Towards a fuller understanding of the healing of childhood parental wounds: an international study of adult children’s forgiveness. ‘No matter how deep the hurt’

ABSTRACT

This article describes a study of adult children’s forgiveness processes following severe childhood parental injury. Consistent with the phenomenological tradition of qualitative research in-depth interviews were conducted with forty-eight participants in the Netherlands, Romania, and Israel to capture their lived experiences of recovery, using forgiveness, from early parental injury. The findings highlight the commanding importance of reaching a conscious wiled decision to pursue child–parent forgiveness, such decision-making fuelled by insights facilitated by the processes of adult development and reinforced by a pro-forgiveness environment. Subsequent to this initial decision, recognizing the joint humanity of parent and child and scaffolding an understanding of the parent and his or her injury within its temporal, cultural and psychological context is of paramount importance to the eventual attainment of forgiveness. Forgiveness, although an ongoing journey, brings with it important fruits. Study findings, including their various nation-specific nuances, are discussed in light of the existing literature on forgiveness processes. Implications of study findings for clinicians working with individuals to facilitate forgiveness of parentally inflicted wounds are considered.

KEYWORDS:

• Child–parent forgiveness
• forgiveness-process
• qualitative research
• international research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics Approval

The present study is in accordance with the ethical guidelines for psychological research in all of the three countries. The authors received informed consent forms from all participating respondents in the respective countries. They also are informed that their participation was voluntary, that all data would be anonymized and that access to the data is restricted to those who are involved in this research project. The Research Ethics Committee of the Ede Christian University of Applied Sciences have reviewed the research and declared in their letter of approval under Ref. no.: ECO 07.09/23 that the research complies according to the committee with the criteria of applicable laws (like the General Data Protection Regulation) and the Dutch Code of Conduct for Research Integrity.