Introduction to an overview of parent education

Abstract

No one person can claim to be an expert in all aspects of rearing children. At this point none of us can really say what constitutes an appropriate family environment and effective rearing techniques for the development of well‐adjusted, happy, and productive human beings. Providing education to parents in order to improve their parenting skills, while not a new activity within the mental health field, has increased in popularity during the last ten years. Despite this heightened interest, however, little has been published which examines the rationale for providing parent education, the variety of methods and techniques currently available, or existing evidence pertaining to the effectivness of parent education programs.

The following group of papers, which is based on a symposium given at the recent APA Convention in Toronto, represents an attempt to determine where we are, what we do know, and what future directions may prove most useful in appraising the efficacy of parent education programs. Each paper examines the field of parent education from a different perspective, and while each may be read separately, a more complete view of the field is obtained by considering the three papers together. The first paper, Parent Education: Rationale, History, and Funding Sources, traces the history and development of parent education and delineates current sources for program funding. The paper on Methods and Models of Parent Education provides a nonevaluative survey of the wide variety of methods and approaches to parent education which are presently taking place. The final paper, Evaluation of Parent Education Programs, examines the problems and issues involved in evaluating the effectivness of parent education programs, and systematically reviews recent outcome research in this area.