It would be wonderful if every parent were offered excellent information and support. Unfortunately, that's not happening yet--but there are some very effective supports available to parents. One important thing to remember is that parents themselves make excellent choices about what kind of help would be a good fit for their family.1
Scholars note that for prevention and health promotion, services that are important to families include “education regarding normal infant health and development, increasing knowledge about what constitutes healthy parent-infant relationships, and access or referral to additional services as needed.”2
Grassroots activists and nonprofit organizations have long been offering information and support to the general population of parents as well as to those facing special circumstances. An anthology of motherhood activism of the 21st century includes more than 80 individuals and organizations, providing information about the concerns of a wide diversity of families.3 Many national nonprofit organizations are listed on Family and Home Network’s website on the Parenting Help and Resources page.4
Rather than waiting until problems develop and then trying to treat them, preventative interventions try to avoid problems from developing in the first place. The effectiveness of helping parents by providing preventative services has been shown by long-term studies. David Olds’ decades-long Nurse-Family Partnership home visiting program enrolls low-income expectant mothers in the intervention early in pregnancy. This video produced by The Pew Charitable Trusts explains the use of home visiting programs, and the cost savings:
[A note: Jane Stevens posted on ACESConnection about the article "Protecting Children from Toxic Stress" by David Bornstein, in the New York Times. It's a fantastic report on another home visiting program, Child First, that begins "by establishing trust, listening and understanding the family’s priorities."]
Parents need support even before their baby is born.5 Community outreach and services are credited by the Dane County, Wisconsin director of public health, Dr. Thomas L. Schlenker, for helping to achieve a dramatic reduction in the rate of preterm births to expectant African-American mothers. Dr. Shclenker says, “Pregnant women need to feel safe, cared for and valued.”6
Oklahoma’s Family Expectations program focuses on couples (married or unmarried) who are expecting a baby. A major component of the program is relationship skills education, with an emphasis on “communication, problem-solving, friendship and fun.” Measures made fifteen months after participants’ enrollment look very promising, with improvements in the quality of couples’ relationships, increased fathers’ involvement with their children and decreased mothers’ depression.7 Another preventive intervention offered to parents and children enrolled in Head Start had components of information and support; it showed significant positive effects for both mothers and children.8
Interaction guidance, a therapeutic approach that focuses on the parent-infant relationship, can improve a mother’s capacity for reflective thinking.9 Intervention programs addressing maternal depression have been proven effective in improving mothers’ and childrens’ well-being.10
Many preventative interventions target families identified to have “risk” factors, but many more families might benefit from broad prevention and health promotion efforts. In 2003 a team of distinguished scholars documented rising rates of mental, emotional and physical illness in U.S. children.11
For parents of infants, the HUG your Baby program offers information needed to “understand a newborn’s states, read an infant’s cues and appreciate a baby’s capabilities.”12 Infant mental health specialists focus on the two-way relationship between parent and infant, and intervention at this early age can be very effective.13 Touch is crucial to humans, and massage has been shown to benefit pregnant women, depressed mothers-to-be, and pre-term infants.14
A recent program was designed as a universal intervention for all the children and parents in a school. Parents of four and five year old children were offered instruction in emotion coaching; in just six weeks the parents reported improvements in their interactions with their children, and child behavior in the classrooms improved.15
Individual parents can seek help through counseling or coaching. Learning about family emotional systems helps some people understand the intergenerational transmission of emotions—with this understanding, many people are able to change patterns of behavior.16 Classes and workshops about parent-child relationships, such as those offered by Hand-in-Hand Parenting, are now available online, making them accessible from anywhere.17
Much is known about how to support parents and prevent problems, and also about how to help if problems arise. People who want to help children should remember to help parents, for as Marc C. Bornstein, Senior Investigator and Head of Child and Family Research at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development says: “Parents create people.”18
References
1. Christiane Robert-Tissot and Bertrand Cramer, “When Patients Contribute to the Choice of Treatment.…,” Infant Mental Health Journal 19, no. 2 (1998): 245–259.
2. Charles H Zeanah, Jr. and Paula Doyle Zeanah, “The Scope of Infant Mental Health,” in Handbook of Infant Mental Health, ed. Charles H. Zeanah, Jr., 3rd ed. (New York: Guilford Press, 2009), 5–21.
3. Andrea O’Reilly, The 21st Century Motherhood Movement: Mothers Speak Out on Why We Need to Change the World and How to Do It (Toronto, CA: Demeter Press, 2011).
4. Family and Home Network, “Parenting Help and Resources”, n.d.
5. Zeanah, Jr. and Zeanah, “The Scope of Infant Mental Health.”
6. Erik Eckholm, “Trying to Explain a Drop in Infant Mortality,” The New York Times, November 27, 2009, sec. US.
7. Barbara Devaney and Robin Dion, 15-month Impacts of Oklahoma’s Family Expectations Program (Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., August 2010).
8. Carolyn Webster-Stratton, “Preventing Conduct Problems in Head Start Children: Strengthening Parenting Competencies.,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 66, no. 5 (1998): 715–730.
9. Susan C. McDonough, “Interaction Guidance: An Approach for Difficult-to-Engage Families,” in Treating Parent-Infant Relationship Problems: Strategies for Intervention, ed. Arnold J. Sameroff, Susan C. McDonough, and Katherine L. Rosenblum (New York, NY: Guilford Press, 2005).
10. Jane Knitzer, Suzanne Theberge, and Kay Johnson, “Reducing Maternal Depression and Its Impact on Young Children: Toward a Responsive Early Childhood Policy Framework” (New York: National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University, 2008.
11. Commission on Children at Risk, “Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities” (New York: Institute for American Values, 2003).
12. Janice Lee Tedder, “Give Them The HUG: An Innovative Approach to Helping Parents Understand the Language of Their Newborn,” The Journal of Perinatal Education 17, no. 2 (2008): 14–20.
13. Mechthild Papousek et al., Disorders of Behavioral and Emotional Regulation in the First Years of Life: Early Risk and Intervention in the Developing Parent-infant Relationship (Washington, D.C.: Zero to Three, 2007).
14(a). T Field et al., “Pregnant Women Benefit from Massage Therapy.,” Journal Of Psychosomatic Obstetrics And Gynaecology 20, no. 1 (March 1999): 31–38.
14(b). T Field et al., “Massage Therapy Effects on Depressed Pregnant Women.,” Journal Of Psychosomatic Obstetrics And Gynaecology 25, no. 2 (June 2004): 115–122.
14.(c) Tiffany M. Field et al., “Tactile/kinesthtic Stimulation Effects on Preterm Neonates.,” Pediatrics 77 (1986): 654–658.
15. Sophie S. Havighurst et al., “Tuning in to Kids: An Emotion-focused Parenting Program-initial Findings from a Community Trial,” Journal of Community Psychology 37, no. 8 (November 2009): 1008–1023.
16. “Bowen Center for the Study of the Family”, n.d.
17. “Hand in Hand Parenting”, n.d.
18. Marc H. Bornstein, “Parenting Matters,” Infant and Child Development 14, no. 3 (September 2005): 311–314.
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