The weaving of a tapestry : stories of how child trauma therapists give meaning to their parenthood

Abstract

The study explores how child trauma therapists give meaning to their parenthood through the use of stories. The parenthood experiences refer to the therapists‘ experience of being parents to their own children. The research questions posed look into how child trauma therapists experience parenthood and how they give meaning to these experiences. The study explores how working with children who have experienced trauma impacts meaning making of parenthood and how this makes sense with regards to existing literature. The current study endorses a social constructionist conceptual framework and uses Systemic Theory and the Maltese Context as theoretical frameworks. In depth interviews were conducted with four child trauma therapists, adopting a Narrative Analysis approach, aimed at generating data in the form of stories. Results show the dynamic nature of the meaning endowed to parenting through the different parental stages. Moreover the stories depict the different factors which impact how child trauma therapists give meaning to their parenthood and the effects of vicarious and secondary trauma and growth on the participants‘ meaning making process. The findings gave rise to recommendations for future research while the implications for practice, supervision and training in the field of psychology were also presented.