Building better human connections: parenting/caring education for children and teens in school.

With today's focus on academics, many teachers believe they have little time to focus on affective education. Indeed, many educators warn us that rather than no child being left behind, "no child may be left whole" (Merrow, 2002). Brazelton and Greenspan (2000) see human development literacy as being more important to children than math and science, however, and advocate teaching parenting skills as an excellent way to accomplish this learning.

Teaching students parenting skills has a great deal of support (Eisler, 2000; Zero to Three, 1992; Zigler, 1999), because it addresses children's immediate social and emotional needs while also laying the groundwork for a more socially and emotionally fit next generation. Empirical evidence demonstrates that parenting education also is associated with improvements in students' caring and social-emotional skills in the classroom (Gulkas, 1994; Masterpaqua, 1992). Comer (2001) reminds us:

Given the purpose of education--to prepare students to become successful workers, family members, and citizens in a democratic society--even many "good" traditional schools, as measured by high test scores, are not doing their job adequately.... A good education should help students to solve problems encountered at work and in personal relationships, to take on the responsibility of caring for themselves and their families, to get along well in a variety of life settings, and to be motivated, contributing members of a democratic society. Such learning requires conditions that promote positive child and youth development. (p. 1)

Indeed, as Bronfenbrenner (1979) wrote decades ago, "No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, the motivations, and [the] skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings" (p. 53). However, schools today focus more on competition than on care. Tests compare one student's performance to those of other students. Even with all the money spent on education, and despite teachers' heroic efforts, the academic performance of students in the United States has not shown great improvement (Levine & Weins, 2003). Some point to students' circumstances (e.g., poverty, violence, parents with limited parenting skills) as the stumbling block. Others believe children will not succeed academically unless there is a caring environment for learning both at home and school, and unless what they learn is meaningful to them (Kohn, 1991, 1999).

The Parenting Project (TPP), a grassroots organization founded by parents, educators, and citizens in the public and private sectors, has identified programs that teach children how to be caring students today and caring parents tomorrow. This national organization promotes parenting education as a way for schools to develop whole students who are successful intellectually, personally, socially, and emotionally. This program strives to teach students caring skills that are crucial in today's world (Eisler, 2002) and that will help them support their own children as they learn and grow. Their children will be in a better position to learn in school, thereby helping future teachers to do their work.

To those who question the wisdom of having children participate in parenting education, Eisler (2000) responds:

Certainly, parenting classes for adults are important. But the adults who need them the most, are often the least likely to take them. So this schooling has to start much earlier, not only through a partnership process (which makes it possible for all children to experience real one-to-one caring from their teachers) but also through the opportunity to experience the giving of caring themselves. This experiential learning of caring and care-giving behaviors as part of the school curriculum is important for all children, but it is essential for neglected and abused children as well as for children who, in their homes, have learned to associate caring with fear, coercion, and violence. (pp. 232-233)

Thus, effective parenting/caring enhances children's potential for healthy human relationships, In learning about parenting, students grow to understand that "nurturing emotional relationships are the most crucial primary foundation for both intellectual and social growth" (Brazelton & Greenspan, 2000, pp. 2-3). Brazelton and Greenspan further note that:

it's this early reciprocal dialogue with emotional cueing, rather than any cognitive stimulation like flash cards, that leads to the growth of the mind and the brain and the capacities to reason and think. Both emotional and intellectual development depend on rich, deep, nurturing relationships early in life, and now continuing neuroscience research is confirming this process. (p. 9)

All future parents must get this information. For many, observing it firsthand enhances their learning greatly.

What Do Children Learn?

In learning to understand the needs and feelings that infants and parents experience, students learn about their own needs and feelings and those of others in their lives. Focusing on others while also pursuing self-awareness, as many parenting programs encourage students to do, can be a more effective way to enhance social-emotional learning than studying virtues in the abstract.

The Parenting Project believes that the essence of parenting--the ability to empathize with and nurture others--forms the basis for a child's character development and cannot be left to chance. Youngsters with empathy skills are less violent and less likely to abuse others (Feshbach, 1982). Teaching these skills early, before boys see them as female traits, is essential (Miedzian, 2002). However, having the skill of empathy is not enough. Educators (e.g., Mayeroff 1971; Noddings, 1992) believe that children must be encouraged and motivated to care. Noddings (1992) defines caring as "stepping out of one's own frame of reference" (p. 24). Mayeroff (1971) describes it as having the development of the other in mind. Kohn (1991) suggests that imagining how someone else thinks, feels, or sees the world not only helps in caring but also promotes cognitive problem solving. Thus, teaching empathy in a parenting class can enhance both social-emotional and cognitive development.

