Looking back, looking ahead: Parental regret and longing for grandparenthood

In this article, we examine parental regret, which is a domain-specific regret about one's own parenting history. In Study 1, we present a short questionnaire on parental regret and determine its construct validity and short-term stability in a sample of parents of adult children (N_T1 = 286, N_T2 = 120; 10-day interval; 71.5% women; age range = 42-74 years). The factor structure of parental regret was best depicted by a general and omission parental regret model. Furthermore, we found that parental regret was related to but not interchangeable with other regret concepts or dispositional pessimism. Study 2 examines parental regret's association with the longing for grandparenthood (N = 450 parents of adult children; 73.0% women; age range = 40-81 years; no grandchildren yet). We argue that regrets about how one behaved during one's children's childhood can lead one to resort to fantasies about idealized realities with future grandchildren, expressed in a longing for grandparenthood. As hypothesized, stronger parental regret was associated with stronger longing for grandparenthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).