Abstract
Purpose:
Parents describe knowing instinctively when there is something wrong with their child, but they experience challenges convincing healthcare professionals of these concerns, which could prohibit timely escalation of care. Our purpose was to develop a phenomenological description of parental intuition from parents’ lived experience.
Methods:
We interviewed 12 parents remotely using a semi-structured schedule. Interviews were analysed using descriptive phenomenology.
Results:
We developed a phenomenological description of parental intuition with essential elements including: parental intuition as pre-reflective and pre-linguistic, as corporeal, affective, instinctive, hysteria, and phronesis. Parental intuition was expressed as prior to consciousness and felt within the body. It manifests as heightened arousal and emotion. Parental intuition was defined as ever-present, yet questionable, potentially gendered, requiring validation. Finally, parental intuition was defined as practical wisdom built up over years of exposure to one’s child, enabling a reciprocal, unspoken and intimate bond.
Conclusions:
Our work has demonstrated the significance of parental intuition in early detection of health deterioration. We discuss philosophical conceptualizations of knowledge and evidence relating to healthcare professionals’ resistance to accept parental intuition as a valid source of knowledge in healthcare. We argue that parental intuition demands integration into practice guidance on paediatric shared decision-making.
Parents describe knowing instinctively when there is something wrong with their child, but they experience challenges convincing healthcare professionals of these concerns, which could prohibit timely escalation of care. Our purpose was to develop a phenomenological description of parental intuition from parents’ lived experience.
Methods:
We interviewed 12 parents remotely using a semi-structured schedule. Interviews were analysed using descriptive phenomenology.
Results:
We developed a phenomenological description of parental intuition with essential elements including: parental intuition as pre-reflective and pre-linguistic, as corporeal, affective, instinctive, hysteria, and phronesis. Parental intuition was expressed as prior to consciousness and felt within the body. It manifests as heightened arousal and emotion. Parental intuition was defined as ever-present, yet questionable, potentially gendered, requiring validation. Finally, parental intuition was defined as practical wisdom built up over years of exposure to one’s child, enabling a reciprocal, unspoken and intimate bond.
Conclusions:
Our work has demonstrated the significance of parental intuition in early detection of health deterioration. We discuss philosophical conceptualizations of knowledge and evidence relating to healthcare professionals’ resistance to accept parental intuition as a valid source of knowledge in healthcare. We argue that parental intuition demands integration into practice guidance on paediatric shared decision-making.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 2491925 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 15 Apr 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.Keywords
- Intuition
- phronesis
- parenting
- shared decision-making
- qualitative research