In her curriculum "Learning How To Care: Education for Parenting," Heath (1995) helps students develop those cognitive parenting skills that also facilitate academic and interpersonal success. The curriculum asks students questions about the parent-infant relationship; to respond, students must employ myriad skills, including anticipating, brainstorming, causal reasoning, deductive reasoning, descriptive reporting, empathizing, evaluative thinking, imaginative thinking, inductive reasoning, interpretive thinking, judging, noting differences, noting similarities, sequencing, solving problems, planning, reflecting, and relational thinking. It helps that the topic of families is nearly always personally meaningful for students. Heath has adapted this program for ESL and family literacy classes, because she found that adult students were more motivated and successful in learning when they read and wrote about families rather than other traditional topics.

While most teachers see face validity in programs addressing violence prevention, child abuse and drug abuse prevention, human development literacy, and cognitive skill development, they often are required to provide empirical data to justify implementing a program in their school. Educators will find descriptions of many parenting program evaluations on TPP's Web site (www.parentingproject.org) and in the organization's advocacy guide (2002). The following are brief descriptions of some successful programs, as identified by TPP.

In England and Australia, momentum is building for these programs. Tomison (1997) notes: "In New South Wales ... education is strongly involved in preparing young people to function in society, rather than working to educate on a purely academic agenda" (p. 40). Tomison (1998) also described Australia's The Starting Out Project, which was designed "to prevent abuse by educating young people about child development and the impact of abuse on children. The project ... enables them to reflect on the way they were parented and to begin to think about how they want to parent" (pp. 13-14).

In 1990, O'Connor wrote: "Education for parenthood has for many years been a neglected, low status area of school curricula, despite a professed belief in the family as a stabilizing influence on society" (p. 86). She believes that programs can vary in format and how they are integrated into curricula, but need to be consistent in terms of support by school staff. Hope and Sharland (1997) concur, explaining that their programs were most successful when they were blended into personal and social-emotional education programs that were highly valued by school personnel and the government. Their report of parent education programs for middle and high school (begun in 1994 in Manchester, England) revealed encouraging findings: Parent education in five pilot schools showed a measurable positive impact on students' knowledge about, skills in, and attitudes towards parenting. The majority of students showed an increased understanding of the roles and responsibilities of parenthood, and saw the importance of reading to children and asking for help in coping with a baby's crying. Few differences were found in children's level of interest by gender or ethnicity. Parents saw the program as practical, relevant, useful, and interesting, and expressed regret that they did not have these programs when they were students.

Strong support also exists among U.S. parents for providing parenting education to young people. A national survey by an independent researcher (Lake, Snell, Perry & Associates, 1999) found that Americans strongly favored relationship and parent preparation for young people. This study indicated that 88 percent favored having it in high schools, 82 percent for middle schools, and 69 percent for elementary schools.

The U.S. programs described here are for grades K12. Ideally, all schools would have on-site family life educators, Family and Consumer Science (FACS) teachers, health teachers, and others who are qualified to teach parenting. These professionals are the backbone of parenting education initiatives. Preservice teachers also could benefit from parenting education.

Experts also believe that parenting courses should be geared towards children's changing learning capacities. The U.K.'s National Children's Bureau describes parent education as a "continuous process, starting with birth and early childhood and going through school days, adolescence and committed relationships, pregnancy and parenthood itself" (O'Connor, 1990, p. 85), with education tailored appropriately to developmental tasks. Others believe that one high school intervention is not adequate to prepare students for such a difficult role (Luster & Youatt, p. 13). Gaudin (1993) emphasizes that:

Schools are in a key position to offer preparation for parenting and life skills development beginning with very young children in kindergarten through critical preteen and teenage years and for young adult parents through extended hour programs.... Development of these critical life skills would do much to prevent neglect in the current and next generation of parents. (p. 63)

Some Encouraging Findings

One of the earliest programs for the elementary grades outside of FACS classes was Educating Children for Parenting. Masterpaqua (1992) evaluated this program and found that 5th- and 6th-grade students in the treatment condition had a significantly larger number of solutions to parent-child problems that reflected positive caring than did those in a control group. Students also viewed physical punishment as less desirable than previously. Many of these findings were replicated in other Educating Children for Parenting studies in 1996 and 1998. Often, students showed increased skills in observation, questioning, and interpersonal problem-solving--all skills relevant to academic and interpersonal learning.

