Forgiving Failures and Fallibility in Parenting: A Self‐Forgiveness Framework for Managing Guilt and Shame Among Parents

ABSTRACT This article proposes a conceptual framework of self‐forgiveness for managing guilt and shame among parents of healthy children. Parenting is fraught with self‐condemning emotions, diminishing the well‐being of the parents and, by extension, their children. The article determines the appropriateness of self‐forgiveness as a morally and practically viable strategy to manage such emotions by adapting Jacinto and Edward's (2011) model of self‐forgiveness. Given the gendered nature of these emotional experiences and of the discourses that contribute to them, the framework caters to distinct needs of mothers and fathers. Four stages (recognition, recalibrating responsibility, expression and re‐creating/expanding identities) are described in the framework to help parents determine the degree of justified responsibility, embrace their inevitable fallibility, and expand both their gender and parent identities. The insights from the article can inform group interventions to ease the emotional challenges of parenting following a structured module of self‐forgiveness based on the proposed conceptual framework.