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Of Critical Parenting Practices
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Of the National Extension Parent Education Model of Critical Parenting,
by Charles A. Smith et al.
See the Preface for information on use and distribution of this document.
Children themselves wished that their parents were more diligent in setting and enforcing rules. Thirty-nine percent of children 10-17 said they "sometimes" wished their parents were stricter or kept a closer watch over them and their lives. Another 8 percent said they wish this a lot. Only about 1 percent said they "never" wanted their parents to be stricter or more attentive. Because of the rapid pace of change in our society and an increasing awareness of and respect for cultural and values diversity, parents will continue to be challenged to expand on traditional styles of childrearing.
The Social Context
Several social trends are now challenging parent-child relationships. Single parent families may be most at risk. Although there always have been single parents in the United States, the causes of solitary parenting have changed. Single parents of previous generations were primarily widows and widowers. Parents are now more likely to be single because of divorce or never being married. Single parents in today's society may be more isolated and perhaps more disillusioned than the single parents of the past. Increasing gaps between the "haves" and the "have-nots" in the U.S. have aggravated the disadvantage of single mothers. Children of single parents are now the poorest age group in the United States. According to Beyond Rhetoric (1991a), the final report of the National Commission on Children, about 25 percent (more than sixteen million) children lived with only one parent in 1989, twice as many as in 1970. Single parent families often are poor and isolated from extended family and community support.
Families today are also more mobile as parents relocate to pursue educational and employment opportunities. This trend has placed an additional burden on families who are no longer living near extended family members who have traditionally provided informal support and assistance.
Parental employment places a great strain on parent-child relationships. Parents may have to depend on other caregivers, for example, to set limits and provide guidance during their children's formative years. Between 1970 and 1990, the proportion of mothers with children under age six who were working or looking for work outside their homes rose from 32 percent to 58 percent. Today, approximately 10.9 million children under six have mothers in the paid labor force (National Commission on Children, 1991a). Unlike generations prior to the Baby Boom, today's mothers are likely to be employed some distance from the home and are less likely to have extended family close by to assume the responsibilities they are unable to handle on their own. About 95 percent of all fathers are employed.
Social trends as varied as school consolidation and desegregation, shopping mall construction, day care centers, and telephones have moved the primary social focus from the immediate neighborhood to the larger community or even the "global village." No longer is it automatic that neighbors will even know each other, much less watch out for each other and serve as a support system. One result is that people without flexible transportation or telephones may become isolated and alone. The challenges parents face in raising their children are indeed considerable. The cultural context for their struggle often fails to provide the support parents need. We live in a culture that often emphasizes violence, materialism, and self-gratification. Parents may feel obligated to accelerate the maturation of their children. Potential resources to support parents and the children often are under-funded. Children are the casualties.
Consequences for Children and Parents
The well-being of our nation's children is clearly at risk. According to the National Commission on Children (1991b), one in four adolescents engages in social behaviors that can lead to serious long-term difficulty; many more are vulnerable for future problems.
Substance abuse. Although the proportion of adolescents who had used alcohol in the past month decreased from 72 percent in 1980 to 57 percent in 1990, the rate remains unacceptably high (National Commission on Children, 1991b). In an Associated Press report published in the January 31, 1994 issue of the Manhattan Mercury, an annual survey of 51,000 high school and eighth-grade youth in more than 400 schools found that fewer teenagers than in previous surveys now see the peril in experimenting with cocaine and other illicit drugs. The researchers who conducted the survey also found that both marijuana and cigarette smoking increased from the previous year.
Juvenile offenders. "Between 1977 and 1987, the number of young people held in correctional facilities on any given day jumped 25 percent, from just over 73,000 to 92,000. Participation in youth gangs is also escalating...gang membership is closely related to delinquency and violence" (National Commission on Children, 1991b, p. 227). In 1988 as many as 450,700 children were classified as runaways. An estimated 127,000 children were "throwaways," children abandoned or thrown out of the home by parents.
Teenage pregnancy. One million teenage girls become pregnant each year. Nearly half of them give birth. The proportion of teenage births that occur outside of marriage has increased steadily since the early 1970s (National Commission on Children, 1991a). The rate of births to single teens increased 16 percent nationally between 1985 and 1990 (American Humane Association, 1993). Children of teen-age mothers are more likely than other children to perform poorly in school and to exhibit behavioral problems (Luster and Mittelstaedt, 1993).
Adolescent suicide. During the 1960s and 1970s, the rate at which adolescents took their own lives doubled, from 3.6 to 7.2 deaths per 100,000. By 1986, it had increased another 30 percent, to 10.2 deaths per 100,000. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among adolescents after accidents. Eight times as many young people attempt suicide unsuccessfully (National Commission on Children, 1991a).
Mental illness. An estimated 12 to 15 percent of all children suffer mental disorders; approximately 10 percent have received treatment in the past year (National Commission on Children, 1991a). Nearly 500,000 American children now live in hospitals, detention facilities, and foster homes. That number is expected to climb to more than 840,000 by 1995 (House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, 1989).
