The End of Child Abuse

 I don't think there will be much progress ending child abuse until it is recognized as a heinous kind of parenting...one that is often passed from generation to generation and one that will take a generation or two to fix.

In our communities the quality of parenting varies tremendously and criminal abuse is at the dark end of the spectrum.  Also on that spectrum are a lot of other kinds of parenting that are just as unsupportive and harmful, but not illegal.  Oughtn’t we care about those children too?

If we want to end child abuse and other forms of unsupportive and harmful parenting we need to frame the solution in terms of proactively working to improve the overall quality of parenting in our communities.  How do you improve the overall quality of parenting? Parenting education!  Not conventional parenting education, but a different kind...one that reaches everyone, everywhere, all the time.  It’s a public health approach akin to the smoking and seatbelts campaigns of the past.  Public health media messaging that teaches parenting behaviors and practices generally recognized as supporting the healthy development of children will in time improve the overall quality of parenting and put an end to child abuse five, ten, twenty years down the road.

The concept of continuous quality improvement saved the automotive industry.  We now drive cars that are much more reliable than they were fifty years ago.  Shouldn’t we be striving to continuously improve the overall quality of parenting?  Don’t children, families, and communities deserve as much?

Another benefit of this new kind of parenting education is equity.  Variability in the quality of parenting is a vicious and powerful source of inequity.  Public health approach parenting education will level and elevate the quality of parenting in communities.

Visit advancingparenting.org.  In our own unique way we are taking this approach to the prevention of child abuse. 🙂