class, nuclear families where the mother is employed, leaving the fathers to take up a considerable share of the parental duties, even chores traditionally considered “feminine” (Kumar, 2019; Sriram & Navalkar, 2013). However, for most fathers, the ability to earn material resources for their children remains a compelling aspect of being a good father, leading to emotional challenges like guilt at any perceived inadequacy in it (Sriram & Navalkar, 2013; Sriram et al., 2019). Interestingly, the perception of a “good father” is not as structured or definite as those of good mothers, the former mostly includes intangible qualities instead of specific tasks or activities (Gupta & Srivastava, 2021), while the latter has a carefully curated image contoured by a list of social prescriptions. The Cardinal Mother In India, particularly in the Hindu tradition, motherhood is often accorded the divine status of a Goddess (Devi/Shakti) associated with fertility and power. This status is lofty and limiting at the same time, often reducing the entire worth of the woman to her ability to give birth and restricting them to the domestic sphere (Dey & Das, 2020). Girls are trained in childcare tasks from a young age such that the good mother role becomes culturally ingrained as a coveted destination and an optimal realization of one’s femininity; a perceived failure in reaching these standards fills the mother with guilt (Tuli et al., 2022). Aspirations to establish a career alongside motherhood are seen as a personal choice and the subsequent struggle to strike a balance as avoidable (Joshi & Pandey, 2017). The guilt these mothers feel for leaving the baby at home, not being able to breastfeed them or not being physically available to witness all its milestones are exacerbated by such social constructions of motherhood, if not generated by them (Srikurthi & Vijayan, 2024). Times are changing and more mothers are now opting for jobs outside the home with significant support from the spouses and other family members who engage in shared parenting (Srikurthi & Vijayan, 2024; Tuli et al., 2022), but even in their search for financial liberty, some mothers feel the need to justify their employment as a means to earn more resources for the child, asserting it to be an extension of the good mother ideology they are compelled to aspire towards (Joshi & Pandey, 2017). Another characteristic of Indian motherhood is the extent of involvement of the family and the community, turning childrearing into a collective enterprise. Mothers lie at the crux of any child-related matter but there are multiple “mothers” at work here, including grandparents, fathers or even older siblings who take on the maternal role in case the biological mother is indisposed (Tuli et al., 2022). Besides the instrumental support received from their fathers and spouses, new mothers rely heavily on their own mothers for emotional strength, forming a supportive dynamic where the latter relates to the daughter’s experiences and gives worth to her feelings and judgments (Gupta et al., 2024). This support, however, comes with a condition- to include the family in decision-making for the child. The mother is expected to carry maximum agency, but she is also urged to seek advice from older family members, especially to teach the child regionally distinct cultural values and heal their ailments with traditional practices (Tuli et al., 2022). There is a delicate balance to strike, between the traditional parenting methods passed down through generations as endorsed by the elders with the modern techniques that are more in tune with the mother’s wishes and comfort; a failure to strike this balance could fuel guilt. Self-forgiveness in Parenting Famously hailed as the “stepchild of the forgiveness literature” (Hall & Fincham, 2005, p. 621), research on self-forgiveness has gained momentum from 2011 onwards across a variety of contexts, including substance abuse disorder (Gueta, 2013), eating disorders (Peterson et al., 2017), war veterans (Levi-Belz et al., 2022). Authors have come up with different definitions of self-forgiveness, some focusing on the transition from self-condemning emotions to positive self-regard (Enright, 1996) while others emphasizing the role of responsibility-taking as a hallmark of genuine self-forgiveness (Woodyatt & Wenzel, 2013b). A salient feature of self-forgiveness is that it does not always need objective wrongdoing or apparent harm to others to function, it can arise out of a subjective violation of one’s moral code, “wrong feeling, … thinking, reacting and especially wrong being” (Dillon, 2001, p. 59), stirring up feelings of discrepancy between the ideal and the real self, necessitating the repair of this moral wound with the benevolence of self-forgiveness. Such discrepancy is evident in the case of parental guilt, thus bringing forth the possibility of using self-forgiveness as a protective strategy to manage this guilt. Drawing from the Needs-based Model of Reconciliation (Shnabel & Nadler, 2008, 2015), parental guilt threatens two fundamental needs of individuals- the social-moral identity and sense of agency. Parents fear that their inadequacy or perceived failures signify a collapse of their parental values and would lead to rejection from the community. Practising self-forgiveness helps them to accept an appropriate degree of responsibility for the perceived violation without getting carried away by self-focused emotions like guilt (Fisher & Exline, 2010). Further, reaffirming their values and reflecting upon how they have acted according to these in the past leads them to earn back their respectful place in the moral/social community and reconcile with the self by maintaining positive regard for it (Woodyatt et al., 2017). Studies investigating the role of self-forgiveness in parental guilt are few and far between. Gueta (2013), in her study with drug-addicted Israeli mothers undergoing self-forgiveness interventions, found that with increased self-forgiveness, mothers could tear away from the self-punitive grip of guilt and establish healthier relationships with their children. Such experiences have also been echoed in LeBeau’s (2013) study on first-time mothers with infants, who spoke of the need to accept their limitations as an inevitable fallibility, engage in self-forgiveness to reduce guilt and experience their parenting more fully. More recently, Marcinechová et al. (2024) compared the facilitators and barriers to self-forgiveness among parents of neurotypical children and those with Autism Spectrum Disorder where guilt emerged as a significant barrier in both the groups and feelings of acceptance, social support and corrective behaviour (ability to rectify parental mistakes) facilitated the process of self-forgiveness. Through forgiving themselves and accepting their limitations, parents re-established their identities “competent caregivers” (Braun, 2023, p. 66), which increased their efficacy and helped them cope better with challenging parental demands by recovering from guilt. The Current Study Given this background on the benefits of self-forgiveness in mitigating guilt, we conducted the present study to explore the subjective experiences of parental guilt and the role of self-forgiveness among the parents of young children. Here, “young children” covers the developmental years between 6 months to 5 years. We excluded the post-partum period immediately after the birth of the child since mothers are especially vulnerable to intense emotional changes, including the onset or relapse of anxiety and depression during this period (Bloch et al., 2006) which, in turn, could temporarily augment the reporting of negative emotions. The study wanted to focus specifically on the experience of guilt which usually emerges more strongly during the later years of infancy onwards up to the preschool age of children (Borelli et al., 2017). Using a qualitative lens of inquiry, we seek to answer the following research questions: RQ1: How do parents of young children experience guilt in their journey of parenthood? RQ2: How does self-forgiveness play a role in the parents’ experience of guilt? Methods Participants The experience of parental guilt is largely shaped by demographic variables like race and class which dictate rules of good motherhood and fatherhood (Helman et al., 2019; Taylor, 2011) making it imperative to situate the study in a specific geographical context which, in this case, were two cities in the Eastern part of India. The study was a cross-sectional exploratory study adopting a qualitative mode of inquiry. 12 parents (6 mothers and 6 fathers), aged between 27 to 41 years (M=33.91 ± 3.57) formed the sample for the study (Table 1). Guided by the ethos of Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019), the final decision regarding sample size was taken during the analysis, using the concept of information power (Malterud et al., 2016). Based on the parameters of our study having a narrow and specific research question, rich descriptions and dialogues between the participants and interviewers, cross-case analysis to understand patterns of meanings and theoretical foundations to draw interpretations from, a relatively small sample size was sufficient to generate the required information power (Malterud et al., 2016). The inclusion criteria were 1) a developmentally healthy child or children aged between 6 months to 5 years; 2) No history of a psychiatric diagnosis in the participants in the last year; 3) the participants were born and brought up in India; 4) They spoke and understood English and/or the regional language of Bengali to ease communication. All the participants were cis-gendered, heterosexual and in a marital relationship for at least two years and the age of the children varied between 6 months to 4 years, with all the participants except one having a single girl child. All the participants were employed at the time of the study except two mothers, one of whom had been a homemaker all along and another who had finished her post-doctorate and looking for job opportunities. 50% of the participants worked in the private sector and 30 % in the public sector. All the participants lived with their spouses except one male participant, a PhD scholar currently living away from their spouse, and 40% of the participants lived in nuclear families. For the ease of understanding patterns across cases, we wanted to maintain a degree of homogeneity in the sample by way of ensuring all the participants were residents of urban or semi-urban areas (through questions in the socio-demographic datasheet) and belonged to middle-to-upper-middle-class socio-economic backgrounds (assessed through MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status by Adler et al., 2000, a subjective measure scored on a range of 1 to 10). Table 1 Socio-demographic details of participants Gender Code Age Child’s age, gender Marriage Duration (in years) Occupation Number of family members SES scores F1 34 6 months, girl 2 Tax returns reviewer (private sector) 6 6 F2 34 1 year, girl 3 Manager at IT sector 5 5 F3 33 1 year, girl 3 PhD scholar 6 6 F4 36 3 years, girl 6 Engineer at Govt. office 6 6 F5 36 3.5 years, boy 1.5 years, girl 6 Engineer at Govt. office 4 5 F6 35 7 months, girl 4 Manager at IT sector 4 7 M1 34 7 months, girl 2 Tax returns reviewer (private sector) 6 5 M2 27 8 months, girl 2 Social worker 3 7 M3 29 3 years, girl 6 Home-maker 6 7 M4 41 4 years, girl 5 Home-maker 3 6 M5 36 4 years, girl 7 Senior Product Manager 3 7 M6 32 2 years, girl 4 Manager at IT sector 4 6 Procedure We recruited fourteen participants through snowball sampling and held an initial telephonic conversation with those who met the inclusion criteria, explaining the nature and purpose of the study. The purpose of the study was termed “Emotional Experiences of Parenthood”. We deliberately omitted the terms “parental guilt” and “self-forgiveness” to prevent any priming or defensiveness of the participants, given the general tendency to suppress the negative emotional experiences of parenthood (Law et al., 2021; Rotkirch & Janhunen, 2010). After the interview, we debriefed the participants by revealing the true purpose of the study and explaining why we had to keep this information from them. We transcribed the data and generated the codes for all fourteen interviews, but for the last two interviews, our codes had become repetitive, perhaps because a coherent story capturing the participants’ experiences had already taken shape. We created themes that appropriately answered the research question and captured the cultural aspects of the context we situated the study in (Braun & Clarke, 2021). We do not claim that no new themes or codes would be possible to construct from the remaining data, perhaps other researchers with different orientations would be able to generate an entirely different set of meanings from more data. But, having reached the desired information power (Malterud et al., 2016), we could no more expand the patterns of themes to incorporate meanings other than the ones we had already created, thus stopping the theme generation after ten participants. All ethical considerations, including but not limited to recording the participants’ consent to both participate and publish data and ensuring confidentiality were maintained. The study was approved by the Institute Ethical Committee (IIT/SRIC/DEAN/2024). As noted above in Table 1, we protected the identities of the participants by assigning alphabetical-numerical codes to them (such as M1 for a mother and F1 for a father) and the same codes apply to their verbatim shared in the “Results” section. Interview Process We gathered data through a semi-structured interview with some probes to guide the interview and generate participants’ experiences of the relevant variables while allowing some liberty to go beyond the probes. Questions selected for the interview were decided by reviewing the available literature (Borelli et al., 2017; Sutherland, 2010). Our interviews were conducted online through video calling to access some of these participants living afar. The interview opened with participants sharing the overall emotional experience of parenthood, followed by some probes about the pressures of parenthood known to elicit guilt (“Are there any external pressures about being a good parent?”, “Are there days when you feel you have not been as good a parent as you wanted to be?”). This was then followed with more direct questions about guilt (“Are there days you feel guilty as a parent?”), exploring ways of dealing with guilt (“How do you respond to these guilt feelings?”). At the end of the interview, we did a small debriefing and sought feedback from the participants about their experiences. Typically, the interview lasted between 30 to 45 minutes, depending upon the verbosity of the participant. We later transcribed these interviews to generate scripts for analysis. Analysis We used Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA) (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2019) to construct themes from the data. Embodying a more inductive, constructionist approach to thematic analysis, RTA puts the researcher at the centre of data analysis, requiring them to “knowingly engage” with the data, acknowledge and evaluate their role in knowledge production and actively generate codes and themes, as opposed to passively discovering them (Braun & Clarke, 2019, 2021). It is important to note the theoretical considerations guiding both the selection of an analysis strategy and the interpretation of the findings (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Byrne, 2022). Our epistemological consideration was constructionist, to help us locate personal experiences in dominant socio-cultural systems to understand how the meanings conveyed by the participants are shaped by the interaction between them and the dominant notions around parenthood in their community. The meaningfulness of a code, in terms of how well it responded to the research questions and how salient it was to the participants who expressed these with conviction, were given primacy over simply the frequency of a code (Byrne, 2022). We felt that creating pre-structured codes from existing studies on other cultures would eclipse the singular cultural characteristics of the Indian scenario that shape the experience of guilt and self-forgiveness among the parents. Accordingly, we adopted a predominantly inductive and reiterative approach towards data analysis and used open coding to weave themes out of the participants’ accounts, combined with certain deductive aspects to ensure the codes and themes answered the research questions. The six steps of thematic analysis given by Braun & Clarke (2006) guided our analysis. We manually transcribed the data ensuring a deep immersion in it and sent back the transcripts to the participants to ascertain their validity (member checking). During coding, our initial codes were surface-level semantic codes (“interference from family in discipling child”), but gradually we started to see these codes as shaped by socio-cultural discourses, giving way for us to construct latent meanings (“distrust in modern parenting strategies”). We also acknowledged our own role as researchers in influencing the responses from the participants and maintained notes on what we thought and felt during the interview, beyond our academic impressions. This gave us a better understanding of the interaction between the researcher’s position and the participants’ accounts. After the initial inductive process of coding, the analysis turned more deductive as the themes were logically and coherently constructed from their constituent codes, keeping the research questions in mind. New codes also emerged at this stage, some of which fit into existing themes and others called for new themes. For instance, earlier the sub-theme of “balancing traditional v/s modern” was embedded within “expectations within family”, under the larger theme of “Being good parents”. But we realized that the specific conflict between young parents and older generations around healthcare of child demanded a separate sub-theme, because it needed a sense of balance from parents who saw value in both traditional and modern methods, as opposed to the complete resistance parents felt the need for when burdened with family’s expectations of parenting in general. Finally, we refined the themes such that each theme could be distinctly identified and held enough merit and