Child abuse. The United States Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect concluded in its 1990 Executive Summary that child abuse in the United States represents a national emergency. In 1974, 60,000 cases of child abuse and neglect were reported. By the late 1980s, this number had increased to 2.4 million per year. Reports of abuse and neglect in 1992 represent a one hundred and 32 percent increase in the last decade (American Humane Association, 1993). Much of the increase is due to growing public awareness of child abuse and the establishment of mandatory reporting laws, but the limited availability of prevention services is also a contributing factor. "This is especially true in rural counties where inaccessibility and lack of facilities perpetuates the level of isolation experienced by families" (National Center on Child Abuse Prevention Research, 1990, p. 5). Children who have been abused or neglected are 53 percent more likely to be arrested as juveniles, 38 percent more likely to be arrested as adults, and 38 percent more likely to commit a violent crime (Widom, 1992).
The Cooperative Extension Service Response
The Cooperative Extension System has recognized the need for family support by identifying and implementing two national initiatives: Youth at Risk and The Plight of Young Children. The National Initiative Task Force on Youth at Risk identified parental support and problem solving/decision-making skills as two of the eight critical educational priority needs. Parent education was one of three areas targeted for Youth at Risk programs (The National Initiative Task Force on Youth at Risk, 1990).
The Plight of Children: Prenatal to Five Task Force recommended that the "...Cooperative Extension System--by FY 1993--will allocate substantial resources--human and financial--to address the critical needs of the nation's at-risk families with young children" (The Plight of Children: Prenatal to Five Task Force, 1991, p. 7).
In Reaching Limited Resource Audiences: Recommendations for Extension Action in the 1990s, the Cooperative Extension System Limited Resources Committee recommended that the organization "...enhance or strengthen programs targeting pregnant and parenting teens, single-parent families, and the functionally illiterate" (The Limited Resource Audiences Committee, 1991, p. 2). Each of these three national initiatives acknowledged the importance of parent education for the extension system.
Parent education is an important component in Cooperative Extension System programs. In a 1991 report by the Cooperative Extension Strategic Planning Council titled Patterns of Change, one of the futuring panels indicated that "extension needs to help families deal with how to educate their children, how to stay away from drugs and gangs, and how to adjust socially to become productive citizens." (Strategic Planning Council, 1991, p. 15).
The Cooperative Extension System, with its experience in community-based parent education, access to research-based knowledge at land grant universities, and its national delivery network of specialists and field faculty is in an ideal position to create and implement a common, core approach to parent education. In addition, with its mandate to reach out to all families with children of all ages, the Cooperative Extension System can play a key role in facilitating networking and collaboration among organizations and agencies that serve families.
The National Extension Parent Education Model (NEPEM)
Unfortunately, CES has not had a national parent education plan. A system-wide model of parent education achieved through consensus- building would provide specialists and field faculty with a common set of terms, approaches, and materials. This core unifying conceptual framework would serve to guide local programs, increase collaboration across state lines, and provide a basis for synthesizing evaluations of common efforts. Furthermore, a unifying vision of parent education would be a powerful tool for teaching decision makers, state and federal organizations and agencies, and the public about a priority within the Cooperative Extension System.
The project to create such a model would have four objectives: (1) create a conceptual model based on the best available research data that identifies the critical parenting practices associated with the development of competence in children and youth, regardless of their socioeconomic status or cultural background; (2) design a curriculum guide of resources consistent with the conceptual model; (3) prepare a report describing the model and curriculum; and (4) distribute the report to professionals throughout the Cooperative Extension System and to federal agencies and organizations that might be interested in networking with extension. The national model could be used by professionals to create comprehensive parent education programs at the local level. Instead of a specific "canned" program, NEPEM would serve as a framework for stimulating and conceptualizing parent education programs developed at state and county levels. This conceptual model and curriculum would be:
NEPEM would provide a core conceptualization of fundamentals that could be adapted and expanded easily by state specialists and field faculty. The model and its recommended curriculum resources could be updated each year. Teams of specialists could be encouraged to prepare materials where gaps exist in the curriculum guide.
First Steps
The task facing the team was to combine their professional and creative energies to design a model that would appeal to extension professionals across the system. Each team member brought to this challenging task a strong advocacy for his or her own perspective about what our priorities should be in parent education. The challenge immediately facing the group was to find common ground based on respect and affirmation of each team member's individual approach. Team members were challenged to revise and compromise to achieve consensus. If four individuals with diverse opinions and values, but a shared commitment to the objectives listed above, could agree on a common model, their recommendations might be more readily accepted and used by other professionals within the system.
Each team member independently prepared a set of materials illustrating his or her own personal model of parent education. At this point each person worked in isolation from other team members. At their first meeting in August 1992, at Kansas State University, each team member presented his or her individual model to the group. These individual approaches were clearly divergent in both content and form. Considerable discussion, much of quite lively, took place over two days in an effort to fully understand the rationale for each of the four individual models.
The next step was to find the common elements that existed within the individual approaches. Instead of continuing to assert the merits of their own designs, team members began to collaborate on a fifth alternative model that would be the joint creation of their common thinking. Once this foundation was created, debate and compromise could be employed to integrate and expand on the initial effort.
