Ongoing projects
My ongoing research projects reflect the questions that currently drive my scientific work: how do parents experience their role in our contemporary societies? What factors support their balance or, conversely, their vulnerability? How do these experiences influence children and family relationships? Conducted in collaboration with researchers from many countries, these projects draw on complementary approaches to produce rigorous knowledge that can inform research, clinical practice, and family support policies alike.
Understanding parental burnout and parental regret around the world
The International Investigation of Parental Burnout (IIPB) is a large collaborative research programme bringing together more than 100 researchers from over 40 countries. Its ambition is to better understand parental burnout and parental regret in very different cultural contexts. The project combines complementary quantitative and qualitative approaches. On the one hand, it draws on one of the largest international databases currently available on parental mental health, comprising more than 16,000 parents. On the other hand, it gives a voice to mothers from more than 25 countries in order to explore—beyond standardised questionnaires—how parental exhaustion is experienced, expressed, and interpreted across cultures. By bringing together figures, narratives, and cross-cultural comparisons, this programme contributes to a more nuanced understanding of contemporary parental realities and to the development of assessment and intervention tools that are more sensitive to cultural contexts.
Parental burnout, parental regret, and child behaviour: a two-way dynamic
Why do some parents become more exhausted than others? How do children’s difficulties influence parental well-being, and vice versa? To answer these questions, this longitudinal study follows families on three occasions over an eight-month period. The project examines the bidirectional relationships between parental burnout, parental regret, and child behaviour, whether emotional difficulties (anxiety, sadness, withdrawal) or behavioural difficulties (agitation, oppositional behaviour, aggression). It also looks at the mechanisms that may explain these relationships, such as perceived parenting competence, parenting practices, and the quality of the parent–child relationship. By adopting a dynamic, transactional perspective, this research aims to better understand how parents and children influence one another over time, in order to inform prevention and the clinical support of families.
Anticipated parental regret and intentions to become a parent
More and more adults are questioning their desire to have children. Among them, some anticipate the possibility of one day regretting their decision to become a parent. This project explores this still under-studied reality: anticipated parental regret. Conducted with adults without children, this research examines how each person envisions parenthood: as a desire, a possibility, a source of uncertainty, or a choice that could be called into question. It seeks to understand to what extent anticipated regret influences intentions to have children and which factors shape these anticipations. Particular attention is paid to tensions between parenthood and personal fulfilment, to the demands associated with contemporary parenthood, and to concerns linked to the uncertainties of today’s world. In parallel, the project also looks at the sources of fulfilment that individuals associate with parenthood. Beyond the question of the desire for a child, this research helps to better understand how representations of parenthood are changing in contemporary societies and the life choices that follow from them.