meaning on its own. Themes had their own set of sub-themes to facilitate their comprehensiveness (Table 2). We situated the findings in the appropriate context provided by the socio-cultural background of the participants and the existing literature to better understand the experience of parental guilt and self-forgiveness among the participants. Researcher’s Reflexivity and Positionality As an early researcher, engaging in the process of both reflexivity and reflectivity yielded challenges, particularly in determining one’s own positionality as an outsider v/s an insider (Holmes, 2020). To enable the reader to understand this position, it is imperative to point out that the three of us are Indian females, with one of us being a married woman with a 20-year-old child and the other two being unmarried women in their late 20s. The interviews were conducted by the younger, unmarried female researcher and they often found themselves in a space between the two defined positions of insider and outsider, as they shared some fixed characteristics with the participants (regionality, language and in certain cases, gender) but differed in the main context under investigation as neither was a parent. In some interviews, this distinction was pointed out by the participants, mostly by the mothers, as they possibly felt some sense of disconnectedness from the researchers and viewed them as someone who would not comprehend the ups and downs of the maternal experience. We attempted to remove this perceived gap, including drawing on personal anecdotal experiences, seeking guidance from the senior researcher and using more colloquial and regionally familiar terms through the interview. Further, there were some specific biases that we too had to overcome. To give an example, on account of her gender and age, one of the younger researchers found her initial views coloured significantly in favour of mothers being the victims of the parental burden while fathers were viewed as being the advantaged party, liberated from the yoke of societal expectations. She acknowledged these views early in the study with the help of the senior researcher and included them in the notes even before starting the interviews. Much of this stance changed as the interviews progressed, consistent field notes were taken and frequently run by the senior researcher such that she kept moving towards a more balanced view regarding the pressures experienced by both the mother and father. Further, we learnt the process of acknowledging the agency of the mothers, instead of seeing them as passive recipients of the social scripts handed out to them to perform. Results Table 2 List of themes and sub-themes and frequency of their endorsement Themes Sub-themes Frequency among mothers Frequency among fathers Burden of being good parents Expectations within family 6 2 Expectations of themselves 6 4 Prevalent notions 6 3 Balancing Act Work v/s Family 4 4 Strictness v/s Leniency 3 3 Traditional v/s Modern 3 2 Reconciliation with self beyond guilt Forgiving and accepting self 5 3 Repair and prepare 2 5 Familial support 6 6 Feeling of relatedness 6 3 The findings of our study are summarized in Table 2 (given above) with detailed descriptions of the themes and subthemes in this section. The first two themes contain the major sources of guilt for parents walking the tightrope of competing expectations from themselves and their families. The frequency of endorsement across the subthemes highlights the gendered nature of such guilt, with more mothers reporting pressure to live up to expected standards than fathers, predisposing them to more chances of failure, and hence, more guilt. The third theme investigates the management of guilt utilising different strategies, ranging from undergoing a private, emotional transformation (such as self-forgiveness) to enlisting support from the community (familial support). Theme 1: Burden of being Good Parents All the parents in the sample, except one, were first-time parents and felt pressure from both internal and external sources to perform the parental role with the expected degree of competence. For the experienced parent, the intensity of the pressure had decreased, but it was now replaced with the strain of maintaining their “good parents” label for both the children equally. Expectations Within Family Since the custom in India is to live with the in-laws after marriage, the voices of other, older family members, carried weight as did the voices in the community where the parents resided. Eight parents (six mothers and two fathers) spoke about the clash between the parenting styles and ideologies of their generation and their parents’ generation, leading to unfavourable comparisons and comments from family members. Grandparents often criticized their way of raising the child, either overtly or covertly, and this led to feelings of self-doubt and guilt among the parents, as they struggled to meet expectations of family members who overlooked the changing times and changing needs of the child. “I mean the generation prior to ours, I certainly feel they were very more hands-on moms. Like my mom only, she did not have any help. Ours was a joint family, she used to cook and also you know, take care of me. Yeah, I mean there is comparison right, in your head also, in your family also… so you're more privileged than the prior generation, so why are you not able to do the things in this way? ” (M1, 34-year-old mother, Private sector employee) Two mothers and one father also spoke about how the older generation pointed out the greater abundance of resources new parents have at their disposal and how much easier it is for them to raise a child these days, further fuelling their feelings of inadequacy and guilt. Expectations of Themselves None of the participants reported any predetermined parenting ideology and stressed, instead, on the spontaneity and dynamicity of parenthood. However, a pattern of gendered expectations emerged across parents, which, if left unfulfilled, led to feelings of guilt. For four fathers, the primary expectation was to provide financial security to the child and any perceived or anticipated failure in doing so generated guilt. “See, I am the breadwinner of the family, so I have that added pressure. Today there are so many high-end schools cropping up and if I cannot get my child admitted there due to a lack of money, then that is on me. I need to give her a good start, later she can do whatever she wants but I need to give her the best that I can. I get scared sometimes, that what if I can’t? what kind of father would that make me?” (F2, 34-year-old father, software engineer at private sector) For all six mothers, their primary concern was giving enough time to the child and being physically present around them as much as possible. A deliberate physical separation from the child, either due to work or by putting the child in school, felt like a “selfish” move. Constant engagement in childcare activities left three mothers with no time to spare for either the self or the spouse. They felt constantly needed by their child and could not relax even after delegating the caregiving to another family member. “When she goes to school and I am sitting alone at home, I start thinking, am I being a bad mother by keeping her away for so long? I mean I know it is for her benefit and she will learn quicker that way, but I still feel a little guilty. I actually get a lot of household work done when she is in school but then after all of that ends and I am just sitting with myself, trying to relax a little, I start feeling this way.” (M4, 41-year-old mother, home-maker) For two parents (one father and one mother), guilt (or the lack of it) came from an (in)ability to breastfeed the child and subsequent reliance on formula feeding. “I keep hearing other parents say that their baby is not sleeping the whole night. Well, I think it is because they keep getting hungry for breast-milk. Both my children have been fed breast-milk and they sleep so soundly. Other parents should also remember this. I think we have done this job properly, we have managed it well.” (F5, 36-year-old father, Engineer in Public sector) Three parents (two mothers, one father) stressed their responsibility towards ensuring good health of the child where even minor ailments, such as skin rashes and cough and cold, were interpreted as their failure to protect the child. Prevalent Notions All parents felt the burden of social notions of parenthood, communicated to them through the community or media representations. The most salient was the primacy of the mother, which was unequivocally endorsed by all the participants. As one father remarked, he felt like a “witness” to the parenting journey while his spouse was being the parent. Parents acknowledged the fathers as a source of support but considered the protagonist in the child’s life to be the mother. “As she is growing up now, I feel like in both good times and bad times, she needs me a lot, she always tries to grab my attention. Even if I am working on something else, she will interrupt me, drag me away and want me to be there. She does not do that with her father though. At times this makes me happy, but then sometimes I get very irritated because by default, I have to do most of the parenting” (M3, 29-year-old mother, home-maker) Two fathers felt that after the birth of the child, their lives were not expected to change as much as their partners’ and their participation in parenting was limited to only playing with the child. They had to convince other family members to let them take up more active roles in childcare. “No one in my office really cared about the fact that I was now a father. When I tell them things like I have to leave early or that I cannot go to this party because I have to take care of my child, they tell me that I already have a wife to do all of this. I guess all of this childcare is still seen as very feminine things and I, as a man, am not supposed to do it. Even at my home, my own parents feel that it is just easier if the mother does everything for my child. Sometimes I feel I am just a guest in this parental journey!” (F3, 33-year-old father, PhD scholar) Four parents (two mothers and two fathers) spoke about the representation of parenthood as an “all-happy” phenomenon and how that is dismally misleading. They felt that the challenges of parenthood- emotional, physical and financial- are often concealed under the celebratory spirit associated with it such that, any negative thought or feeling about parenthood is seen as a personal blemish of the parents experiencing it. Theme 2: Balancing Act Parents also spoke of the need to straddle competing demands in their parenting journey and often struggling to strike the perfect balance between these. Work v/s Family One such competing demand was allocating time to both work and family. Four fathers and four mothers spoke of the difficulty in managing childcare with their professional responsibilities; this difficulty was not only experienced but also anticipated by mothers who were currently at the tail end of their maternity leave and preparing to rejoin office. Parents felt that they might end up missing important moments of their child’s life due to the long hours at the office and this led to guilt. Even for those working from home, seeing their child around but not being able to engage with them during office hours was painful. “I feel so irritated, I feel like giving up my job! Seriously! It is so hard to watch my child playing next to me, laughing, crying and doing all sorts of things, and having to direct my attention to my work. I feel like leaving the work and playing with her for some time. The more the work pressure increases, the more this sense of ‘missing out’ creeps in.” (F1, 34-year-old father, private sector employee) Strict v/s Lenient Three fathers and three mothers also spoke of the need to balance their emotional temperament in their dealings with the child, trying to be a disciplinarian but also exuding enough warmth and love. They felt that the traditional ways of parenting in India had changed to give way to more liberal and permissive parenting where the child was no longer expected to be afraid of their parents. But, at times, regulating one’s emotions, especially anger, was difficult in front of the child and every time there was an outburst, they felt a sense of failure. “Frankly, my daughter does not expect me to scream at her. I let her be naughty, because after all she is a child…sometimes you just have to let her be. So when I end up losing my temper, she also feels unsettled. I regret those times, I feel I should have had more patience. Actually I don’t want to become that permissive father whose child becomes a wilful and disobedient. But I think there is a better way to manage these situations. I need to control my anger more.” (F4, 36-year-old father, public sector employee). Another mother was also concerned that the children these days are much more impressionable, so any emotionally reckless behaviour would not only hurt them but also be mimicked by them in a range of situations. Traditional v/s Modern Yet another struggle expressed by three mothers and two fathers was balancing the traditional wisdom passed down by grandparents with the modern knowledge they possessed. This conflict was most palpable in issues of healthcare, when some grandparents disapproved of the over-reliance of the parents on modern medicine and insisted, they resort to herbal and ayurvedic healing practices. The fathers felt that they have too much exposure to too much information, such that even minor physical ailments are catastrophized, forcing them into private healthcare settings which are designed to guilt them into availing unnecessary packages. “We, as a generation, are very strongly influenced by social media. Even if there is a boil on my child’s skin, there are so many platforms to search what it means and how dangerous it could be…and the more information I get, the more anxious I become. Then I have to take my child to the doctor because there is too much guilt in not doing so. My parents did not have all these fancy consultation services during their time and still they raised us to be healthy children. But then, medicine has also come a long way and if there are better facilities now, I feel like I should avail those for the sake of my child”. (F2, 34-year-old, Manager at IT sector) Theme 3: Reconciliation with Self beyond Guilt Participants agreed that guilt, while largely a fleeting experience, tended to emerge frequently and fuelled intense negative thoughts about the self. This emotional anguish prompted them to devise strategies for addressing their guilt. Forgiving and Accepting Self All but one mother spoke about the need to recognise parental fallibility as natural as human fallibility, thus keeping room for imperfections in their parenting. They realized how they could only control so much in their child’s life and how difficult it is to label “right” and “wrong” behaviours in parenting, more so for new parents. Three fathers and two mothers felt that awareness of the perceived mistake was important, but so was the need to forgive the self and move on from the guilt, instead of ruminating about it. “There is no point chasing greatness at fatherhood, you will be perfect for a few days and then again you will make a mistake. But you can’t sit with these mistakes, then time will pass me by and I will be too unhappy and guilty to enjoy my interactions with my child. So, I tell myself that yes, I may not be a great father, but I certainly am a good father.” (F6, 35-year-old, Manager at IT sector) Three mothers also spoke of the need to acknowledge the sheer amount of effort they were putting in, often resulting in physical exhaustion and lack of adequate rest over prolonged periods. To keep tackling this massive parental load, they felt that forgiving and being compassionate to themselves were important. One mother strongly opposed the idea of using the term “forgiveness”; she felt that she was not at fault and thus there was nothing to forgive. Imperfections and the tendency to feel inadequate, she felt, was a natural human tendency applicable to all areas of life and thus, parents should focus more on their good intentions and efforts instead of drowning in guilt. Another mother viewed forgiveness a little differently- she felt that more than accepting her flaws and forgiving herself, the forgiveness from and happiness of the child could be used to alleviate the guilt. “I mean, yeah, we can forgive ourselves and at the same time it's a child… like on the other side it's a child. The child is happy with their parent … in whatever they’re doing, they forget things so easily. So if we see that we are feeling guilty about this child but the child himself or herself is not angry with us, then it becomes easier for us to forgive ourselves.” (M2, 27-year-old, social worker) Repair and Prepare Seven participants (two mothers and five fathers) used the repair and prepare strategy where they focused on the need to take a rational stance towards the guilt, gauge the degree of responsibility one has in the situation, make amends to fix the perceived mistakes and not repeat them in the future. They took active measures to either stop or minimize the guilt-inducing behaviour. For them, guilt served an adaptive function as they were “alarms” to abide by certain codes of good parental behaviour. For the behaviours they could not repair, they prepared justifications, particularly for their inability to spend enough time with the child due to work pressures. “ Whenever I feel guilty about not being there with my wife and child, I ask myself one question- what am I doing now? I always make sure that if I am not with them, I am doing some important work because that compensates for the lack of time, it is the price I have to pay for earning resources for both their well-being” (F3, 33-year-old, PhD scholar) Familial Support All participants spoke about the benefits of having familial support in mitigating negative emotional experiences, including guilt. Four fathers and two mothers talked about the emotional and instrumental support they received from their spouses in sharing childcare duties and in acknowledging and normalising the negative emotions of parenthood. The fathers, especially, felt that their spouses often mediated the relationship between them and their children and buffered them against the guilt arising from work-family