Many families face more than one hardship at once—mental ill-health, substance use, domestic violence, separation, or incarceration. These co-occurring pressures can undermine parents’ confidence in their parenting (parental self-efficacy), which matters for children’s wellbeing and intergenerational disadvantage. This scoping review mapped recent evidence on how cumulative adversities relate to parental self-efficacy and what helps or hinders it.
While the evidence base is small (10 studies, 2005–2022), a consistent pattern emerges: in families facing multiple adversities, parental self-efficacy is often lower. Mental health (especially depression/anxiety, and PTSD in some samples) may act as a central mechanism—it frequently co-occurs with other adversities and, in two studies, was shown to mediate links between adversity (e.g., intimate partner violence) and lower parental self-efficacy (one via personal mastery).
Influences show up at multiple levels:
- Individual: personal mastery/sense of control, parenting experience, wellbeing.
- Family: child progress/needs, communication with children, perceived co-parent competence.
- Community/services: availability and quality of support (e.g., child-welfare support).
Gaps: fathers and diverse families are under-represented; most studies are small/cross-sectional; most studies didn’t check whether more hardships added up to a bigger negative impact on parents’ confidence (for example, one problem vs two, three, or four). And they rarely looked at which specific combinations of hardships matter most when mental health isn’t one of them—like separation plus incarceration, or domestic violence plus substance use—instead, most research focused on combinations that included mental health.
In light of these findings, parental self-efficacy could be made a core outcome in family focused services—and, where feasible, services should be supported to track it routinely. Models that pair evidence-based parenting support with mental health care, and improve service coordination at key transitions—such as re-entry after prison or treatment—are especially important. Measuring and supporting parents’ confidence through accessible, flexible supports or interventions should become standard practice. These supports can help build skills and a sense of control, strengthen co-parenting and parent–child relationships, and boost engagement when adversity stacks up. We also need to actively include fathers and under-served families, who are often overlooked. Finally, investing in longitudinal, real-world studies that examine how cumulative adversity impacts parenting—and which combinations of support are most protective—will be key to breaking intergenerational cycles of disadvantage.