Children and the Challenges of Parental Parenting Agreement: Exploring Counselors’ Lived Experiences

Parental disagreement in child-rearing practices is one of the serious challenges within families, whose consequences affect not only children but also the counseling process and the professional performance of counselors. The purpose of this study was to explore counselors’ lived experiences of working with children whose parents hold conflicting views regarding parenting practices. The present research employed a qualitative design based on the interpretative phenomenological approach. The study population consisted of family counselors active in counseling centers across Iran in 2025. Using purposive sampling, 15 counselors with direct experience of working with families facing parental disagreements in the domain of child-rearing were selected. Data saturation occurred with the thirteenth participant, and the last two interviews did not yield new information. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, all of which were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using Smith et al.’s (2009) interpretative phenomenological analysis method. The analysis revealed three main themes: (a) counselors’ practical challenges, (b) counselors’ coping strategies, and (c) counselors’ educational and organizational needs. The findings indicated that counselors experience significant psychological and ethical burdens when working therapeutically with families characterized by parental disagreements in child-rearing. Furthermore, the study highlights the necessity of designing culturally adapted interventions, developing specialized protocols, and establishing institutional support to enable counselors to manage parental disagreements in child-rearing more effectively.