conflict and social or familial expectations. All six fathers also reiterated the importance of guidance from their parents, in terms of financial help as well as the reassurance that they are doing the best they can, all of which helps them with their guilt. Similarly, for five mothers, besides spousal support, the greatest emotional support came from the presence of their own mothers; they felt a renewed sense of connectedness with them as they turned to them for wisdom, advice and reassurance. Feeling of Relatedness Yet another strategy for the parents in managing their guilt was a feeling of relatedness with other parents, who, they felt were able to empathize with them and offer practical solutions to their child-related problems. All the participants found emotional support and informational resources on parenthood from a network of fellow parents, either in person or through their testimonials on social media. One mother spoke about how she draws strength by observing limitations in other mothers and realizes that perfection in all aspects of the maternal role is a myth. “When I take my child in the evening for playing with other kids… so that's where I see that somewhere or the other, everyone is lacking something, which is the reality…even when I think about my mom. So one thing that helps is, you know, not being unnecessarily influenced by, like, only the positive example, just look into the whole picture, because there are cases where someone might be doing something very well, but even the same person is not doing the other things well.” (M6, 32-year-old, Manager at IT sector) Discussion Self-forgiveness in Parental Guilt Parents in our study chose self-forgiveness as a strategy to manage their feelings of guilt, combined with the need to accept their fundamental fallibility as humans. Taxed with the cultural expectations of being good parents and sometimes their internal arduous aspirations, the parents needed to actively replace the self-condemning feelings that labelled them as “bad” or “selfish” parents and move towards more benevolent views, as is encapsulated by the process of self-forgiveness (Hall & Fincham, 2005;2008). To borrow from the Needs-based model of reconciliation (Shnabel & Nadler, 2008; 2015), self-forgiveness in these parents serves a dual purpose. First, it helps them reaffirm their commitment to parenting values by acknowledging the perceived violation from it and repairing the behaviours, restoring their moral self to its desired version (Woodyatt et al., 2017). This is reflected through the active measures parents take to reduce guilt, such as keeping a better check on their anger, changing work schedules to spend more time with the child, seeking immediate medical consultation for even minor ailments or preparing cognitive justifications (e.g. a compulsion to prioritize office work over family time to earn enough money for child’s well-being). All these measures are aimed at mending the moral fracture to their parenting identities causing guilt and integrating these perceived behavioural failures into their idea of a good parent. Second, by engaging in these reparative and compensatory behaviours, they sustain membership in social communities including family and friends who might have otherwise castigated them for their perceived inadequacies as parents. Studies have shown the role of self-forgiveness in predicting parental efficacy as it allows parents to accept their fallibility and still give themselves due credit for being good parents; they can bounce back from the guilt and work towards further growth (Braun, 2023). The study also reveals some factors that take the parents closer to self-forgiveness. Acceptance of one’s limitations as a parent and of the inevitability of mistakes are strongly intertwined with the process of self-forgiveness, both prompting and perpetuating it among the parents. Acceptance of the self was also the most potent facilitator of self-forgiveness among parents of both neurotypical children and those with Autism Spectrum Disorder, buffering them against guilt and self-condemnation (Marcinechová et al., 2023). Reassurance and emotional support from the spouse, their own parents, other parents and even their child also make it easier for the parents to forgive themselves, as they are reminded of their good intentions and persistent efforts to rise to the parental demands. Other studies on parents (Gueta, 2013; LeBeau, 2013) have also highlighted the role of social support in bolstering self-forgiveness, perhaps by making them feel more worthy of the benevolence self-forgiveness offers. Father versus Mother: Cultural Expectations in India The experience of guilt among parents has mostly been explored in Western populations which differ significantly in the socio-cultural context from India where the “familial self” takes precedence over any individual identity (Roland, 1988, a cited in Tuli et al., 2022, p. 857). Parenthood is seen not only as a personal event for the couple, but a collective achievement for the whole family and community and often translates into an enhanced status for the mother for giving birth to a child who can keep the family traditions alive (Gupta et al., 2024; Sriram & Navalkar, 2016). There are also specific cultural practices such as sending the mother to their natal homes after giving birth to ensure she has enough physical and emotional rest before returning to juggle her child, work and family (Gupta et al., 2024). Such active participation from family members and the community at large also shapes the experiences of and expectations from both the parents, which show both convergences and divergences with the studies from Western populations. The primacy of the mother was unequivocally addressed by all the participants and is consistent with the social norms in Indian families and culture. However, participants also expressed ideological clashes about a good way to parent with other family members. Other studies also discuss the strong involvement of such peripheral actors in the centrality of mothering such that a mother who tries to limit their participation and disregard their advice is seen as violating the accepted norms of “shared parenting” (Tuli et al., 2022, p. 858). These expectations from the family are much more strongly exerted on the mother than the father, given the greater domestic participation of the former, failing to strike this precarious balance prompts guilt. Further, culturally lauded images of motherhood as a divine and compelling embodiment of the qualities typically considered feminine, most notably unconditionally loving, nurturing and self-sacrificing (Dey & Das, 2020) are internalized; working outside the house is perhaps perceived as incompatible with this image. So, the thought of returning to work and not being able to spend enough time with their child fill the working mothers in the study with guilt and fear of inadequacy. This highlights the persistence, if not the primacy, of traditional motherhood ideals, which has now turned into a “Supermum” ideal where women are expected to juggle all roles at once and excel in each of them (Choi et al., 2005, p. 167). For fathers in the study, the primary source of guilt is the inability to provide sufficient financial resources for their children, highlighting the major expectation from Indian fathers is the provision of financial security to their families. Although there have been significant changes in the roles and responsibilities of fathers, with modern fathers participating more actively in childcare duties and being more emotionally responsive (Sriram et al., 2019), yet when it comes to feelings of guilt and the perceived failures causing it, the service-provider role matters the most (Seward & Rush, 2015). Moreover, the fathers in the study feel more insulated from social pressures and expectations as compared to mothers, possibly because child-rearing is still considered a mother’s job; the participation of the father, though optimistically increasing, is not socially decreed. Gupta and Srivastava (2021) gleaned similar insights from their survey, showing that active childcare did not feature in the fatherhood ideal of participants, although they did engage in it in the absence of the mothers. Regarding work-family balance, the fathers regret the lessened time they give their child due to work pressure but are less likely to express guilt over it than the mothers- a common finding in studies of work-family guilt (Borrelli et al., 2017; Fourcreault et al., 2023). This social pressure to prioritize earning money is perhaps an emblem of masculinity for the fathers; inability to ensure financial security threatens their identity as a man (Lewington et al., 2021). Guilt over letting work take over childrearing is overshadowed by the guilt of incompetence as both a man and a father if work takes a backseat. The paramountcy of the mother in the parenting journey also translates to fathers being pushed to the fringes, such that the emotional experiences of the fathers, both positive and negative, are left unaddressed. The mothers in the study spoke about the difficulty in openly expressing the negative emotions of parenting and feeling a guilt about these emotions, citing the social norms of parenthood as being a divine gift that should only be revered, not regretted. This difficulty can be attributed to the dominance of the motherhood myth (Rotkirch & Janhunen, 2010), which denies mothers the right to feel any negative emotion (anger, anxiety, regret) related to their child and any mother having such thoughts is made to feel personally responsible for this “behavioural failing” (Law et al., 2021, p. 1833). Furthermore, in a close-knit community like India, there are frequent social comparisons of the mothers with either the older generations or other mothers which tends to fuel competition (Chae, 2015) and induces feelings of inadequacy and guilt. Paradoxically, it is this same collective societal structure of India that offers emotional support from multiple quarters to counter the threat of guilt, such as the mothers’ own family and peer groups (Gupta et al., 2024), and some of these safe spaces develop for the mothers in domestic quarters, away from the prying eyes of the societal sanction on acknowledging the guilt of parenthood. The role of the fathers, on the other hand, is much less emotionally driven, relegating them to “ideological” perceptions of parenthood, as opposed to its “physical” perceptions among mothers (Kumar, 2019, p. 87). As expressed by the participants in the study, they often see themselves as “witnessing” the parental journey from a distance, perhaps due to both biological and social limitations that ensure fathers are mostly involved in leisure activities with their children, with fewer instances of spending alone time with the child (solo-parenting) than mothers (Musick et al., 2016). This safeguards them from the burden of social comparisons because the ideal of fatherhood is less certain and less prescriptive (Gupta & Srivastava, 2021), reducing the risk of guilt or inadequacy. Conversely, it tends to block the fathers from the emotional support avenues available to mothers, as the community turns all the attention and resources to the mothers. Research Limitations and Implications The findings of our study can provide the foundation for designing intervention programs for new parents or even expectant parents, to monitor their expectations of themselves in being good parents. While most parental classes focus on honing the childrearing skills of parents as they transition to parenthood, it is also important to address the emotional challenges that arise and safeguard them against the unrealistic social standards of parenting designed to make them feel inadequate and guilty. In the Indian scenario, specifically, there is a high degree of censure in discussing the negative emotional experiences of parenthood, more so among mothers who are assigned a larger-than-life status of love and sacrifice (Tuli et al., 2022). Thus, it becomes imperative to challenge this myth and recognize parenthood as a humane journey, fraught with flaws and the ensuing emotional turmoil. The emergent themes in our study also highlight the role of prevalent social notions of parenting in shaping guilt experiences, which are often reinforced by media representations and celebrity mother discourses (Chae, 2015; Dey & Das, 2020). Locating the guilt in these external exaggerated standards of parenting instead of letting it indicate a personal failure would help the parents manage it more effectively. Most of the benefits of self-forgiveness have been found in cases of interpersonal transgressions in relationships (Woodyatt & Wenzel, 2013) or clinically significant issues such as eating disorders (Peterson et al., 2017) and trauma in war veterans (Levi-Belz et al., 2022). Although guilt and self-forgiveness have independently come up as themes in a few qualitative studies exploring the challenges of parenting (Gueta, 2013; LeBeau, 2013; Marcinechova, 2023), our contribution lies in highlighting the role self-forgiveness in specifically reducing parental guilt. In case of perceived violations, parents can be trained to take an appropriate amount of responsibility without letting guilt override the benevolent emotions directed to and deserved by the self (Hall & Fincham, 2005; 2008). It would help them separate their actions from their overall parent identity so that they can continue to feel efficient after committing mistakes (Braun, 2023). However, some “constraints on generality” (Simons et al., 2017, p. 1123) must be kept in mind while interpreting our findings. Consistent with our aim of creating a more inclusive view of parental guilt, beyond what is understood in the Western framework, we recruited parents from the eastern zone of India and relied on a qualitative methodology. We realize such a specific context imposes limitations on transferring our findings to other cultures. Future research can use our study as a specific case and compile and compare similar studies across cultures to find the convergences and divergences of parental guilt (see Seward & Rush, 2015) and develop a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon. Our sample was also contextually homogenous, in terms of their cultural background and socio-economic status. Other studies could investigate other socio-demographic factors that have a bearing upon the experience of both guilt and self-forgiveness among parents. For instance, parents of low socio-economic backgrounds with fewer resources at their disposal and a greater financial burden brought about by childcare, struggle with the guilt of privation of both needs and wants of their children (Goyal et al., 2010). A family-based approach could also be used by future researchers to understand the issues of parental guilt and ways of managing it, since in India the “familial self” (Roland, 1988, a cited in Tuli et al., 2022, p. 857) gains priority over other identities. Interviewing the whole family, especially the grandparents instead of only the parents, and analysing the different levels of interactions within the family as well as between the family and the proximal community would yield a deeper understanding of how the family and community become carriers of conventions that are designed to make the parents feel inadequate. Interventions can be designed keeping the whole family in mind, so that they recognize the inter-generational transmission of guilt and consciously resist it. Declarations Disclosure of Interest The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. Data Availability Statement The data will be provided by the authors upon reasonable request. Funding No funding was received for conducting this study. We did receive a travel grant to from the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) to present preliminary findings from this study at the 16 th IAFOR Asian Conference on Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Tokyo. Acknowledgement We extend our gratitude to the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) for their travel grant that allowed us to present preliminary findings from this study at the 16 th IAFOR Asian Conference on Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Tokyo. 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Maternal Guilt: An Existential Phenomenological Study of the Early Experiences of First-Time Mothers [Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation]. Duquesne University. Lévesque, S., Bisson, V., Charton, L., & Fernet, M. (2020). Parenting and relational well-being during the transition to parenthood: Challenges for first-time parents. Journal of Child and Family Studies , 29 , 1938-1956.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01727-z Levi-Belz, Y., Dichter, N., & Zerach, G. (2022). Moral injury and suicide ideation among Israeli combat veterans: The contribution of self-forgiveness and perceived social support. Journal of Interpersonal Violence , 37 (1-2), NP1031-NP1057. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260520920865 Lewington, L., Lee, J., & Sebar, B. (2021). “I’m not just a babysitter”: Masculinity and men’s experiences of first-time fatherhood. Men and Masculinities , 24 (4), 571-589. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184x21993884 Liss, M., Schiffrin, H. H., & Rizzo, K. M. (2013). Maternal guilt and shame: The role of self-discrepancy and fear of negative evaluation. Journal of Child and Family Studies , 22 , 1112-1119. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-012-9673-2 Maclean, E. I., Andrew, B., & Eivers, A. (2021). The motherload: Predicting experiences of work-interfering-with-family guilt in working mothers. Journal of Child and Family Studies , 30 , 169-181. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01852-9 Malterud, K., Siersma, V. D., & Guassora, A. D. (2016). Sample size in qualitative interview studies: guided by information power. Qualitative Health Research , 26 (13), 1753-1760. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732315617444 Marcinechová, D., Záhorcová, L., & Lohazerová, K. (2024). Self-forgiveness, guilt, shame, and parental stress among parents of children with autism spectrum disorder. Current Psychology , 43 (3), 2277-2292. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04476-6 Martínez, P., Carrasco, M. J., Aza, G., Blanco, A., & Espinar, I. (2011). Family gender role and guilt in Spanish dual-earner families. Sex Roles , 65 , 813-826.