Corter – parents supports

I think the research suggests that anything we can do to support parents is going to be paid back in terms of how it supports children’s development because families have the biggest influence on children. Childhood services are important, early childhood programs are essential, but families come first in terms of the influence that they have on a child’s development. So we believe that, and the research supports this, in believing that parents need to be supported in many different ways. And we recently wrote a literature review for Invest in Children as part of their Community Vitality Project on the question of what kinds of supports do parents need and want. And we really came to the conclusion that parents need tangible supports, but they also need intangible supports. And it’s easier sometimes for us to think about the tangible supports. Ideally parents would live in healthy communities where they have jobs and there would be services that keep the community safe and healthy, and there would be amenities such as libraries and community spaces where children could play, and services for children and parents. So that would be part of a tangible support that would make parenting easier, that would help parents do the best job they can for their children, and it would help children develop in the healthiest possible way.  

But in looking at the literature and in talking to parents in our own research, we find that intangible supports are sometimes overlooked. That is, we think about rolling out the hardware, but we don’t think about what parents need: the relationships that they need to sustain their work as parents. We always emphasize the importance of the parent-child relationship and the attachment relationship but parents need relationships too: to support them to be able to make that attachment connection. So, one example of an important relationship is the relationship between parents and professionals. Whether that professional is a child care worker, or a kindergarten teacher. And we find if that that relationship is respectful, mutually respectful, then that helps the parent achieve the feelings of empowerment and capacity to make a difference in the child’s life; to be empowered to connect to services, find the resources that the parent and the child needs.  

And that relationship between professionals and parents can fuel that kind of capacity for parental competence and to empowerment. So we think that’s an example if an intangible support. So it’s not just about the service. It’s partly about the relationships that go into that service and into the connection between the child, the parent, and the professional. So we need to have a three-legged stool of professional, parent and child. Not just a two-legged stool of professional and child, or child and parent. If we get that multiple support, we’re more likely to have an impact on child development; we begin to pull together the ecology of the child’s development.