Increasing Wellbeing through a Parenting Program: Role of Gender and Partnered Attendance

Abstract

Coping skills provide a resource for tackling stress in everyday situations, including those relating to parenting. The aim of this article is to establish whether parents who experienced a 10-hour universal social emotional parenting program -Families Coping (FC) -benefit through increased productive coping strategies, decreased nonproductive coping strategies, and increased parent wellbeing, within a positive parenting framework. It is also of interest to see whether gender and/or partner attendance makes a difference in program outcomes such as coping styles and wellbeing. The data set combined two groups of parents (N = 23) of preschool-aged children from an early learning centre in inner-metropolitan Melbourne in 2013 and 2014 who undertook the FC parenting program. A mixed methods design was employed, where parents completed pre-and post-program questionnaires on coping and wellbeing. Results were considered with respect to gender and partner attendance. A one-way repeated-measures multiple analysis of variance (RM-MANOVA) showed a significant increase in one productive parenting style (Dealing with the Problem), a significant decrease in nonproductive parent coping, and a significant increase in parent wellbeing. Comparison of results between gender and partner attendance groups showed minimal differences in program effectiveness. Qualitative data mostly confirmed the key findings.

Exploring Indigenous Community Conceptions of Parent Wellbeing: A Qualitative Analysis

“…With parenting and child outcomes as the primary focus, many parenting programs have shown secondary improvements in parent wellbeing indicators, such as parents’ depression, anxiety, and stress [ 22 ]. Previous research literature argues that interventions for children’s emotional, developmental, and behavioural concerns to include attention to parental wellbeing as well as parenting [ 27 , 28 , 29 ]. This may provide parents with a framework to assist their reflective functioning [ 30 , 31 ] and coping skills [ 29 ].…”

“…Previous research literature argues that interventions for children’s emotional, developmental, and behavioural concerns to include attention to parental wellbeing as well as parenting [ 27 , 28 , 29 ]. This may provide parents with a framework to assist their reflective functioning [ 30 , 31 ] and coping skills [ 29 ].…”