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-0031-4 Musick, K., Meier, A., & Flood, S. (2016). How parents fare: Mothers’ and fathers’ subjective well-being in time with children. American Sociological Review , 81 (5), 1069-1095. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122416663917 Nomaguchi, K., & Milkie, M. A. (2020). Parenthood and well‐being: A decade in review. Journal of Marriage and Family , 82 (1), 198-223. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12646 Peterson, S. J., Van Tongeren, D. R., Womack, S. D., Hook, J. N., Davis, D. E., & Griffin, B. J. (2017). The benefits of self-forgiveness on mental health: Evidence from correlational and experimental research. The Journal of Positive Psychology , 12 (2), 159-168. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1163407 Rotkirch, A., & Janhunen, K. (2010). Maternal guilt. Evolutionary Psychology , 8 (1), 90-106. https://doi.org/10.1177/147470491000800108 Seward, R. R., & Rush, M. (2015). Fathers, fathering, and fatherhood across cultures: Convergence or divergence? (Working Paper Series, WP40). School of Applied Social Science, University College Dublin, Belfield Dublin, Republic of Ireland. Retrieved from http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/WP40_2015_Ray%20Seward%20and%20Rush.pdf(open in a new window) Shnabel, N., & Nadler, A. (2008). A needs-based model of reconciliation: Satisfying the differential needs of victim and perpetrator. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 94 (1), 116-132. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.94.1.116 Shnabel, N., & Nadler, A. (2015). The role of agency and morality in reconciliation processes the perspective of the needs-based model. Current Directions in Psychological Science , 24 (6), 477–483. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721415601625 Simons, D. J., Shoda, Y., & Lindsay, D. S. (2017). Constraints on generality (COG): A proposed addition to all empirical papers. Perspectives on Psychological Science , 12 (6), 1123-1128. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617708630 Srikruthi, C.H., Vijayan., D. (2024). Fear of reintegration and maternal guilt- post maternity leave. International Journal of Health Sciences and Research, 14 (5), 385-395. https://doi.org/10.52403/ijhsr.20240551 Sriram, R., & Navalkar, P. G. (2012). Who is an ‘Ideal’father? Father, mother and childrens’ views. Psychology and Developing Societies , 24 (2), 205-237.https://doi.org/10.1177/097133361202400206 Sriram, R., & Navalkar, P. (2013). Fathering in India: Understanding challenges and opportunities. In J.Pattanaik (Ed.), Father/Male involvement in young children's lives: An International analysis. (pp. 279-300). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5155-2_16 Sriram, R., Verma, A., Mattu, S., Sandhu, G., & Singh, A. (2019). Nature and extent of a father’s involvement: Research evidence from western India. In R.Sriram (Ed.), Fathering in India: Images and realities . (pp. 61-81). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1715-6_4 Sutherland, J. A. (2010). Mothering, guilt and shame. Sociology Compass , 4 (5), 310-321. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2010.00283.x Taylor, T. (2011). Re‐examining cultural contradictions: Mothering ideology and the intersections of class, gender, and race. Sociology Compass , 5 (10), 898-907. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2011.00415.x Tuli, M. (2012). Beliefs on parenting and childhood in India. Journal of Comparative Family Studies , 43 (1), 81-91. https://doi.org/10.3138/jcfs.43.1.81 Tuli, M., Chaudhary, N., & Dalal, J. (2022). Socio-cultural images of motherhood: Individual variations of a collective construct. Human Arenas , 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-022-00310-w Woodyatt, L., & Wenzel, M. (2013). Self-forgiveness and restoration of an offender following an interpersonal transgression. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology , 32 (2), 225-259. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2013.32.2.225 Woodyatt, L., Wenzel, M., & de Vel-Palumbo, M. (2017). Working through psychological needs following transgressions to arrive at self-forgiveness. In L.Woodyatt, E.L.Worthington Jr., M. Wenzel & B.J. Griffin (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of self-forgiveness , (pp 43-58).Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60573-9_4 Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-9532360","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":637871264,"identity":"4022fdb8-3d38-4d6b-9021-04730f672995","order_by":0,"name":"Poulami Sengupta","email":"data:image/png;base64,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","orcid":"","institution":"Rekhi Centre of Excellence for the Science of Happiness, Indian Institute of Technology","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Poulami","middleName":"","lastName":"Sengupta","suffix":""},{"id":637871265,"identity":"449a5d94-1efa-4c2f-83ab-b0a7404e71a5","order_by":1,"name":"Vidisha Rai","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Rekhi Centre of Excellence for the Science of Happiness, Indian Institute of Technology","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Vidisha","middleName":"","lastName":"Rai","suffix":""},{"id":637871266,"identity":"cd42f586-851d-4048-926c-5675e1fee323","order_by":2,"name":"Atasi Mohanty","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Rekhi Centre of Excellence for the Science of Happiness, Indian Institute of Technology","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Atasi","middleName":"","lastName":"Mohanty","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2026-04-26 13:39:51","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-9532360/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9532360/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":109459305,"identity":"19231163-0cf3-472c-8771-cffcb74b5538","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-05-18 10:41:17","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":348136,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-9532360/v1/3fdbc29e-dff5-45c3-8cb9-22684a6d5dd1.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"Good yet Guilty- Exploring Parental Guilt and Self-forgiveness among Indian parents of Young Children","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eParenthood is socially considered an eventuality in adult life and often a necessity, but its emotional consequences for the adults participating in it have been contentious (Connelly \u0026amp; Kimmel, 2015; Musick et al., 2016; Nomaguchi \u0026amp; Milkie, 2020). It has famously been touted as a \u0026ldquo;mixed bag\u0026rdquo; of emotions (Musick et al., 2016, p. 1075) and one such significant emotional outcome is Parental Guilt. It stems from the discrepancy between the current standards of parenting and those of \u0026ldquo;ideal\u0026rdquo; parenthood that are internalized and externalized through social norms (Liss et al., 2013). Such guilt is most intensely faced during the early years of parenthood as the couple expands to include the child in their dynamic \u0026nbsp;(Levesque et al., 2020)- parents are yoked with the social norms of being competent parents, the constant advice from medical professionals to ensure optimal development of the baby and even cultural constraints to raise the child true to their heritage.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eParental Guilt: Only in Mothers?\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eParental guilt is a gendered concept entrenched in the difference in cultural expectations from mothers and fathers (Connelly \u0026amp; Kimmel, 2015; Henderson et al., 2016). For mothers, a potent source of guilt is the motherhood myth (Rotkirch \u0026amp; Janhunen, 2010), suggesting that mothers are supposed to be omnipresent in the child\u0026apos;s life and grant unconditional care and nurturance; any form of negative thoughts about the child such as anger and aggression, real or imagined absence (or wilful time away) from the child, thoughts of regretting motherhood evoke strong feelings of guilt. The negative thoughts about motherhood are difficult to share with anyone since they defy the expectations of being a \u0026ldquo;good mother\u0026rdquo; who enjoys the experience as nothing but natural and joyous (Law et al., 2021). They feel guilty about feeling guilty, interpret it as a personal blemish on their maternal emotions and fear social condemnation for having such thoughts (LeBeau,2013; Liss et al., 2013). While new mothers draw significant emotional support from their interactions with other mothers from the community, they also risk feeling alienated and distressed if their parenting ideals and styles do not live up to or deviate significantly from the standards of the group. Exposure to celebrity mothers who put out embellished stories of achieving massive success both in motherhood and career fuels competition among working mothers who then try to reach these towering goals (Chae, 2015). Motherhood myth has survived the change in times, to integrate the lifestyle of the modern working mother, morphing into the \u0026ldquo;Supermum\u0026rdquo; myth (Choi et al., 2005, p. 167) that expects women to be more adaptive to challenges, expanding the number of areas she needs to excel.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDespite being first studied among mothers, recent research shows that parental guilt also prevails among fathers as they move from emotionally distant resource providers to more nurturant caregivers, especially during their transition into parenthood for the first time (Levesque et al., 2020, Lewington et al., 2021). Fathers struggle to balance the traditional masculine role of unconditionally prioritizing work over family with the modern fatherhood needs of giving sufficient time to childcare. Such work-family guilt makes them feel they have committed a moral transgression by their inability to balance their work and family responsibilities in a manner that adheres to their personal norms (Borelli et al., 2017; Foucreault et al., 2023). It is heightened in dual-earner couples, where the parents feel they must delegate their parental tasks due to work commitments, leading to perceptions of lower life satisfaction (Fourecreault et al., 2023; Martinez et al., 2011). Work-family guilt is also significantly high among working women, especially mothers of toddlers battling the highly potent mothering stereotypes activated at that age (Borelli et al., 2017). Their choice of leaving the baby to go outside for work is socially frowned upon and interpreted as a lack of complete submission to the motherhood duties, often leading them to a compromise through a part-time job which lowers a sense of conflict and preserves the overall well-being of the mother (Buehler \u0026amp; O\u0026rsquo;Brien, 2011; MacLean et al., 2021). \u0026nbsp; Interestingly, the degree of engagement with the child that decides whether parents should feel guilty is often based on an \u0026ldquo;interiorized norm\u0026rdquo; (Fourcreault et al., 2023, p. 1072) rather than the objective frequency, indicating the exaggerated, punishing standards of perfection parents hold themselves to.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost studies linked parental guilt with adverse mental health outcomes, including depression (Kim et al., 2011), low self-efficacy and anxiety among mothers (Henderson et al., 2016), and lower life satisfaction for both parents (Aarntzen et al., 2019; Fourcreault et al., 2023). However, Cho and Allen (2012) highlighted the adaptive functions of guilt as it motivated greater involvement in recreational and educational activities with children, perhaps to repair the perceived damages and lessen the guilt. Considering this bipolarity, Constantinou et al. (2021) put guilt in a spectrum, such that at lower levels it could encourage greater investment in the parenting role but at higher levels, it becomes counter-productive to both parents\u0026rsquo; and child\u0026rsquo;s health.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIndian Context: Notions of Ideal Parenting\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eParental guilt, rooted in notions of what constitutes good motherhood or fatherhood, is sensitive to variations across countries, cultures and races (Gauthier et al., 2021; Helman et al., 2019; Taylor, 2011), while retaining some core uniform characteristics. Most scholarship on the experience of parental guilt derives from studies on parents from the US, Europe and Australia where most of the participants are middle-to-upper class White people, living in nuclear families (Borelli et al., 2017; Foucreault et al., 2023; LeBeau, 2013). The socio-cultural context of India differs in its custom of living together with the extended family, often multiple generations under the same roof and subsequently sharing both the mirth and misery of childrearing with other members of the family (Tuli et al., 2022). Nurturing the child becomes a collective, community affair and voices beyond those of the parents need to be weighed in making decisions about the child\u0026rsquo;s well-being. The present paper delves into understanding how these cultural characteristics in India affect the experience of parental guilt and strategies used to manage it. We first discuss the notions of fatherhood and motherhood in India, followed by an introduction to the role of self-forgiveness in parental guilt, and finally we describe the details of our study.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Provider Father\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the Indian context, the tasks of and expectations from mothers and fathers differ vastly, although with changing economic times, urban migration resulting in nuclear families and greater participation of women in the labour force, this distinction is gradually narrowing (Sriram \u0026amp; Navalkar, 2012). Unlike their earlier duty of only resource-provision for the family, fathers now see their roles expanding into more emotionally suffused domains such as being a caretaker, playmate, friend, mentor and role model (Gupta \u0026amp; Srivastava, 2021; Sriram \u0026amp; Navalkar, 2012). \u0026nbsp;In contrast to Western cultures where fatherhood is associated with training the child to become an adult ready for the world (Seward \u0026amp; Rush, 2015), Asian cultures had long designated the father as the patriarch of the family, precluding any emotional involvement with the child; they were expected to grow up more autonomously.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn recent times, significant changes have taken place in the ideological and practical aspects of fatherhood in India, particularly in the urban, middle-class, nuclear families where the mother is employed, leaving the fathers to take up a considerable share of the parental duties, even chores traditionally considered \u0026ldquo;feminine\u0026rdquo; (Kumar, 2019; Sriram \u0026amp; Navalkar, 2013). However, for most fathers, the ability to earn material resources for their children remains a compelling aspect of being a good father, leading to emotional challenges like guilt at any perceived inadequacy in it (Sriram \u0026amp; Navalkar, 2013; Sriram et al., 2019). Interestingly, the perception of a \u0026ldquo;good father\u0026rdquo; is not as structured or definite as those of good mothers, the former mostly includes intangible qualities instead of specific tasks or activities (Gupta \u0026amp; Srivastava, 2021), while the latter has a carefully curated image contoured by a list of social prescriptions.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Cardinal Mother\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn India, particularly in the Hindu tradition, motherhood is often accorded the divine status of a Goddess (Devi/Shakti) associated with fertility and power. This status is lofty and limiting at the same time, often reducing the entire worth of the woman to her ability to give birth and restricting them to the domestic sphere (Dey \u0026amp; Das, 2020). Girls are trained in childcare tasks from a young age such that the good mother role becomes culturally ingrained as a coveted destination and an optimal realization of one\u0026rsquo;s femininity; a perceived failure in reaching these standards fills the mother with guilt (Tuli et al., 2022). Aspirations to establish a career alongside motherhood are seen as a personal choice and the subsequent struggle to strike a balance as avoidable (Joshi \u0026amp; Pandey, 2017). The guilt these mothers feel for leaving the baby at home, not being able to breastfeed them or not being physically available to witness all its milestones are exacerbated by such social constructions of motherhood, if not generated by them (Srikurthi \u0026amp; Vijayan, 2024). Times are changing and more mothers are now opting for jobs outside the home with significant support from the spouses and other family members who engage in shared parenting (Srikurthi \u0026amp; Vijayan, 2024; Tuli et al., 2022), but even in their search for financial liberty, some mothers feel the need to justify their employment as a means to earn more resources for the child, asserting it to be an extension of the good mother ideology they are compelled to aspire towards (Joshi \u0026amp; Pandey, 2017).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnother characteristic of Indian motherhood is the extent of involvement of the family and the community, turning childrearing into a collective enterprise. Mothers lie at the crux of any child-related matter but there are multiple \u0026ldquo;mothers\u0026rdquo; at work here, including grandparents, fathers or even older siblings who take on the maternal role in case the biological mother is indisposed (Tuli et al., 2022). Besides the instrumental support received from their fathers and spouses, new mothers rely heavily on their own mothers for emotional strength, forming a supportive dynamic where the latter relates to the daughter\u0026rsquo;s experiences and gives worth to her feelings and judgments (Gupta et al., 2024). This support, however, comes with a condition- to include the family in decision-making for the child. The mother is expected to carry maximum agency, but she is also urged to seek advice from older family members, especially to teach the child regionally distinct cultural values and heal their ailments with traditional practices (Tuli et al., 2022). There is a delicate balance to strike, between the traditional parenting methods passed down through generations as endorsed by the elders with the modern techniques that are more in tune with the mother\u0026rsquo;s wishes and comfort; a failure to strike this balance could fuel guilt.