Learning How To Care: Education for Parenting (Heath, 1995) has been used by this author since 1985, and also has been the subject of evaluation (Murphy, Heath, D'Anna, D'Anna, & Towey, 1994). Murphy et al. (1994) examined the results when the curriculum was taught to students in two urban public schools. A sample of 5th- to 7th-grade students observed and described infants and their needs more accurately at the post-test and generated more developmentally appropriate solutions than they did before the program. These students demonstrated greater appreciation of the parental role and showed modest gains in their knowledge of the physical and social dimensions of child development. In the second school, students were interviewed and kept journals. A content analysis of the journals and interviews found that students reported infant safety and the responsibilities of parenthood as the most important information they had learned in the program.

Teachers in both schools in the Murphy et al. study believed that parenting classes should be part of a school initiative on caring. Through discussions with teachers in several states, the authors have found a belief that the same caring process taught in parenting classes could be used to improve how teachers, parents, and students relate to each other, and to improve classroom discipline.

In the late 1990s, this author helped develop a caring school model in urban and suburban public and private schools, with parent visits as the centerpiece. These programs succeeded when the principal believed in them. The following quotes from participating teachers reflect their power: "Because of parenting education, there has been an increased sensitivity to the needs of infants and others. There has been an increased understanding of one's dependency upon others for varying needs. My students have been very willing to share their thoughts and feelings." Another teacher said, "1 feel students are more aware of each other as individuals. They appear to be more accepting of differences."

Parents Under Construction[TM] is a K-12 parenting education program that aims to show students the relationship between a parent's practices and a child's mental health. This program has been evaluated in 17 separate independent studies over the past decade. Students appeared to gain increased knowledge of child development and develop more positive attitudes towards children. Many students saw physical punishment as a less viable option. Teachers rated students' improvements in empathy and pro-social behavior as very often high, and they also believed that the programs improved their own caring skills. Similar results were found in England (Hope & Sharland, 1997, p. 38). The ideal outcome would be that this next generation of parents will be more aware of a child's needs and will be more capable of meeting them.

Baby Think It Over[R], now part of an organization called Realityworks[R], Inc., focuses on providing hands-on learning experiences to help prepare youth to make key life decisions. The program uses a computerized infant simulator to teach students the responsibilities of parenting. Several independent studies have found the program has a significant impact on students in terms of helping them realize that parenthood is much more difficult than they might have believed, leading many to decide to delay parenthood.

Dads Make a Difference, like Baby Think It Over[R], is often used in Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS) classes or after-school programs. It educates students about the importance of fathers in children's lives. The curriculum for middle school is led by older teens, and focuses on the legal, financial, and emotional responsibilities of being a parent. The older teen programs focus on relationship skills and life planning. Several independent research studies show that students retained their newfound knowledge regarding parenting and their attitudes about the value of delaying becoming a parent.

These kinds of interventions are usually one of many used by family and consumer science classes in high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. TPP's advocacy guide (2002) includes the FACS education standards for parenting education. Assessments for the thousands of parent education classes taught by these teachers are tied to standards and scope of instruction guidelines, and are done regularly. Luster and Youatt (1989) found that students participating in a high school parenting education group were significantly more knowledgeable about child development, significantly less likely to believe infants are "spoiled" by responsive and affectionate care, and more likely to emphasize the importance of talking and reading to children, than were students in a control group. Students in the program also were more likely to believe that infants needed considerable leeway in exploring their environments and were less likely than those in the control group to hold an authoritarian view on discipline. Finally, they were significantly more likely than the controls to believe that parents exert considerable influence on the developing child. From what we know about research with parents, these beliefs are related to positive child outcomes (Luster, Rhoades, & Haas, 1989).

Tulloch and Omvig (1989) studied high school students taking a one-semester FACS course on parenting. These students showed a significant change in attitudes towards the timing of parenthood, wanting to delay it until they were older. Dittman and Anderson (1987) found that high school students who took a parenting class showed significant gains in knowledge and problem-solving categories and in self-confidence. Other researchers (Cooke, 1990; Gaudin, 1993; Luster & Youatt, 1989; O'Connor, 1990) state that parenting education programs are most effective if taught across many years of schooling.

The state of New York now mandates that every student take a parenting class before high school graduation. This author prepared materials for the state's Parent Education Resource Guide on the rationale and best practices for teaching and assessing these courses (McDermott, 2002).

Some Concluding Thoughts

This has been a brief snapshot of the rationale for the need for, and benefits of, teaching parenting / caring in schools, and a description of some successful programs. TPP's advocacy guide (2002), which is soon to be online, provides much more detail on programs, references, and guides for starting a program.

Childhood educators understand the impact of parents in children's lives and in schools. They know about the capacity of children to care and how it can get lost in the competitive climate now often found in schools. For this reason, the author hopes that teachers will share their insights regarding both the potential and challenges of implementing K-12 parenting education in schools today.

