Parenting goals in parents of children with ASD have received very little research attention, despite their potential importance for understanding parenting behaviour. The first aim of this study was to explore the dimensional structure of items measuring parenting goals pertaining to achievement of specific child outcomes (e.g. adherence to norms, cooperation, trust in parents, resilience, autonomy) in parents of children with ASD.

Our parenting goal items formed two subscales: “norm adherence goals” and “autonomy support and relationship goals”. Items in the norm adherence goals subscale measured the degree to which parents/caregivers considered it important that the child cooperate with them, respect their authority, and behave well in public. These goals broadly resembled previous accounts of “parent-centred” or “self-image” parenting goals, although they may also reflect “child-centred” socialization goals (Hastings and Grusec 1998).

Autonomy support and relationship goals tapped the degree to which parents/caregivers considered it important to promote their child’s resilience and wellbeing, and develop the quality of their relationship with the child; which broadly resembles previous accounts of “child-” and “relationship-centred” goals, or “compassionate”/“growth-oriented” goals. We chose descriptive labels for these subscales given the ambiguity regarding underlying motivations, and our lack of certainty regarding whether these item sets comprehensively reflect goal-types previously identified under these labels.

Consistent with work by Conti (2015), these findings suggest that parenting goals found in parents of children with ASD overlap with those seen in broader samples of parents (which may, of course, have included small numbers of parents of children with ASD, e.g. Hastings and Grusec 1998; Kirby et al. 2019). In the present sample, parents varied in their endorsement of norm adherence goals. However, autonomy support and relationship goals were almost unanimously endorsed, resulting in a ceiling effect. This result is similar to the finding reported by Conti (2015), which indicated that parents of children with ASD showed higher endorsement of compassionate vs. self-image parenting goals (Cohen’s d = 1.67).

A key question of interest in this study was whether parenting goals can predict parenting behaviour. We found that norm adherence goals positively predicted reported use of reinforcement approaches, rules, and discipline. Variation in norm adherence goals explained 16–25% of the variance in these parenting strategies over and above child factors.

One possible explanation for these findings is that parents who prioritise adherence to norms use strategies like setting boundaries, discipline, and contingent reward to motivate the child to comply or engage in desirable behaviour. Another possibility is that parents who value norm adherence make greater demands of their child with ASD that trigger problem behaviour, requiring more frequent use of behavioural control strategies. A third possibility is that parents of children with ASD who value adherence to norms view certain management strategies, such as time-out, as “punishment”, rather than seeing it more as “thinking time”, and thus endorse certain question items differently. Qualitative, observational, and longitudinal research designs could be helpful in teasing apart these possibilities.

As well as positively predicting reinforcement-based strategies, norm adherence goals were a modest negative predictor of accommodation. Accommodation describes seeking to prevent problematic episodes by being flexible, making allowances for the child, and avoiding encounters with the child’s triggers. Thus, this finding is broadly in line with results from Hastings and Grusec (1998), which suggested that goals surrounding child obedience (like norm adherence goals) were negatively related to accepting or understanding responses to child problem behaviour (like accommodation).

Contrary to our hypotheses, autonomy support and relationship goals did not significantly predict individual variation in parenting strategies. This was likely due to ceiling effects, meaning that we were unable to capture sufficient variation using this scale. Future studies using alternative means to capture variation, such as asking parents to rank or prioritise goals in particular situations (e.g. as per Hastings and Grusec 1998), or providing a more comprehensive assessment of relevant goals using systematically derived assessment tools, may be necessary to measure this dimension sensitively.

The present findings suggest that parents’ motivations may be a key factor in determining their child management approaches, which has potential implications for clinical practice. In particular, reinforcement-based approaches, which are the mainstay of many parenting interventions, may lack appeal for families for whom norm adherence is not a key priority. Therefore, it may be helpful for interventionists to take into account parenting goals to personalize interventions, and thus offer the best fit for families. Indeed, previous work suggests that interventions can be strengthened by including adaptations to accommodate parenting goals and family-specific perspectives (e.g. McCabe et al. 2005; McCabe and Yeh 2009; McCabe et al. 2012).

In terms of links between parenting goals and child factors, norm adherence goals were 20% higher in parents of children at mainstream school compared with those not currently educated in mainstream, or not in receipt of education. Norm adherence goals were also endorsed less by parents of children reported to have lower ability/less independence in daily living skills, although these results did not survive Bonferroni correction. These findings tentatively suggest that parents might adapt their goals related to their estimation of their child’s capabilities. Parents of children in mainstream schools may also recognise that following rules is necessary for their child’s inclusion. Alternatively, parents who value norm adherence less may seek educational provision outside of mainstream.

Notably, parenting goals did not differ in relation to the severity of the child’s ASD or their level of reactivity. This suggests that parenting goals are (at least in part) a product of parents’ own personalities, beliefs, and value systems, interacting with parents’ experiences and their own and their children’s environment. The consequence is that parents of children with ASD likely manage similar child behaviours in very different ways. A further possibility is that, for many families, parenting goals no longer play a dominant role in how parents respond when the child displays very high levels of reactivity. Convergent evidence suggests that reductions in child reactivity act as a powerful negative reinforcer for parents, such that various forms of accommodation (e.g. withdrawal of demands, provision of preferred activities) become a routine that overshadows cognitions that typically inform their behaviour with their child (Dumas 2005). Notably, Dumas (2005) highlight that, once established, such routines are usually impervious to change using rewards and punishments. They recommend an alternative set of strategies, specifically, facilitative listening, distancing, and motivated action plans to establish more positive routines (Dumas 2005). Future research should therefore consider how parents’ own value systems, their views regarding drivers of child problem behaviour, and the habitual patterns that may have established outside of their conscious awareness, influence both their parenting goals and parenting behaviour.