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSelf-forgiveness in Parenting\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFamously hailed as the \u0026ldquo;stepchild of the forgiveness literature\u0026rdquo; (Hall \u0026amp; Fincham, 2005, p. 621), research on self-forgiveness has gained momentum from 2011 onwards across a variety of contexts, including substance abuse disorder (Gueta, 2013), eating disorders (Peterson et al., 2017), war veterans (Levi-Belz et al., 2022). Authors have come up with different definitions of self-forgiveness, some focusing on the transition from self-condemning emotions to positive self-regard (Enright, 1996) while others emphasizing the role of responsibility-taking as a hallmark of genuine self-forgiveness (Woodyatt \u0026amp; Wenzel, 2013b). A salient feature of self-forgiveness is that it does not always need objective wrongdoing or apparent harm to others to function, it can arise out of a subjective violation of one\u0026rsquo;s moral code, \u0026ldquo;wrong feeling, \u0026hellip; thinking, reacting and especially wrong being\u0026rdquo; (Dillon, 2001, p. 59), stirring up feelings of discrepancy between the ideal and the real self, necessitating the repair of this moral wound with the benevolence of self-forgiveness. Such discrepancy is evident in the case of parental guilt, thus bringing forth the possibility of using self-forgiveness as a protective strategy to manage this guilt.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing from the Needs-based Model of Reconciliation (Shnabel \u0026amp; Nadler, 2008, 2015), parental guilt threatens two fundamental needs of individuals- the social-moral identity and sense of agency. Parents fear that their inadequacy or perceived failures signify a collapse of their parental values and would lead to rejection from the community. Practising self-forgiveness helps them to accept an appropriate degree of responsibility for the perceived violation without getting carried away by self-focused emotions like guilt (Fisher \u0026amp; Exline, 2010). Further, reaffirming their values and reflecting upon how they have acted according to these in the past leads them to earn back their respectful place in the moral/social community and reconcile with the self by maintaining positive regard for it (Woodyatt et al., 2017).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStudies investigating the role of self-forgiveness in parental guilt are few and far between. Gueta (2013), in her study with drug-addicted Israeli mothers undergoing self-forgiveness interventions, found that with increased self-forgiveness, mothers could tear away from the self-punitive grip of guilt and establish healthier relationships with their children. Such experiences have also been echoed in LeBeau\u0026rsquo;s (2013) study on first-time mothers with infants, who spoke of the need to accept their limitations as an inevitable fallibility, engage in self-forgiveness to reduce guilt and experience their parenting more fully. More recently, Marcinechov\u0026aacute; et al. (2024) compared the facilitators and barriers to self-forgiveness among parents of neurotypical children and those with Autism Spectrum Disorder where guilt emerged as a significant barrier in both the groups and feelings of acceptance, social support and corrective behaviour (ability to rectify parental mistakes) facilitated the process of self-forgiveness. Through forgiving themselves and accepting their limitations, parents re-established their identities \u0026ldquo;competent caregivers\u0026rdquo; (Braun, 2023, p. 66), which increased their efficacy and helped them cope better with challenging parental demands by recovering from guilt. \u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe Current Study\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGiven this background on the benefits of self-forgiveness in mitigating guilt, we conducted the present study to explore the subjective experiences of parental guilt and the role of self-forgiveness among the parents of young children. Here, \u0026ldquo;young children\u0026rdquo; covers the developmental years between 6 months to 5 years. We excluded the post-partum period immediately after the birth of the child since mothers are especially vulnerable to intense emotional changes, including the onset or relapse of anxiety and depression during this period (Bloch et al., 2006) which, in turn, could temporarily augment the reporting of negative emotions. The study wanted to focus specifically on the experience of guilt which usually emerges more strongly during the later years of infancy onwards up to the preschool age of children (Borelli et al., 2017). Using a qualitative lens of inquiry, we seek to answer the following research questions:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eRQ1: How do parents of young children experience guilt in their journey of parenthood?\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eRQ2: How does self-forgiveness play a role in the parents\u0026rsquo; experience of guilt?\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Methods","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eParticipants\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe experience of parental guilt is largely shaped by demographic variables like race and class which dictate rules of good motherhood and fatherhood (Helman et al., 2019; Taylor, 2011) making it imperative to situate the study in a specific geographical context which, in this case, were two cities in the Eastern part of India. The study was a cross-sectional exploratory study adopting a qualitative mode of inquiry. 12 parents (6 mothers and 6 fathers), aged between 27 to 41 years (M=33.91 \u0026plusmn; 3.57) formed the sample for the study (Table 1). Guided by the ethos of Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Braun \u0026amp; Clarke, 2019), the final decision regarding sample size was taken during the analysis, using the concept of information power (Malterud et al., 2016). \u0026nbsp;Based on the parameters of our study having a narrow and specific research question, rich descriptions and dialogues between the participants and interviewers, cross-case analysis to understand patterns of meanings and theoretical foundations to draw interpretations from, a relatively small sample size was sufficient to generate the required information power (Malterud et al., 2016). The inclusion criteria were 1) a developmentally healthy child or children aged between 6 months to 5 years; 2) No history of a psychiatric diagnosis in the participants in the last year; 3) the participants were born and brought up in India; 4) They spoke and understood English and/or the regional language of Bengali to ease communication. All the participants were cis-gendered, heterosexual and in a marital relationship for at least two years and the age of the children varied between 6 months to 4 years, with all the participants except one having a single girl child. All the participants were employed at the time of the study except two mothers, one of whom had been a homemaker all along and another who had finished her post-doctorate and looking for job opportunities. 50% of the participants worked in the private sector and 30 % in the public sector. All the participants lived with their spouses except one male participant, a PhD scholar currently living away from their spouse, and 40% of the participants lived in nuclear families. For the ease of understanding patterns across cases, we wanted to maintain a degree of homogeneity in the sample by way of ensuring all the participants were residents of urban or semi-urban areas (through questions in the socio-demographic datasheet) and belonged to middle-to-upper-middle-class socio-economic backgrounds (assessed through MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status by Adler et al., 2000, a subjective measure scored on a range of 1 to 10).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTable 1\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSocio-demographic details of participants\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv align=\"\"\u003e\n \u003ctable border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" width=\"661\"\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eGender Code\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eAge\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eChild\u0026rsquo;s age, gender\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eMarriage Duration \u0026nbsp;(in years)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eOccupation\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eNumber of family members\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSES scores\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eF1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e34\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6 months, girl\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTax returns reviewer (private sector)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eF2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e34\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1 year, girl\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eManager at IT sector\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eF3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e33\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1 year, girl\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003ePhD scholar\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eF4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e36\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3 years, girl\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eEngineer at Govt. office\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eF5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e36\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3.5 years, boy\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1.5 years, girl\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eEngineer at Govt. office\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eF6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e35\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e7 months, girl\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eManager at IT sector\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e7\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eM1\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e34\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e7 months, girl\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTax returns reviewer (private sector)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eM2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e27\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e8 months, girl\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSocial worker\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e7\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eM3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e29\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3 years, girl\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eHome-maker\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e7\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eM4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e41\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e4 years, girl\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eHome-maker\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eM5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e36\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e4 years, girl\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e7\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSenior Product Manager\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e7\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eM6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e32\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2 years, girl\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eManager at IT sector\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 94px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 95px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n \u003c/table\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eProcedure\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe recruited fourteen participants through snowball sampling and held an initial telephonic conversation with those who met the inclusion criteria, explaining the nature and purpose of the study.\u0026nbsp;The purpose of the study was termed \u0026ldquo;Emotional Experiences of Parenthood\u0026rdquo;. We deliberately omitted the terms \u0026ldquo;parental guilt\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;self-forgiveness\u0026rdquo; to prevent any priming or defensiveness of the participants, given the general tendency to suppress the negative emotional experiences of parenthood (Law et al., 2021; Rotkirch \u0026amp; Janhunen, 2010). After the interview, we debriefed the participants by revealing the true purpose of the study and explaining why we had to keep this information from them. We transcribed the data and generated the codes for all fourteen interviews, but for the last two interviews, our codes had become repetitive, perhaps because a coherent story capturing the participants\u0026rsquo; experiences had already taken shape. We created themes that appropriately answered the research question and captured the cultural aspects of the context we situated the study in (Braun \u0026amp; Clarke, 2021). We do not claim that no new themes or codes would be possible to construct from the remaining data, perhaps other researchers with different orientations would be able to generate an entirely different set of meanings from more data. But, having reached the desired information power (Malterud et al., 2016), we could no more expand the patterns of themes to incorporate meanings other than the ones we had already created, thus stopping the theme generation after ten participants.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll ethical considerations, including but not limited to recording the participants\u0026rsquo; consent to both participate and publish data and ensuring confidentiality were maintained. The study was approved by the Institute Ethical Committee (IIT/SRIC/DEAN/2024). As noted above in Table 1, we protected the identities of the participants by assigning alphabetical-numerical codes to them (such as M1 for a mother and F1 for a father) and the same codes apply to their verbatim shared in the \u0026ldquo;Results\u0026rdquo; section.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eInterview Process\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe gathered data through a semi-structured interview with some probes to guide the interview and generate participants\u0026rsquo; experiences of the relevant variables while allowing some liberty to go beyond the probes. Questions selected for the interview were decided by reviewing the available literature (Borelli et al., 2017; Sutherland, 2010). Our interviews were conducted online through video calling to access some of these participants living afar. The interview opened with participants sharing the overall emotional experience of parenthood, followed by some probes about the pressures of parenthood known to elicit guilt (\u0026ldquo;Are there any external pressures about being a good parent?\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Are there days when you feel you have not been as good a parent as you wanted to be?\u0026rdquo;). This was then followed with more direct questions about guilt (\u0026ldquo;Are there days you feel guilty as a parent?\u0026rdquo;), exploring ways of dealing with guilt (\u0026ldquo;How do you respond to these guilt feelings?\u0026rdquo;). At the end of the interview, we did a small debriefing and sought feedback from the participants about their experiences. Typically, the interview lasted between 30 to 45 minutes, depending upon the verbosity of the participant. We later transcribed these interviews to generate scripts for analysis.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnalysis\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe used Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA) (Braun \u0026amp; Clarke, 2006, 2019) to construct themes from the data. Embodying a more inductive, constructionist approach to thematic analysis, RTA puts the researcher at the centre of data analysis, requiring them to \u0026ldquo;knowingly engage\u0026rdquo; with the data, acknowledge and evaluate their role in knowledge production and actively generate codes and themes, as opposed to passively discovering them (Braun \u0026amp; Clarke, 2019, 2021). It is important to note the theoretical considerations guiding both the selection of an analysis strategy and the interpretation of the findings (Braun \u0026amp; Clarke, 2006; Byrne, 2022). Our epistemological consideration was constructionist, to help us locate personal experiences in dominant socio-cultural systems to understand how the meanings conveyed by the participants are shaped by the interaction between them and the dominant notions around parenthood in their community. The meaningfulness of a code, in terms of how well it responded to the research questions and how salient it was to the participants who expressed these with conviction, were given primacy over simply the frequency of a code (Byrne, 2022).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe felt that creating pre-structured codes from existing studies on other cultures would eclipse the singular cultural characteristics of the Indian scenario that shape the experience of guilt and self-forgiveness among the parents. Accordingly, we adopted a predominantly inductive and reiterative approach towards data analysis and used open coding to weave themes out of the participants\u0026rsquo; accounts, combined with certain deductive aspects to ensure the codes and themes answered the research questions.