References

Brazelton, T. B., & Greenspan, S. I. (2000). The irreducible needs of children: What every child must have to grow, learn and flourish. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Comer, J. (2001). Schools that develop children. The American Prospect, 12(7), 1-9.

Cooke, B. (1990). Teaching and evaluating courses in parenthood for adolescents. Illinois Teacher, 33(3), 6-88.

Dads make a difference. (n.d.) Evaluations available at: http://dads.umn.edu

Dittman, J., & Anderson, E. P. (1987). An evaluation of parenting education for teenagers. Journal of Vocational Home Economics Education, 5(1), 1-12.

Eisler, R. (2000). Tomorrow's children: A blueprint for partnership education in the 21st century. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Eisler, R. (2002). The power of partnership. Novato, CA: New World Library.

Feshbach, N. (1982). Sex differences in empathy. In N. Eisenberg (Ed.), The development of prosocial behavior (p. 315-338). New York: Academic Press.

Gaudin, J. M., Jr. (1993). Child neglect: A guide for intervention. Washington, DC: National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect.

Gulkas, S. (1994). Evaluation of education for parenting. Summary results available at www.ecparenting.org

Heath, H. (1995). Learning how to care: Education for parenting (Rev. ed.). Philadelphia: Conrow Publishing.

Hope, P., & Sharland, P. (1997). Tomorrow's parents: Developing parent education in schools. London, England: Turnaround Publisher Services Ltd.

Kohn, A. (1991). Caring kids: The role of the school. Phi Delta Kappan, 72(7), 496-506.

Kohn, A. (1999). The schools our children deserve: Moving beyond traditional classrooms and tougher standards. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Lake, Snell, Perry & Associates. (1999). Report on 1000 nationwide interviews. Available at: www.parentingproject.org

Levine, B., & Weins, J. (2003). There is another way: A different approach to educational reform. Phi Delta Kappan, 84(9), 658-665.

Luster, T., Rhoades, K., & Haas, B. (1989). The relations between parental values and parenting behavior: A test of the Kohn hypothesis. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 51, 139-147.

Luster, T., & Youatt, J. (1989, April). The effects of pre-parenthood education on high school students. Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Kansas City, KS. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. 305 181)

Masterpasqua, F. (1992). Educating Children for Parenting: Evaluation of the learning about parenting curriculum. Unpublished manuscript, Widener University. Available at: www.ecparenting.org

Mayeroff, M. (1971). On caring. New York: Harper & Row.

McDermott, D.R. (2002). Rationale supporting parent education in schools. Available at: www.parentingproject.org

Merrow, J. (2002, October). Keynote speech at the 9th Annual Forum of the Character Education Partnership, Atlanta, GA.

Miedzian, M. (2002). Boys will be boys: Breaking the link between masculinity and violence (2nd ed.). New York: Doubleday.

Murphy, D., Heath, H., D'Anna, C., D'Anna, M. & Towey K. (1994, November). Learning how to care: A paradigm shift in home, school, and community. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the National Council on Family Relations, Minneapolis, MN. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. 382 351) Available at: www.npin.org.library/2000/n00471/n00471.html

National Standards for Family and Consumer Sciences Education. Available at www.facse.org

New York State Parent Education Resource Guide. Available at: www.emsc.nysed.gov:80/rscs/chaps/Parenting/Parenting_webpage.html

Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools. New York: Teachers College Press.

O'Connor, L. (1990). Education for parenthood and the national curriculum: Progression or regression? Early Child Development and Care, 57, 85-88.

Parenting Project, The. (2002). Preparing tomorrow's parents today: How to bring parenting education for children and teens to your school. Boca Raton, EL: Author.

Parents Under Construction[TM] (n.d.). Evaluation summaries available at: www.childbuilders.org/programsfolder/programs.html

Realityworks[R] evaluations available at: http://realityworks.org

Tomison, A. (1997). Preventing child abuse and neglect in NSW: Findings from a State audit. Sydney, Australia: NSW Child Protection Council. Available at: www.aifs.org.au

Tomison, A. (1998). Valuing parent education: A cornerstone of child abuse prevention. Issues paper # 10. Available at: www.aifs.org.au

Tulloch, C., & Omvig, C. (1989). Changing attitudes through parenthood education. Journal of Vocational Home Economics Education, 7, 104-113.

Zero to Three. (1992). Head Start: The Emotional Foundations of School Readiness. Washington, DC: Author.

Zigler, E. (1999). Testimony, Connecticut Committee on Children.

Dana R. McDermott is Assistant Professor, DePaul University, The School for New Learning, Chicago, Illinois.