Preparation for parenthood programme: Experiences from southern India

Abstract

Parenting skills are critically important to ensure that children are brought up in a safe environment. Recent evidence shows that studies of parenting skills are still at a preliminary stage in low- and middle-income countries. These need to involve family practitioners and religious groups who often play a major role in preparing young people in India. There are organized programmes available in the country for Christian adults to prepare themselves for marriage and family life through various church initiatives and activities. In order to develop a programme which can be used to prepare young parents for responsibilities of parenthood, a needs assessment was carried out among 70 young adults who attended a marriage preparation course in Bangalore, India. All the participants belonged to the Christian faith. Participants consisted of 53% men and 47% women whose average age for deciding to get married was 26.8 years. All of them expressed a need for such a preparatory programme for parenthood. They considered they needed to know about normal child development, behavioural management of children, to develop adequate skills in handling children at different ages, and deal with their own past issues with their own parents when they were being parented. The results suggest that the development of a preparatory programme for young adults to support them in the role of parenthood must take their views and needs into account.

Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank all the participants who were willing to participate in the study and all the organizers of the marriage preparation course at St Thomas Forane Church, Bangalore, for making this study possible.

Declaration of interest: B.T. is a member of the resource team in the Syro-Malabar Family Apostolate Mission in south India and regularly engages with young adults in preparing for marriage. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.