Positive parenting the preventive way: Transforming research into practice with an intervention for new parents

Abstract

Following the 2006 recommendation of the Council of Europe to support positive parenting, the development of a preventive intervention for expectant parents and parents of toddlers is described. The intervention aims at helping young parents to accomplish their most critical tasks: (1) formation of a nurturing relationship between parent and child, based on competent parenting in order to ensure a healthy socioemotional development of the infant; and (2) positive development of the couples' relationship. On the basis of research findings concerning these issues, a preventive intervention with 10 modules was developed, implemented, and evaluated. In a non-randomized pre–post control group design, training group participants (n = 95) showed more knowledge about early child development, less anger control problems in interaction with the child, more security in interaction with the child, and stability of marital satisfaction as opposed to the usual decrease.

Keywords:

• Parenting
• Prevention
• Transition to parenthood
• Parent–child relationship
• Marital relationship