Wendy Grolnick

Wendy Grolnick is professor of psychology in the Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. She has been conducting research on the roles that parents and other caregivers play in children’s motivation and adjustment for more than 25 years. Her work focuses on how parents can encourage children’s achievement while also supporting their experience of autonomy and agency. She is also interested in factors that help or hinder parents’ ability to provide motivation-facilitating parenting to their children. Wendy has also been involved in Disaster Mental Health work with the Red Cross for over 15 years. She has deployed to various disaster sites to work with parents including Newtown, Connecticut after the mass shooting. Wendy is the author of more than 80 scholarly articles as well as two books: The Psychology of Parental Control: How Well-Meant Parenting Backfires (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) and Pressured Parents, Stressed-Out Kids: Dealing with Competition while Raising a Successful Child (Prometheus). Her work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Spencer Foundation, and the William T. Grant Foundation, among others.