Universal parental support for parents of adolescents: Who wants municipality‐based parental support and in what form?

Abstract

Parenting a child through adolescence can be a challenge for many parents; adolescents go through notable developmental, physical, and psychological changes that affect the relationships around them. Most parents find parental support during these years important. These young people's relationships with their parents are important to their mental health, but although parental support is universally available to parents of younger children, it is still scarce for parents of adolescents. The aim of this study was to explore what factors are associated with interest in universal parental support through telephone interviews and questionnaires with 223 parents of 13‐ to 17‐year‐olds. Parents’ interest in parental support was linked to their own anxious mood, their lower perceived parental capacity, their perception of the child as having psychiatric problems, the parents’ perception of their adolescents’ openness about things and their perception of the adolescent's overall difficulties in daily life due to psychiatric symptoms. The results show that lighter forms of support such as lectures or seminars were more appealing to parents with higher social status. Offering community‐based individual counseling and leader‐led parent training groups therefore has the potential to reach parents with difficulties more equally, while offering support only through lectures and seminars could increase the inequality between parents in different social situations.

Swedish parents' satisfaction and experience of facilitators and barriers with Family Check‐up: A mixed methods study

“…Previous research has shown that Swedish parents prefer “easy‐to‐get” information, such as online or via a telephone help line as immediate support for parents searching for advice (Thorslund, Alfredsson & Axberg, 2018). Other research shows that self‐led information‐seeking is dependent on parent educational level (Alfredsson & Broberg, 2018).…”

Successful implementation of parenting support at preschool: An evaluation of Triple P in Sweden

“…Nevertheless, it is important to consider that previous research recommends awareness of increased inequalities as an unwanted side-effect of universally offered parenting interventions through, among other things, a skewed distribution of socioeconomic variables among recruited parents [ 40 ]. Further, as there is evidence that some (effective) public health interventions, such as smoking cessation programs, might increase inequalities due to different response to the intervention based on socioeconomic differences [ 93 ], it can be argued that parenting programs carry this potential risk as well.…”

“…Parents in Sweden are seeking out parent training for various reasons: curiosity, specific problems that they need help to tackle, or following recommendations from friends [ 39 ]. Parents who perceive their own parenting capacity as low and believe their children have mental health or behavioural problems are more interested in receiving parenting support [ 40 ]. Further, it has been stated [ 40 ] that individual or group formats have the potential of reaching families with more difficulties, while lighter formats such as seminars reach parents with higher education, hence using only the latter delivery format might increase inequalities.…”