Wednesday, December 14, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Parenting classes
benefit all families
By Steve Lundeberg
Oregon State University
CORVALLIS
—
Parenting education can
improve the skills of every
mom and dad and the behav-
ior of all children, and it
particularly benefits fami-
lies from low-income or
otherwise underserved pop-
ulations, a new study from
Oregon State University
suggests.
Researchers examined a
sample of more than 2,300
mothers and fathers who par-
ticipated in parenting edu-
cation series in the Pacific
Northwest between 2010 and
2012. The series, designed to
support parents of children
up to 6 years old, typically
lasted nine to 12 weeks and
consisted of one one-hour
session per week led by a
parent education facilita-
tor. There was no fee for
participants.
The study, part of a grow-
ing partnership between
the OSU College of Public
Health and Human Sciences
and the Oregon Parenting
Education Collaborative to
increase access to parenting
education for all families,
may remove some of the
stigma attached to parent-
ing education, which has
historically been associated
with court orders for parents
who’ve run afoul of child-
protective laws.
“Parenting education
works across the board,”
said John Geldhof, an OSU
assistant professor of behav-
ioral and health sciences.
“All parents can benefit. The
way people typically learn
parenting is from their par-
ents and from books, and
often times what they’ve
learned is out of date and not
the best practices for today.
All parents – high income,
low income, mandated, not
mandated – can benefit from
evidence-based parenting
education.”
Neglectful or otherwise
ineffective parenting strate-
gies, which can be heightened
by economic strain, can put
children in jeopardy. While
many parenting practices can
lead to favorable outcomes in
children, research indicates
that the optimal combination
usually features high levels
of support and monitoring
and the avoidance of harsh
punishment. Those positive
outcomes include higher
grades, fewer behavior prob-
lems, less substance use, bet-
ter mental health and greater
social competence.
Findings of the OSU
research, recently pub-
lished in Children and Youth
Services Review, indicate that
parent education series serv-
ing predominantly lower-
income parents resulted in
greater improvements in
their skills and their chil-
dren’s behaviors compared to
series serving higher-income
parents.
“The results provide pre-
liminary evidence that par-
enting education may be
most effective when it targets
underserved populations,”
said lead author Jennifer
Finders, a graduate student
in the College of Public
Health and Human Sciences.
“Another thing that’s excit-
ing — the Oregon Parenting
Education Collaborative
classes that are offered are
general in content, and we’re
seeing evidence that they’re
being adapted for diverse
families. This suggests that
the local parenting educators
are implementing the pro-
grams with fidelity and also
with flexibility.”
Finders called the results
“really great preliminary
findings.”
“Now we need to better
understand the mechanisms
that underlie the findings
so we can tailor programs
to specific families in excit-
ing ways for research and
for practice,” she said. “This
highlights the need for future
research that continues to
involve the Oregon Parenting
Education Collaborative and
other researchers at OSU and
elsewhere. We think par-
ents are gaining knowledge
of child development, tools
for dealing with the stresses
of parenting, and social
networks.”
The collaborative includes
among its leadership Shauna
Tominey, assistant profes-
sor of practice and parent-
ing education specialist at
OSU’s Hallie E. Ford Center
for Healthy Children &
Families, part of the College
of Public Health and Human
Sciences. The parenting edu-
cation series the collabora-
tive offers are delivered at no
cost to the parents.
“Given that the gap
is widening between the
white, middle-class popu-
lation of children and chil-
dren belonging to the grow-
ing low-income and Latino
populations, examining the
relative impact of parenting
education programs across
these diverse populations
is essential,” Finders said.
“We think parenting educa-
tion can have the greatest
impact by adapting existing
curricula to be culturally rel-
evant and sensitive to diverse
children and families’
needs.”
27
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