Ghost Parents

Since the Covid pandemic, an increasing number of children have been persistently absent from school. Many of these children are neurodivergent, are experiencing mental health crises, and are out of school for many months or years. We know this has an impact on their carer’s own mental health and their ability to remain employed. However, we do not fully understand the ways that this impacts parents. 
 
We do not know how Ghost Parents engage with the labour market or how best to support them to remain in or return to paid work. Our team of cross disciplinary researchers are working with organizations and Lived Experience Experts (LEEs) to identify current research and policy insights. Further, we hare exploring what would help Ghost Parents stay in work and what the overall impacts are – for families and society – when Ghost Parents leave paid work. Finally, we are working with LEEs and other organizations that support Ghost Parents and families to co-create a framework for interventions that could provide support to Ghost Parents. 
 
We will accomplish these goals using a variety of methods. We are conducting reviews of academic literature, databases, and policy documents across social sciences and health disciplines, so that we can understand what people already know about this issue. We are collecting data through interviews and questionnaires. We are organizing workshops and co-creation sessions with LEEs and policymakers, and third sector organizations, and are holding collaborative sessions to collect data and insight, as well as sessions to check the findings against lived experiences and current needs. Using findings from our research and consultations, we will develop an economic model to explore likely costs and potential benefits to society from interventions to support Ghost Parents to stay in work. 
 
LEEs are crucial to the success of this project. It is only possible to create workable solutions if we understand the lived experience and needs of the population we are studying. Our Ghost Parents Advisory Group (GPAG) will provide input into the research direction, contribute to data collection, and collaborate and comment on our findings and dissemination plans. We hope the GPAG will be integral to developing the project toward its future direction. 

This project is supported by a grant from the NIHR Work and Health Program [209904].

Where did the phrase “Ghost Parent” come from?

The terms “Ghost Parenting/Ghost Parents” was developed collaboratively with dozens of parents in the context of the qualitative research that Dr. Press has done since 2023.

After the collaborative creation of the term with Ghost Parents, Dr. Press piloted the term with hundreds of parents who have children who cannot attend school; these parents embrace the term “Ghost Parents” to describe themselves.

Rather than deterring them from participating in Dr. Press’s research, the term gave them language to describe their lived experience and allowed them to identify ways that their lives have changed since their children stopped attending school.

Many parents used the term in contrast to “Ghost Children” saying that their children are not ghosts because they, the parents, know where they are. Parents offered many examples of their own “Ghost Parent” experiences and explained how they have retreated from the places and relationships they used to engage with.

Initially the term “EBSNA Parent” was used, but the qualitative research led to the adoption of the term Ghost Parents.