A new study from researchers at McGill University, Harvard, Kuwait, and Emory Universities reveals a surprising finding – while parenting programs can significantly improve children’s emotional and cognitive skills, they often fall short when it comes to providing effective mental health support for parents. This insight could help inform the design of future programs that better support both parents and their young children during a critical phase of early childhood development. Childhood development and parental mental health are closely intertwined, and this research highlights the need for a more holistic approach to family support.
Making The Most Of Parenting: Integrated Programs
The international study had gone over and absorbed a total of 25 published studies across the globe and saw that children who were under three years old could make quicker development in their emotional and cognitive aspects in life if their family members or parents joined an intervention that welcomed mental health treatment with parenting skills together than those who never experienced any(ibid). This underscores the promise of multi-component programs for improving child development.
However, the researchers also observed a paradoxical difference in results — while children improved, mothers experienced minimal to no relief of their depressive symptoms. The authors commented that the scarcity of studies on fatherhood limits our understanding of how depression programs affect depressive symptomology. This shows a major oversight in the support that these programs provide since parents’ mental health has an extensive impact on parenting practices and children’s outcomes.
Helping Parents With Their Mental Health
The authors note that many of these integrated parenting programs only have one to two sessions focusing on mental health, which they argue may be insufficient for parents in distress. This is particularly worrying because perinatal depression affects one-quarter of mums and one-tenth of dads, making it twice as common as Gestational Diabetes which we routinely test for. Depressed parents are all too often unable to provide the nurturing care their child needs.
Findings from this study may inform program development to better assist parents and their young children in a key early phase of child development. This balance of child-rearing skills and parental mental health will lead to more beneficial short-term and long-term effects for these families.
Integrated and holistic investments in family wellbeing
The researchers say that given how over 250 million children across the globe do not reach their developmental potential, it is essential to help families provide a strong foundation at this critical time in a child’s growth. These programs can harness a virtuous cycle of nurturing, resilient families by adopting a more holistic approach that cares about the mental health and well-being of parents just as much as the development trajectories of their children.
However, as the researchers write, “Regardless of how the benefits were accrued for children who gained from their parents receiving help with raising them, those with poorer mental health struggled more to manage parenting practices and outcomes for children. In doing so, we will be able to achieve everything that parenting programs have yet to realize in supporting the welfare and well-being of the next generation.
