Parents are at increased risk for loneliness, especially in the first-year post birth, and the negative impacts of both loneliness and mental illness can have lasting consequences for parents and their children. Ruth Naughton-Doe of the University of York’s School for Business and Society is drawing from both her own experiences and from those of other parents to try and create solutions for this often-overlooked issue.
I am working on a fellowship, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, which aims to find solutions for the related problems of loneliness and mental illness experienced by parents during the perinatal period (pregnancy and the first year after having a baby).
Parents are at increased risk for loneliness, especially in the first-year post birth, and the negative impacts of both loneliness and mental illness can have lasting consequences for parents and their children. Parents who most need support might not be able to find it due to not knowing where to look, a lack of suitable options, or not being able to afford the options available.
The idea for this project came during my own experience of loneliness and postnatal depression. I started researching the topic of loneliness, and what I found was the general dialogue around loneliness was that it was an older people’s problem. I do think that this dialogue is shifting now, and it is being recognised that younger people may be even more at risk of loneliness. But I still think it can come as a shock to many new parents – it certainly did to me.
What support exists for parents experiencing loneliness?
We started our work on this topic with a review of the current interventions available around the world that address loneliness during this perinatal period. What we have found is that there really isn’t much research out there, especially exploring services for minoritised groups such as LGBT+ parents, dads and refugees – an interesting finding in itself, considering how common these issues are.
We’ve also asset-mapped one area of Sheffield called Gleadless to find services or activities available to parents in the perinatal period. We know that in the UK, there are organisations such as the National Childcare Trust that run antenatal courses, church-run playgroups, playgrounds, family hubs and community centres. There are some local support options available, but new parents still feel lonely, and we need to find out what will help.
I believe parents who have felt lonely, and practitioners who have worked with those parents, hold vital knowledge for finding solutions for perinatal loneliness. That is why we are now taking the findings from the review and the asset-mapping and feeding them into the next part of the project, which involves talking to parents and service providers in Sheffield and Manchester, doing focus groups and interviews to discuss things like barriers to accessing services, what their experiences with services were and whether they had helped them, and what they would like to see that currently does not exist.
Drawing from lived experiences
We are working with two advisory groups: a stakeholders group, composed of professionals and academics interested in this area, and a lived experience group, composed of people who have dealt first-hand with these issues. They're both going to help us to look at our findings, comment on them, and really lead the research in a way.
Our lived experience group has been amazing to work with so far, and we have had so much interest and engagement. I was concerned that we wouldn't get that many dads, but four have been involved already. Our members also include an LGBT+ single parent, a Muslim dad who is the primary carer for his children, a refugee who arrived in the UK on her own, and many more people with unique stories of their own. Drawing from this diversity of experiences will help us create a much better picture of how the current services support, or don’t support, people from different backgrounds and situations.
This group has been advising me on the questions I should ask parents when the study progresses. Recently, we talked about the barriers which might stop people taking part in the study, and it has thrown up many issues I would never have considered myself. One thing that came up strongly was that they would be afraid of saying too much in case we reported them to social services. This in itself has made us aware that this may be a big reason why people don't seek help in the first place.
A theory of change
At the end of all of this, I will come up with a theory that will inform individuals, professionals, and policymakers about how to both reduce and prevent perinatal loneliness. This will range from ideas about individual support, things people can do themselves like self-help, right up to more structural changes in society and policy.
We must also remember that support needs to be tailored to parents’ unique situations, including support for fathers, parents of disabled children, adoptive parents, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT+) parents, parents from ethnic minorities, parents with disabilities or long-term health conditions, and parents with fewer financial resources.
Through this fellowship, I am also aiming to build capacity for further research in this area by creating a Perinatal Loneliness Research Group to bring together academics interested in perinatal loneliness to collaborate in future research.