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe six steps of thematic analysis given by Braun \u0026amp; Clarke (2006) guided our analysis. We manually transcribed the data ensuring a deep immersion in it and sent back the transcripts to the participants to ascertain their validity (member checking). During coding, our initial codes were surface-level semantic codes (\u0026ldquo;interference from family in discipling child\u0026rdquo;), but gradually we started to see these codes as shaped by socio-cultural discourses, giving way for us to construct latent meanings (\u0026ldquo;distrust in modern parenting strategies\u0026rdquo;). We also acknowledged our own role as researchers in influencing the responses from the participants and maintained notes on what we thought and felt during the interview, beyond our academic impressions. This gave us a better understanding of the interaction between the researcher\u0026rsquo;s position and the participants\u0026rsquo; accounts.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter the initial inductive process of coding, the analysis turned more deductive as the themes were logically and coherently constructed from their constituent codes, keeping the research questions in mind. New codes also emerged at this stage, some of which fit into existing themes and others called for new themes. For instance, earlier the sub-theme of \u0026ldquo;balancing traditional v/s modern\u0026rdquo; was embedded within \u0026ldquo;expectations within family\u0026rdquo;, under the larger theme of \u0026ldquo;Being good parents\u0026rdquo;. But we realized that the specific conflict between young parents and older generations around healthcare of child demanded a separate sub-theme, because it needed a sense of balance from parents who saw value in both traditional and modern methods, as opposed to the complete resistance parents felt the need for when burdened with family\u0026rsquo;s expectations of parenting in general. Finally, we refined the themes such that each theme could be distinctly identified and held enough merit and meaning on its own. Themes had their own set of sub-themes to facilitate their comprehensiveness (Table 2). We situated the findings in the appropriate context provided by the socio-cultural background of the participants and the existing literature to better understand the experience of parental guilt and self-forgiveness among the participants.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eResearcher\u0026rsquo;s Reflexivity and Positionality\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs an early researcher, engaging in the process of both reflexivity and reflectivity yielded challenges, particularly in determining one\u0026rsquo;s own positionality as an outsider v/s an insider (Holmes, 2020). To enable the reader to understand this position, it is imperative to point out that the three of us are Indian females, with one of us being a married woman with a 20-year-old child and the other two being unmarried women in their late 20s. The interviews were conducted by the younger, unmarried female researcher and they often found themselves in a space between the two defined positions of insider and outsider, as they shared some fixed characteristics with the participants (regionality, language and in certain cases, gender) but differed in the main context under investigation as neither was a parent. In some interviews, this distinction was pointed out by the participants, mostly by the mothers, as they possibly felt some sense of disconnectedness from the researchers and viewed them as someone who would not comprehend the ups and downs of the maternal experience. We attempted to remove this perceived gap, including drawing on personal anecdotal experiences, seeking guidance from the senior researcher and using more colloquial and regionally familiar terms through the interview. Further, there were some specific biases that we too had to overcome. To give an example, on account of her gender and age, one of the younger researchers found her initial views coloured significantly in favour of mothers being the victims of the parental burden while fathers were viewed as being the advantaged party, liberated from the yoke of societal expectations. She acknowledged these views early in the study with the help of the senior researcher and included them in the notes even before starting the interviews. Much of this stance changed as the interviews progressed, consistent field notes were taken and frequently run by the senior researcher such that she kept moving towards a more balanced view regarding the pressures experienced by both the mother and father. Further, we learnt the process of acknowledging the agency of the mothers, instead of seeing them as passive recipients of the social scripts handed out to them to perform.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Results","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTable 2\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eList of themes and sub-themes and frequency of their endorsement\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ctable border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\"\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 139px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThemes\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 148px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSub-themes\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrequency among mothers\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrequency among fathers\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 139px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eBurden of being \u003cem\u003egood parents\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 148px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eExpectations within family\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 139px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 148px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eExpectations of themselves\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 139px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 148px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003ePrevalent notions\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 139px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eBalancing Act\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 148px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eWork v/s Family\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 139px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 148px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eStrictness v/s Leniency\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 139px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 148px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional v/s Modern\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 139px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eReconciliation with self beyond guilt\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 148px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eForgiving and accepting self\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 139px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 148px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eRepair and prepare\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 139px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 148px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eFamilial support\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 139px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 148px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eFeeling of relatedness\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 107px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe findings of our study are summarized in Table 2 (given above) with detailed descriptions of the themes and subthemes in this section. The first two themes contain the major sources of guilt for parents walking the tightrope of competing expectations from themselves and their families. The frequency of endorsement across the subthemes highlights the gendered nature of such guilt, with more mothers reporting pressure to live up to expected standards than fathers, predisposing them to more chances of failure, and hence, more guilt. The third theme investigates the management of guilt utilising different strategies, ranging from undergoing a private, emotional transformation (such as self-forgiveness) to enlisting support from the community (familial support).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTheme 1: Burden of being \u003cem\u003eGood Parents\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll the parents in the sample, except one, were first-time parents and felt pressure from both internal and external sources to perform the parental role with the expected degree of competence. For the experienced parent, the intensity of the pressure had decreased, but it was now replaced with the strain of maintaining their \u0026ldquo;good parents\u0026rdquo; label for both the children equally. \u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eExpectations Within Family\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince the custom in India is to live with the in-laws after marriage, the voices of other, older family members, carried weight as did the voices in the community where the parents resided. Eight parents (six mothers and two fathers) spoke about the clash between the parenting styles and ideologies of their generation and their parents\u0026rsquo; generation, leading to unfavourable comparisons and comments from family members. Grandparents often criticized their way of raising the child, either overtly or covertly, and this led to feelings of self-doubt and guilt among the parents, as they struggled to meet expectations of family members who overlooked the changing times and changing needs of the child.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;I mean the generation prior to ours, I certainly feel they were very more hands-on moms. Like my mom only, she did not have any help. Ours was a joint family, she used to cook and also you know, take care of me. Yeah, I mean there is comparison right, in your head also, in your family also\u0026hellip; so you\u0026apos;re more privileged than the prior generation, so why are you not able to do the things in this way?\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; (M1, 34-year-old mother, Private sector employee)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo mothers and one father also spoke about how the older generation pointed out the greater abundance of resources new parents have at their disposal and how much easier it is for them to raise a child these days, further fuelling their feelings of inadequacy and guilt.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eExpectations of Themselves\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNone of the participants reported any predetermined parenting ideology and stressed, instead, on the spontaneity and dynamicity of parenthood. However, a pattern of gendered expectations emerged across parents, which, if left unfulfilled, led to feelings of guilt. \u0026nbsp;For four fathers, the primary expectation was to provide financial security to the child and any perceived or anticipated failure in doing so generated guilt.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;See, I am the breadwinner of the family, so I have that added pressure. Today there are so many high-end schools cropping up and if I cannot get my child admitted there due to a lack of money, then that is on me. I need to give her a good start, later she can do whatever she wants but I need to give her the best that I can. I get scared sometimes, that what if I can\u0026rsquo;t? what kind of father would that make me?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(F2, 34-year-old father, software engineer at private sector)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor all six mothers, their primary concern was giving enough time to the child and being physically present around them as much as possible. A deliberate physical separation from the child, either due to work or by putting the child in school, felt like a \u0026ldquo;selfish\u0026rdquo; move. Constant engagement in childcare activities left three mothers with no time to spare for either the self or the spouse. They felt constantly needed by their child and could not relax even after delegating the caregiving to another family member.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;When she goes to school and I am sitting alone at home, I start thinking, am I being a bad mother by keeping her away for so long? I mean I know it is for her benefit and she will learn quicker that way, but I still feel a little guilty. I actually get a lot of household work done when she is in school but then after all of that ends and I am just sitting with myself, trying to relax a little, I start feeling this way.\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e(M4, 41-year-old mother, home-maker)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor two parents (one father and one mother), guilt (or the lack of it) came from an (in)ability to breastfeed the child and subsequent reliance on formula feeding.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;I keep hearing other parents say that their baby is not sleeping the whole night. Well, I think it is because they keep getting hungry for breast-milk. Both my children have been fed breast-milk and they sleep so soundly. Other parents should also remember this. I think we have done this job properly, we have managed it well.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (F5, 36-year-old father, Engineer in Public sector)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThree parents (two mothers, one father) stressed their responsibility towards ensuring good health of the child where even minor ailments, such as skin rashes and cough and cold, were interpreted as their failure to protect the child.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003ePrevalent Notions\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll parents felt the burden of social notions of parenthood, communicated to them through the community or media representations. The most salient was the primacy of the mother, which was unequivocally endorsed by all the participants. As one father remarked, he felt like a \u0026ldquo;witness\u0026rdquo; to the parenting journey while his spouse was being the parent. Parents acknowledged the fathers as a source of support but considered the protagonist in the child\u0026rsquo;s life to be the mother.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;As she is growing up now, I feel like in both good times and bad times, she needs me a lot, she always tries to grab my attention. Even if I am working on something else, she will interrupt me, drag me away and want me to be there. She does not do that with her father though. At times this makes me happy, but then sometimes I get very irritated because by default, I have to do most of the parenting\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (M3, 29-year-old mother, home-maker)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo fathers felt that after the birth of the child, their lives were not expected to change as much as their partners\u0026rsquo; and their participation in parenting was limited to only playing with the child. They had to convince other family members to let them take up more active roles in childcare.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;No one in my office really cared about the fact that I was now a father. When I tell them things like I have to leave early or that I cannot go to this party because I have to take care of my child, they tell me that I already have a wife to do all of this. I guess all of this childcare is still seen as very feminine things and I, as a man, am not supposed to do it. Even at my home, my own parents feel that it is just easier if the mother does everything for my child. Sometimes I feel I am just a guest in this parental journey!\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e(F3, 33-year-old father, PhD scholar)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFour parents (two mothers and two fathers) spoke about the representation of parenthood as an \u0026ldquo;all-happy\u0026rdquo; phenomenon and how that is dismally misleading. They felt that the challenges of parenthood- emotional, physical and financial- are often concealed under the celebratory spirit associated with it such that, any negative thought or feeling about parenthood is seen as a personal blemish of the parents experiencing it.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTheme 2: Balancing Act\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eParents also spoke of the need to straddle competing demands in their parenting journey and often struggling to strike the perfect balance between these.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eWork v/s Family\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne such competing demand was allocating time to both work and family. Four fathers and four mothers spoke of the difficulty in managing childcare with their professional responsibilities; this difficulty was not only experienced but also anticipated by mothers who were currently at the tail end of their maternity leave and preparing to rejoin office. Parents felt that they might end up missing important moments of their child\u0026rsquo;s life due to the long hours at the office and this led to guilt. Even for those working from home, seeing their child around but not being able to engage with them during office hours was painful.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;I feel so irritated, I feel like giving up my job! Seriously! It is so hard to watch my child playing next to me, laughing, crying and doing all sorts of things, and having to direct my attention to my work. I feel like leaving the work and playing with her for some time. The more the work pressure increases, the more this sense of \u0026lsquo;missing out\u0026rsquo; creeps in.