Supporting Parenting: Early Childhood in Focus

Governments are showing more and more interest in providing services to parents to help them fulfill their parenting roles. But what does "good" parenting mean? How can policies to support parents best be adapted to local culture? What is the most appropriate way to critically evaluate these policies? This edition of Early Childhood in Focus addresses these questions by looking at examples of parenting support programmes from the UK, USA, Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia, and identifies practical questions for policy makers, advocates and practitioners to consider.  The book is edited by John Oates, published by the Open University, with support from the Bernard van Leer Foundation.

The publication contends that the quality of parent-child relationships is significantly associated with...

• Leaning skills and educational achievements.  Children's reading ability is associated with the reading environment around them and there is evidence that parental involvement with school is associated with achievement.
• Social competence.  Parental warmth, lack of conflict, and control and monitoring appear to play an important role in developing children's social skills.
• Children's own views of themselves — including their sense of self-worth.
• Aggressive 'externalizing' behavior and delinquency.  The more extreme the circumstances for parents, the worse the outcomes for children and the likelihood of psychological disturbance.
• Depression, anxiety, and other 'internalising' problems — include complaints where physical symptoms are related to emotional stress and social withdrawal.
• High-risk health behaviours — such as smoking, illicit drug use, alcohol use, sexually risky behaviour, and obesity.

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