Education For Parenthood

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

As research in neuroscience increasingly points to the unparalleled influence of the first 1000 days of life from conception to two years of age in determining the baby's life trajectory, the need for high-quality early parenting education delivered by knowledgeable and dedicated professionals becomes ever more apparent. This book describes the global aims of early parenting education. It identifies the key areas that research suggests are important: building a relationship with the unborn and newborn baby; preparing for labour and birth; supporting parents' mental health; protecting the couple relationship across the transition to parenthood; and education for special groups such as same-sex couples, women with fear of birth, prisoners, military wives and parents from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. All practitioners providing early parenting programmes - midwives, health visitors, family link workers, children's centre staff and voluntary sector teachers - will gain new ideas for their practice in this book. Students taking midwifery and early childhood courses will find much to support their studies. Ultimately, the book provides inspiration for all those who are committed to the role of parenting education in reducing social inequalities.

Pregnancy is a time of physical and emotional upheaval and brings with it joy, ambivalence, relief, excitement, and expectations. Adequate preparation for pregnancy and the parenting role is important for those embarking on the challenges of rearing and educating an infant. This book explores through the literature and women's self-reports their experiences of pregnancy, birth, the postnatal period, and antenatal-parenthood classes. Verbal comments are provided. Topics include: · Pregnancy as a social phenomenon · The role of being a pregnant woman: stereotypes and images · The importance of education for parenthood · The importance of infant education · What is effective parenting? · Parenthood as crisis · Medical and midwifery models of care · Portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth in the media · The advent of the electronic media: Internet and eHealth as major sources of information about pregnancy, birth, and parenthood · The design and evaluation of parenthood programs and who has the responsibility to provide them

Procreation, Parenthood, and Educational Rights explores important issues at the nexus of two burgeoning areas within moral and social philosophy: procreative ethics and parental rights. Surprisingly, there has been comparatively little scholarly engagement across these subdisciplinary boundaries, despite the fact that parental rights are paradigmatically ascribed to individuals responsible for procreating particular children. This collection thus aims to bring expert practitioners from these literatures into fruitful and innovative dialogue around questions at the intersection of procreation and parenthood. Among these questions are: Must individuals be found competent in order to have the right to procreate or to parent? What, if anything, can justify parents' special authority over, or special obligations toward, their children, particularly children they biologically procreate? How is the relationship between the right to procreate and the right to parent best understood? How ought liberal societies understand the parent-child relationship and the rights and claims it gives rise to? A distinguishing feature of the collection is that several of its chapters address these issues by drawing on philosophical work in the realm of education, one of the most controversial areas in the ethics of parenthood. This book represents a distinctive synthesis of topics and literatures likely to appeal to scholars and advanced students working across a wide range of disciplines.

Developed for students in child and family science courses, An Introduction to Effective Parenting Education: Exploring Context, Content, and Strategies provides foundational information and orients readers to professional parent education, both formal and informal. Geared specifically to those who may one day provide parenting education, the text is organized into three sections that discuss the context of parenthood in the United States, the content generally included in parenting programs, and the specific strategies parent educators use to teach adults. Readers learn about the sociology of parenthood, including demographic trends regarding parenthood, the effect of parenting on both parents and children, and the research that has produced a scientific consensus regarding effective parenting. They also review the best practices of those parenting strategies in depth. Strategies include attachment relationship formation; communication approaches such as active listening, I-messages, and win-win problem-solving; process-centered feedback to nurture a growth mindset; natural and logical consequences; and applied behavior analysis. Finally, readers explore the profession of family life education, including best practices for teaching as well as a review of widely used parenting programs. Focused on content that is practically applicable, and dedicated to compassionate, evidence-based parenting education, An Introduction to Effective Parenting Education encourages students to think deeply about all aspects of parenting. It is well-suited to courses in child and family science, human development and family studies, or parent-child relations. Kathleen Dyer earned her Ph.D. in human development and family studies at the University of Missouri, Columbia. She is an associate professor in the Department of Child, Family, and Consumer Studies at California State University, Fresno where she also serves as the department chair. Dr. Dyer has been certified as a Family Life Educator by the National Council on Family Relations since 2006. She regularly provides parenting education in a church setting as well as with a court-ordered divorce-related parenting program. Her professional writing has appeared in numerous journals including Infant and Child Development, the British Medical Journal, Family Science Review, Sleep, and the Journal of Adult Development.

An account of education for motherhood that begins in the first decades of the 20th century, when the high mortality rate among infants, small children, and women in childbirth prompted a massive (Canadian) government campaign to educate women in the complex tasks of motherhood. Focusing on the period from 1900 to 1960, Arnup documents the barrage of advice from the experts and assesses its changing messages and its impact on women's daily lives. Paper edition (unseen), $18.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR