Vicarious futurity : parental hope and despair for their children's future

The current thesis examines vicarious futurity, or the hope and despair that parents have for the future of their children. Qualitative studies describe parents’ hope for their child’s filture as enabling them to find positive benefits from their child’s illness or disability, and the tension between vicarious hope and Vicarious despair motivating parents to strive for a better future (Barnard, 1995; Bland & Darlington, 2002; Herth, 1993; Kearney, 1994; Larson, 1998; Riley, 1997; Schall, 2000). However, there have been no studies quantifying the hope and despair that parents have for their child’s future