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;(F1, 34-year-old father, private sector employee)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eStrict v/s Lenient\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThree fathers and three mothers also spoke of the need to balance their emotional temperament in their dealings with the child, trying to be a disciplinarian but also exuding enough warmth and love. They felt that the traditional ways of parenting in India had changed to give way to more liberal and permissive parenting where the child was no longer expected to be afraid of their parents. But, at times, regulating one\u0026rsquo;s emotions, especially anger, was difficult in front of the child and every time there was an outburst, they felt a sense of failure.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;Frankly, my daughter does not expect me to scream at her. I let her be naughty, because after all she is a child\u0026hellip;sometimes you just have to let her be. So when I end up losing my temper, she also feels unsettled. I regret those times, I feel I should have had more patience. Actually I don\u0026rsquo;t want to become that permissive father whose child becomes a wilful and disobedient. But I think there is a better way to manage these situations. I need to control my anger more.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (F4, 36-year-old father, public sector employee).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnother mother was also concerned that the children these days are much more impressionable, so any emotionally reckless behaviour would not only hurt them but also be mimicked by them in a range of situations.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eTraditional v/s Modern\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYet another struggle expressed by three mothers and two fathers was balancing the traditional wisdom passed down by grandparents with the modern knowledge they possessed. This conflict was most palpable in issues of healthcare, when some grandparents disapproved of the over-reliance of the parents on modern medicine and insisted, they resort to herbal and ayurvedic healing practices. The fathers felt that they have too much exposure to too much information, such that even minor physical ailments are catastrophized, forcing them into private healthcare settings which are designed to guilt them into availing unnecessary packages.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;We, as a generation, are very strongly influenced by social media. Even if there is a boil on my child\u0026rsquo;s skin, there are so many platforms to search what it means and how dangerous it could be\u0026hellip;and the more information I get, the more anxious I become. Then I have to take my child to the doctor because there is too much guilt in not doing so. My parents did not have all these fancy consultation services during their time and still they raised us to be healthy children. But then, medicine has also come a long way and if there are better facilities now, I feel like I should avail those for the sake of my child\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/em\u003e (F2, 34-year-old, Manager at IT sector)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTheme 3: Reconciliation with Self beyond Guilt\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eParticipants agreed that guilt, while largely a fleeting experience, tended to emerge frequently and fuelled intense negative thoughts about the self. This emotional anguish prompted them to devise strategies for addressing their guilt.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eForgiving and Accepting Self\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll but one mother spoke about the need to recognise parental fallibility as natural as human fallibility, thus keeping room for imperfections in their parenting. They realized how they could only control so much in their child\u0026rsquo;s life and how difficult it is to label \u0026ldquo;right\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;wrong\u0026rdquo; behaviours in parenting, more so for new parents. Three fathers and two mothers felt that awareness of the perceived mistake was important, but so was the need to forgive the self and move on from the guilt, instead of ruminating about it.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;There is no point chasing greatness at fatherhood, you will be perfect for a few days and then again you will make a mistake. But you can\u0026rsquo;t sit with these mistakes, then time will pass me by and I will be too unhappy and guilty to enjoy my interactions with my child. So, I tell myself that yes, I may not be a great father, but I certainly am a good father.\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e(F6, 35-year-old, Manager at IT sector)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThree mothers also spoke of the need to acknowledge the sheer amount of effort they were putting in, often resulting in physical exhaustion and lack of adequate rest over prolonged periods. To keep tackling this massive parental load, they felt that forgiving and being compassionate to themselves were important. One mother strongly opposed the idea of using the term \u0026ldquo;forgiveness\u0026rdquo;; she felt that she was not at fault and thus there was nothing to forgive. Imperfections and the tendency to feel inadequate, she felt, was a natural human tendency applicable to all areas of life and thus, parents should focus more on their good intentions and efforts instead of drowning in guilt. Another mother viewed forgiveness a little differently- she felt that more than accepting her flaws and forgiving herself, the forgiveness from and happiness of the child could be used to alleviate the guilt.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;I mean, yeah, we can forgive ourselves and at the same time it\u0026apos;s a child\u0026hellip; like on the other side it\u0026apos;s a child. The child is happy with their parent \u0026hellip; in whatever they\u0026rsquo;re doing, they forget things so easily. So if we see that we are feeling guilty about this child but the child himself or herself is not angry with us, then it becomes easier for us to forgive ourselves.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (M2, 27-year-old, social worker)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eRepair and Prepare\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeven participants (two mothers and five fathers) used the \u003cem\u003erepair and prepare\u003c/em\u003e strategy where they focused on the need to take a rational stance towards the guilt, gauge the degree of responsibility one has in the situation, make amends to fix the perceived mistakes and not repeat them in the future. They took active measures to either stop or minimize the guilt-inducing behaviour. For them, guilt served an adaptive function as they were \u0026ldquo;alarms\u0026rdquo; to abide by certain codes of good parental behaviour. For the behaviours they could not repair, they prepared justifications, particularly for their inability to spend enough time with the child due to work pressures.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eWhenever I feel guilty about not being there with my wife and child, I ask myself one question- what am I doing now? I always make sure that if I am not with them, I am doing some important work because that compensates for the lack of time, it is the price I have to pay for earning resources for both their well-being\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e(F3, 33-year-old, PhD scholar)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eFamilial Support\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll participants spoke about the benefits of having \u003cem\u003efamilial support\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003ein mitigating negative emotional experiences, including guilt. Four fathers and two mothers talked about the emotional and instrumental support they received from their spouses in sharing childcare duties and in acknowledging and normalising the negative emotions of parenthood. The fathers, especially, felt that their spouses often mediated the relationship between them and their children and buffered them against the guilt arising from work-family conflict and social or familial expectations.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll six fathers also reiterated the importance of guidance from their parents, in terms of financial help as well as the reassurance that they are doing the best they can, all of which helps them with their guilt. Similarly, for five mothers, besides spousal support, the greatest emotional support came from the presence of their own mothers; they felt a renewed sense of connectedness with them as they turned to them for wisdom, advice and reassurance.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eFeeling of Relatedness\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYet another strategy for the parents in managing their guilt was a \u003cem\u003efeeling of relatedness\u003c/em\u003e with other parents, who, they felt were able to empathize with them and offer practical solutions to their child-related problems. All the participants found emotional support and informational resources on parenthood from a network of fellow parents, either in person or through their testimonials on social media. One mother spoke about how she draws strength by observing limitations in other mothers and realizes that perfection in all aspects of the maternal role is a myth.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;When I take my child in the evening for playing with other kids\u0026hellip; so that\u0026apos;s where I see that somewhere or the other, everyone is lacking something, which is the reality\u0026hellip;even when I think about my mom. So one thing that helps is, you know, not being unnecessarily influenced by, like, only the positive example, just look into the whole picture, because there are cases where someone might be doing something very well, but even the same person is not doing the other things well.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (M6, 32-year-old, Manager at IT sector)\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSelf-forgiveness in Parental Guilt\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eParents in our study chose self-forgiveness as a strategy to manage their feelings of guilt, combined with the need to accept their fundamental fallibility as humans. Taxed with the cultural expectations of being good parents and sometimes their internal arduous aspirations, the parents needed to actively replace the self-condemning feelings that labelled them as \u0026ldquo;bad\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;selfish\u0026rdquo; parents and move towards more benevolent views, as is encapsulated by the process of self-forgiveness (Hall \u0026amp; Fincham, 2005;2008). To borrow from the Needs-based model of reconciliation (Shnabel \u0026amp; Nadler, 2008; 2015), self-forgiveness in these parents serves a dual purpose. First, it helps them reaffirm their commitment to parenting values by acknowledging the perceived violation from it and repairing the behaviours, restoring their moral self to its desired version (Woodyatt et al., 2017). This is reflected through the active measures parents take to reduce guilt, such as keeping a better check on their anger, changing work schedules to spend more time with the child, seeking immediate medical consultation for even minor ailments or preparing cognitive justifications (e.g. a compulsion to prioritize office work over family time to earn enough money for child\u0026rsquo;s well-being). All these measures are aimed at mending the moral fracture to their parenting identities causing guilt and integrating these perceived behavioural failures into their idea of a good parent. Second, by engaging in these reparative and compensatory behaviours, they sustain membership in social communities including family and friends who might have otherwise castigated them for their perceived inadequacies as parents. Studies have shown the role of self-forgiveness in predicting parental efficacy as it allows parents to accept their fallibility and still give themselves due credit for being good parents; they can bounce back from the guilt and work towards further growth (Braun, 2023).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe study also reveals some factors that take the parents closer to self-forgiveness. Acceptance of one\u0026rsquo;s limitations as a parent and of the inevitability of mistakes are strongly intertwined with the process of self-forgiveness, both prompting and perpetuating it among the parents. Acceptance of the self was also the most potent facilitator of self-forgiveness among parents of both neurotypical children and those with Autism Spectrum Disorder, buffering them against guilt and self-condemnation (Marcinechov\u0026aacute; et al., 2023). Reassurance and emotional support from the spouse, their own parents, other parents and even their child also make it easier for the parents to forgive themselves, as they are reminded of their good intentions and persistent efforts to rise to the parental demands. Other studies on parents (Gueta, 2013; LeBeau, 2013) have also highlighted the role of social support in bolstering self-forgiveness, perhaps by making them feel more worthy of the benevolence self-forgiveness offers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFather versus Mother: Cultural Expectations in India\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe experience of guilt among parents has mostly been explored in Western populations which differ significantly in the socio-cultural context from India where the \u0026ldquo;familial self\u0026rdquo; takes precedence over any individual identity (Roland, 1988, a cited in Tuli et al., 2022, p. 857). Parenthood is seen not only as a personal event for the couple, but a collective achievement for the whole family and community and often translates into an enhanced status for the mother for giving birth to a child who can keep the family traditions alive (Gupta et al., 2024; Sriram \u0026amp; Navalkar, 2016). There are also specific cultural practices such as sending the mother to their natal homes after giving birth to ensure she has enough physical and emotional rest before returning to juggle her child, work and family (Gupta et al., 2024). Such active participation from family members and the community at large also shapes the experiences of and expectations from both the parents, which show both convergences and divergences with the studies from Western populations.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe primacy of the mother was unequivocally addressed by all the participants and is consistent with the social norms in Indian families and culture. However, participants also expressed ideological clashes about a good way to parent with other family members. Other studies also discuss the strong involvement of such peripheral actors in the centrality of mothering such that a mother who tries to limit their participation and disregard their advice is seen as violating the accepted norms of \u0026ldquo;shared parenting\u0026rdquo; (Tuli et al., 2022, p. 858). These expectations from the family are much more strongly exerted on the mother than the father, given the greater domestic participation of the former, failing to strike this precarious balance prompts guilt. Further, culturally lauded images of motherhood as a divine and compelling embodiment of the qualities typically considered feminine, most notably unconditionally loving, nurturing and self-sacrificing (Dey \u0026amp; Das, 2020) are internalized; working outside the house is perhaps perceived as incompatible with this image. So, the thought of returning to work and not being able to spend enough time with their child fill the working mothers in the study with guilt and fear of inadequacy. \u0026nbsp;This highlights the persistence, if not the primacy, of traditional motherhood ideals, which has now turned into a \u0026ldquo;Supermum\u0026rdquo; ideal where women are expected to juggle all roles at once and excel in each of them (Choi et al., 2005, p. 167).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor fathers in the study, the primary source of guilt is the inability to provide sufficient financial resources for their children, highlighting the major expectation from Indian fathers is the provision of financial security to their families. Although there have been significant changes in the roles and responsibilities of fathers, with modern fathers participating more actively in childcare duties and being more emotionally responsive (Sriram et al., 2019), yet when it comes to feelings of guilt and the perceived failures causing it, the service-provider role matters the most (Seward \u0026amp; Rush, 2015). Moreover, the fathers in the study feel more insulated from social pressures and expectations as compared to mothers, possibly because child-rearing is still considered a mother\u0026rsquo;s job; the participation of the father, though optimistically increasing, is not socially decreed. Gupta and Srivastava (2021) gleaned similar insights from their survey, showing that active childcare did not feature in the fatherhood ideal of participants, although they did engage in it in the absence of the mothers. Regarding work-family balance, the fathers regret the lessened time they give their child due to work pressure but are less likely to express guilt over it than the mothers- a common finding in studies of work-family guilt (Borrelli et al., 2017; Fourcreault et al., 2023). This social pressure to prioritize earning money is perhaps an emblem of masculinity for the fathers; inability to ensure financial security threatens their identity as a man (Lewington et al., 2021). Guilt over letting work take over childrearing is overshadowed by the guilt of incompetence as both a man and a father if work takes a backseat.