Investing in parents' development as an investment in primary prevention

Abstract

Primary prevention and health promotion initiatives for young children have increasingly incorporated parents in their programs, but often within limited contexts of training narrowly defined parenting 'skills'. development if we hope to achieve enduring influences that will have direct and indirect enduring, selfsustaining effects upon the child, family and community. This article presents arguments for focusing upon promoting parents' development and examples of prevention and promotion programs that have successfully done so. It is argued that prevention efforts must increasingly focus upon promoting parents' own