Intervention strategies promoting parental subjective well-being: an integrative review

High levels of parental subjective well-being are associated with frequent use of efficient parenting practices, which motivated the development and assessment of programs intended to promote parental subjective well-being. This integrative review aimed to analyze the intervention strategies used to promote subjective well-being among parents of 0 to 11-year-old children. The search was conducted in the Web of Science, Scopus, PsycINFO, PubMed, and LILACS databases, considering papers written in English, Spanish, or Portuguese, published up to March 2022. Two judges collected and analyzed data independently, using the Rayyan web application. Eleven papers met the inclusion criteria and described 21 strategies to promote parental subjective well-being applied to 4,579 participants. The strategies were classified as behavioral, cognitive, or emotional. The interventions influencing only the affective dimension of parental subjective well-being included only behavioral and cognitive strategies. On the other hand, the interventions that enhanced both affective and cognitive dimensions included strategies addressing emotional variables besides behavioral and cognitive variables. Policymakers and mental health professionals must prioritize interventions that include components based on these three categories of variables to enhance parents’ well-being.