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe paramountcy of the mother in the parenting journey also translates to fathers being pushed to the fringes, such that the emotional experiences of the fathers, both positive and negative, are left unaddressed. The mothers in the study spoke about the difficulty in openly expressing the negative emotions of parenting and feeling a guilt about these emotions, citing the social norms of parenthood as being a divine gift that should only be revered, not regretted. This difficulty can be attributed to the dominance of the motherhood myth (Rotkirch \u0026amp; Janhunen, 2010), which denies mothers the right to feel any negative emotion (anger, anxiety, regret) related to their child and any mother having such thoughts is made to feel personally responsible for this \u0026ldquo;behavioural failing\u0026rdquo; (Law et al., 2021, p. 1833). Furthermore, in a close-knit community like India, there are frequent social comparisons of the mothers with either the older generations or other mothers which tends to fuel competition (Chae, 2015) and induces feelings of inadequacy and guilt. Paradoxically, it is this same collective societal structure of India that offers emotional support from multiple quarters to counter the threat of guilt, such as the mothers\u0026rsquo; own family and peer groups (Gupta et al., 2024), and some of these safe spaces develop for the mothers in domestic quarters, away from the prying eyes of the societal sanction on acknowledging the guilt of parenthood. The role of the fathers, on the other hand, is much less emotionally driven, relegating them to \u0026ldquo;ideological\u0026rdquo; perceptions of parenthood, as opposed to its \u0026ldquo;physical\u0026rdquo; perceptions among mothers (Kumar, 2019, p. 87). As expressed by the participants in the study, they often see themselves as \u0026ldquo;witnessing\u0026rdquo; the parental journey from a distance, perhaps due to both biological and social limitations that ensure fathers are mostly involved in leisure activities with their children, with fewer instances of spending alone time with the child (solo-parenting) than mothers (Musick et al., 2016). This safeguards them from the burden of social comparisons because the ideal of fatherhood is less certain and less prescriptive (Gupta \u0026amp; Srivastava, 2021), reducing the risk of guilt or inadequacy. Conversely, it tends to block the fathers from the emotional support avenues available to mothers, as the community turns all the attention and resources to the mothers.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eResearch Limitations and Implications\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe findings of our study can provide the foundation for designing intervention programs for new parents or even expectant parents, to monitor their expectations of themselves in being good parents. While most parental classes focus on honing the childrearing skills of parents as they transition to parenthood, it is also important to address the emotional challenges that arise and safeguard them against the unrealistic social standards of parenting designed to make them feel inadequate and guilty. In the Indian scenario, specifically, there is a high degree of censure in discussing the negative emotional experiences of parenthood, more so among mothers who are assigned a larger-than-life status of love and sacrifice (Tuli et al., 2022). Thus, it becomes imperative to challenge this myth and recognize parenthood as a humane journey, fraught with flaws and the ensuing emotional turmoil. The emergent themes in our study also highlight the role of prevalent social notions of parenting in shaping guilt experiences, which are often reinforced by media representations and celebrity mother discourses (Chae, 2015; Dey \u0026amp; Das, 2020). Locating the guilt in these external exaggerated standards of parenting instead of letting it indicate a personal failure would help the parents manage it more effectively.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost of the benefits of self-forgiveness have been found in cases of interpersonal transgressions in relationships (Woodyatt \u0026amp; Wenzel, 2013) or clinically significant issues such as eating disorders (Peterson et al., 2017) and trauma in war veterans (Levi-Belz et al., 2022). Although guilt and self-forgiveness have independently come up as themes in a few qualitative studies exploring the challenges of parenting (Gueta, 2013; LeBeau, 2013; Marcinechova, 2023), our contribution lies in highlighting the role self-forgiveness in specifically reducing parental guilt. In case of perceived violations, parents can be trained to take an appropriate amount of responsibility without letting guilt override the benevolent emotions directed to and deserved by the self (Hall \u0026amp; Fincham, 2005; 2008). \u0026nbsp;It would help them separate their actions from their overall parent identity so that they can continue to feel efficient after committing mistakes (Braun, 2023).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, some \u0026ldquo;constraints on generality\u0026rdquo; (Simons et al., 2017, p. 1123) must be kept in mind while interpreting our findings. \u0026nbsp;Consistent with our aim of creating a more inclusive view of parental guilt, beyond what is understood in the Western framework, we recruited parents from the eastern zone of India and relied on a qualitative methodology. We realize such a specific context imposes limitations on transferring our findings to other cultures. Future research can use our study as a specific case and compile and compare similar studies across cultures to find the convergences and divergences of parental guilt (see Seward \u0026amp; Rush, 2015) and develop a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon. Our sample was also contextually homogenous, in terms of their cultural background and socio-economic status. Other studies could investigate other socio-demographic factors that have a bearing upon the experience of both guilt and self-forgiveness among parents. For instance, parents of low socio-economic backgrounds with fewer resources at their disposal and a greater financial burden brought about by childcare, struggle with the guilt of privation of both needs and wants of their children (Goyal et al., 2010).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA family-based approach could also be used by future researchers to understand the issues of parental guilt and ways of managing it, since in India the \u0026ldquo;familial self\u0026rdquo; (Roland, 1988, a cited in Tuli et al., 2022, p. 857) gains priority over other identities. Interviewing the whole family, especially the grandparents instead of only the parents, and analysing the different levels of interactions within the family as well as between the family and the proximal community would yield a deeper understanding of how the family and community become carriers of conventions that are designed to make the parents feel inadequate. Interventions can be designed keeping the whole family in mind, so that they recognize the inter-generational transmission of guilt and consciously resist it. \u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDisclosure of Interest\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eData Availability Statement\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe data will be provided by the authors upon reasonable request.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFunding\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo funding was received for conducting this study. We did receive a travel grant to from the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) to present preliminary findings from this study at the 16\u003csup\u003eth\u003c/sup\u003e IAFOR Asian Conference on Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Tokyo.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAcknowledgement\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe extend our gratitude to the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) for their travel grant that allowed us to present preliminary findings from this study at the 16\u003csup\u003eth\u003c/sup\u003e IAFOR Asian Conference on Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Tokyo.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAarntzen, L., Derks, B., van Steenbergen, E., Ryan, M., \u0026amp; van der Lippe, T. (2019). Work-family guilt as a straightjacket. 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A worked example of Braun and Clarke\u0026rsquo;s approach to reflexive thematic analysis. \u003cem\u003eQuality \u0026amp; Quantity\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e56\u003c/em\u003e(3), 1391-1412.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-021-01182-y \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChae, J. (2015). \u0026ldquo;Am I a better mother than you?\u0026rdquo; Media and 21st-century motherhood in the context of the social comparison theory. \u003cem\u003eCommunication Research\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e42\u003c/em\u003e(4), 503-525. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650214534969 \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCho, E., \u0026amp; Allen, T. D. (2019). The transnational family: A typology and implications for work-family balance. \u003cem\u003eHuman Resource Management Review\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e29\u003c/em\u003e(1), 76-86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2018.01.001 \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChoi, P., Henshaw, C., Baker, S., \u0026amp; Tree, J. (2005). 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The motherload: Predicting experiences of work-interfering-with-family guilt in working mothers. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Child and Family Studies\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e30\u003c/em\u003e, 169-181. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01852-9 \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMalterud, K., Siersma, V. D., \u0026amp; Guassora, A. D. (2016). Sample size in qualitative interview studies: guided by information power. \u003cem\u003eQualitative Health Research\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e26\u003c/em\u003e(13), 1753-1760. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732315617444 \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMarcinechov\u0026aacute;, D., Z\u0026aacute;horcov\u0026aacute;, L., \u0026amp; Lohazerov\u0026aacute;, K. (2024). 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Parenthood and well‐being: A decade in review. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Marriage and Family\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e82\u003c/em\u003e(1), 198-223. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12646 \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePeterson, S. J., Van Tongeren, D. R., Womack, S. D., Hook, J. N., Davis, D. E., \u0026amp; Griffin, B. J. (2017). The benefits of self-forgiveness on mental health: Evidence from correlational and experimental research. \u003cem\u003eThe Journal of Positive Psychology\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e12\u003c/em\u003e(2), 159-168. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1163407 \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRotkirch, A., \u0026amp; Janhunen, K. (2010). Maternal guilt. \u003cem\u003eEvolutionary Psychology\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e8\u003c/em\u003e(1), 90-106. https://doi.org/10.1177/147470491000800108 \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSeward, R. R., \u0026amp; Rush, M. 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Socio-cultural images of motherhood: Individual variations of a collective construct. \u003cem\u003eHuman Arenas\u003c/em\u003e, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-022-00310-w \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWoodyatt, L., \u0026amp; Wenzel, M. (2013). Self-forgiveness and restoration of an offender following an interpersonal transgression. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Social and Clinical Psychology\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e32\u003c/em\u003e(2), 225-259. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2013.32.2.225 \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWoodyatt, L., Wenzel, M., \u0026amp; de Vel-Palumbo, M. (2017). Working through psychological needs following transgressions to arrive at self-forgiveness. In L.Woodyatt, E.L.Worthington Jr., M. Wenzel \u0026amp; B.J. Griffin (Eds.), \u003cem\u003eHandbook of the psychology of self-forgiveness\u003c/em\u003e, (pp 43-58).Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60573-9_4 \u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":false,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"human-arenas","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"huar","sideBox":"Learn more about [Human Arenas](http://link.springer.com/journal/42087)","snPcode":"42087","submissionUrl":"https://submission.nature.com/new-submission/42087/3","title":"Human Arenas","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"em","reportingPortfolio":"Springer Hybrid","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false},"keywords":"parental guilt, self-forgiveness, reflexive thematic analysis, Indian parents","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-9532360/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9532360/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eParental guilt occurs in response to the perceived violation of ideal standards of parenting, resulting in negative mental health consequences for the parents. Coerced into following the dominant discourses on parenthood which shape the “good mother/father” identity, parents experience feelings of failure at falling short of these standards, leading to guilt about their parenting. A possible way to counter the self-focused negative judgments brought about by guilt is the practice of self-forgiveness. The present study qualitatively explores the experience of parental guilt among Indian parents with young children (aged 6 months to 5 years) and the role of self-forgiveness in mitigating it. Using online semi-structured interviews with twelve participants, the study employs Reflexive Thematic Analysis to identify three themes- “Burden of being \u003cem\u003eGood Parents\u003c/em\u003e”, “Balancing Act” and “Reconciliation with Self beyond Guilt”- describing the origin and experience of guilt, and how self-forgiveness helps parents preserve their sense of wholeness and adequacy in the face of punitive social evaluations. These findings are situated in the socio-cultural context of India where familial ties lie at the forefront and gendered expectations mould the experience of parental guilt among fathers and mothers. The study would help practitioners working with new parents to appropriately locate the guilt they feel in the pressure deliberately designed by external social discourses and practise self-forgiveness to embrace their inevitable imperfections as parents.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Good yet Guilty- Exploring Parental Guilt and Self-forgiveness among Indian parents of Young Children","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2026-05-18 10:40:07","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-9532360/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0},{"type":"decision","content":"Revision requested","date":"2026-05-08T14:29:54+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2026-05-08T11:36:03+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2026-05-08T09:13:04+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"51128696390455889685305266154698064083","date":"2026-05-08T05:22:26+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"126616730601017675345782156871835074455","date":"2026-05-08T02:38:42+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"65528607265263983694081149926732204172","date":"2026-05-07T17:21:07+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"246157765150590000508376671117438520772","date":"2026-05-07T09:24:35+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"74336483453676131044052352106755792363","date":"2026-05-07T08:17:13+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewersInvited","content":"","date":"2026-05-07T08:09:23+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorAssigned","content":"","date":"2026-04-29T10:09:31+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"checksComplete","content":"","date":"2026-04-29T10:09:26+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"submitted","content":"Human Arenas","date":"2026-04-26T13:27:49+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"human-arenas","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"huar","sideBox":"Learn more about [Human Arenas](http://link.springer.com/journal/42087)","snPcode":"42087","submissionUrl":"https://submission.nature.com/new-submission/42087/3","title":"Human Arenas","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"em","reportingPortfolio":"Springer Hybrid","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"1d047f47-0553-4500-983b-0ebe46d2fb61","owner":[],"postedDate":"May 18th, 2026","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[{"type":"decision","content":"Revision requested","date":"2026-05-08T14:29:54+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2026-05-08T11:36:03+00:00","index":72,"fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2026-05-08T09:13:04+00:00","index":71,"fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"51128696390455889685305266154698064083","date":"2026-05-08T05:22:26+00:00","index":70,"fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"126616730601017675345782156871835074455","date":"2026-05-08T02:38:42+00:00","index":69,"fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"65528607265263983694081149926732204172","date":"2026-05-07T17:21:07+00:00","index":68,"fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"246157765150590000508376671117438520772","date":"2026-05-07T09:24:35+00:00","index":64,"fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"74336483453676131044052352106755792363","date":"2026-05-07T08:17:13+00:00","index":63,"fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewersInvited","content":"56","date":"2026-05-07T08:09:23+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""}],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"in-revision","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-05-18T10:40:07+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2026-05-18 10:40:07","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-9532360","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-9532360","identity":"rs-9532360","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}