A key limitation of this study is that, since it was exploratory, we did not take a systematic approach to identify relevant parenting goal items. Conducting a qualitative survey and synthesis of goals pertaining to specific child outcomes would be of considerable value in building capacity to systematically uncover parenting goal dimensions pertaining to child outcomes.

A second limitation is that we did not include a control group of parents of matched children who are neurotypical, or compare parenting goals for siblings in the same family, where one is neurotypical and one has ASD. Since some parents of children with ASD anecdotally report that using reinforcement based (and particularly punitive) approaches to attempt to discourage difficult behaviour would lead to intolerable levels of stress (Lucyshyn et al. 2004), we speculate that some parents of children with ASD may choose to place less emphasis on norm adherence goals compared with what they might for a sibling who is neurotypical. Comparative studies are needed to test this possibility.

A further limitation is that we relied on parental self-report rather than implicit or observational measures of parenting behaviours. Therefore, associations may have been inflated due to common-rater bias. However, since we detected differential links between norm adherence goals and specific parenting strategies, common-rater bias cannot account for these results, as one might expect it to inflate associations across all dimensions.

Our data cannot provide a complete picture of parenting in relation to child behaviour, since only one parent provided information about their parenting goals. Since parents may adapt their parenting to offset the style of their partner (e.g. by being more accommodative to compensate for an authoritarian spouse), future studies should examine parenting and parenting goals in both parents to improve our understanding of family systems (Smetana et al. 2006).

A further consideration is that, in the present study, participants were a community-based sample recruited from online sources (e.g., parent support groups, social network groups). Many participating parents had a particular interest in extreme/“pathological” demand avoidance (PDA), a profile purportedly linked to anxiety-driven avoidance of routine demands in ASD, which has stimulated considerable interest and debate in the UK (see e.g. Green et al. 2018; O’Nions and Noens 2018). The PDA-concept involves a formulation of avoidance behaviour that emphasizes child anxiety as the driving factor and, therefore, likely impacts parental cognitions regarding what is at the root of their child’s difficulties. Specifically, parents familiar with the PDA-concept may be less likely to attribute child reactivity or avoidance to “willful defiance”. Since recommendations for PDA described by caregivers and some clinicians include adopting a child-centred flexible approach (e.g. Christie et al. 2012), we speculate that the present sample may well show lower norm adherence goals compared with epidemiological samples exhibiting similar levels of child reactivity.

Lastly, clinical data (e.g., on child diagnoses, IQ, verbal ability) were not available for this sample. We cannot be sure that gold-standard diagnostic tools were used to inform diagnostic decision-making. Therefore, further studies in clinically well-characterised autism populations recruited using epidemiological sampling are needed to explore possible links between parenting goals, parenting strategies, and child characteristics.

Parenting goals remain under-explored in relation to ASD, despite their relevance to understanding parenting behaviour. Future studies could investigate the intersection between parenting strategies; comparing participants high on both norm adherence and autonomy support and relationship goal types, on each one exclusively, and on neither goal type. This may afford more predictive power than exploring links with dimensions independently.

Parenting goals are likely to be partly influenced by cognitions regarding the child’s emotions and the reasons for their behaviour (e.g. see Bugental and Johnston 2000). Several study participants reported anecdotally that fully recognizing and appreciating their child’s difficulties had led to a change in their approach to parenting. Some parents mentioned placing less importance and value on others’ expectations, judgements, and advice and instead concentrating on developing trust and improving their relationship with their child. Multi-method longitudinal studies are needed to explore whether and how parenting goals evolve in parallel with cognitions and beliefs and impact parenting behaviour. Such studies should also take into account the role of automatic parenting behaviours that reduce or prevent child reactivity, which operate outside of conscious awareness, and therefore may show a mismatch with stated goals (Dumas 2005; Lucyshyn et al. 2015).

Our recently published meta-synthesis (O’Nions et al. 2018) suggested that the demands of parenting children with very high levels of emotion dysregulation can lead parents to focus exclusively on avoiding demands and routines that may provoke child problem behaviour and submitting to their child when he or she engages in problem behaviour to access a want or need. Reports suggest that, in the absence of professional support, this is often perceived as the only conceivable option to prevent family breakdown (e.g. Lucyshyn et al. 2004). However, the sense of entrapment that would result likely has deleterious consequences for long-term parental mental and physical health.

More research is needed to see whether interventions designed to foster certain “parent-centred” parenting goals, such as cultivating detachment from the child’s emotional states, or prioritising self-care in parenting contexts, may be helpful in addressing this issue. However, consistent with work suggesting that resilience is heavily impacted by the community and support structures around an individual (Ungar and Theron 2020), these types of “parent-centred” goals may only come online when parents are able to access the emotional and practical support that they require to facilitate more positive interactions with their child and reduce their stress.