After numerous conference calls and fax exchanges and a team meeting at the National Council on Family Relationships (NCFR) 1992 Annual Meeting, an initial model was created, one that differed significantly from each of the previous individual approaches. It consisted of six clusters or categories of parent skills, each composed of a list of priority parent practices related to that category.
This initial model was reviewed by a national advisory board established by Ron Daly. NEPEM also was presented at various regional and national conferences, including the 1993 NCFR meeting, to obtain additional input. Consensus had to be built across the system if NEPEM was to prove useful.
Evaluating the Initial Model
A survey designed to gain feedback about the value and specific content of the model was distributed to all human development and family life specialists throughout the system. Specialists were encouraged to make copies of the survey to give to field faculty and parent educators who work closely with extension. A total of eighty-nine surveys were returned. Approximately 10 percent of the returns were completed by full- time administrators, 48 percent by state specialists, 42 percent by field faculty, and 3 percent by individuals outside of extension. The results of the survey reported in Table 1 provided strong confirmation of the initial model.
Survey respondents provided many suggestions for improving the team's first effort. This feedback, as well as additional comments from other professionals and advisory board members provided direction for making a variety of editorial changes. Some icons were changed, some titles and priority practices were modified, and numbering of the categories was eliminated.
The current model is summarized on page 14. For those who would like to introduce NEPEM to groups, a set of visuals suitable for use as handouts or transparencies can be found in Appendix 1. A more stylized version of the same information can be found in Appendix 2. Some reviewers suggested greater emphasis in the model on the importance of community and social support as a context for parent education. These issues are indeed important if not critical for parent education. The purpose of NEPEM, though, is to focus exclusively on the direct education of parents. Such issues as social support and political reform are conceptualized in the model in terms of how parents can involve themselves and others in these issues. In Care for Self, for example, critical parenting skills include supporting and seeking support from other parents. In Advocate, the team suggested that we encourage parents to speak out on behalf of their children in the community and insist on effective social services and responsible public policy that supports families of all kinds. The importance of community support and availability of services is emphasized in the narrative discussion of the model but is not incorporated as a separate category in the model itself.
Assumptions of the Model
As they progressed toward consensus regarding the common priorities for extension parent education, the NEPEM team made nine key assumptions regarding parents and their relationships with children:
Underlying Guiding Principles
Team members were guided by eight underlying principles that shaped the model.
NEPEM focuses exclusively on what parents do to enhance the well- being of their children.
This principle is critical for understanding NEPEM. The authors decided to focus on parent action. Other variables in the lives of parents and children are also critical for their growth. The educational system, public policy that affects families, and community support for parents are all crucial for both children and parents. But these systems are not parent education unless parents are directly involved. The authors hope these broader issues are given the emphasis they deserve in our extension system. With its Advocate category, the NEPEM model emphasizes building parent skills to use or motivate these systems to be more supportive and accountable for their impact on families.
The model focuses on priority parent practices that are significant across the full range of childhood and adolescence.
None of the practices targets parents of any specific age group of children. More specific objectives could be created by parent educators to apply the model to parents of children of a specific age. How parents listen and attend to children's feelings and ideas would obviously be different if their children were infants or adolescents. The parent educator who develops a program based on NEPEM is challenged to convert the selected priority parent practice to more specific program objectives appropriate for the targeted parent group. Materials in the curriculum guide that accompanies the model often are targeted for parents of specific ages of children.
The model emphasizes core priorities.
The NEPEM model is basically what we believe is the "heart and soul" of our parent education programs. It is the foundation on which state and county extension programs can build. We hope extension parent educators will find it provides common ground where they can join others across the system regardless of individual or state differences in priorities. We did not attempt to define everything of importance for parent education, only what we believed to be of fundamental significance for all parent educators within the system.
Few individual specialists or even single state extension parent education programs will address all of the NEPEM priority practices at one time. By joining together and linking resources and expertise, we will be more effective in gradually building a comprehensive program in parent education. NEPEM's real value is not in what it is but in the dialogue and collaboration it sets into motion.
Issues are more important than arrangement.
We decided early in the process of debate and negotiation that agreement on the arrangement of the parent practices would be difficult, if not impossible to achieve. Instead, we focused on achieving consensus on the basic or core skills and the categories that might provide a logical framework for the practices. We removed arrows, flowcharts, numbers, and other symbols of cause and effect and of sequence in the model. Avoiding all visual or connective relationships between the parent practice categories is impossible once they are placed on paper. There may, in fact, be some subtle connection between them as they are presented in the current model. We leave that for the user to decide. In the team's view, the actual skills and practices emphasized in the model are more important than their arrangement.
NEPEM categories of parent skills have fluid, not rigid boundaries.
Think of NEPEM as a model that is in motion. What we have created is a snapshot of parenting skills organized into six fluid categories. Most of the priority parent practices could be placed in more than one category. Categories are conveniences that allow us to communicate the overall emphasis of the model. Users should keep the entire picture in focus and not become distracted by the frame.
NEPEM is dynamic, not static.
NEPEM is our attempt to create a representation of the best thinking about what our system believes is important for parent education. We fully expect that NEPEM will change as our knowledge of parenting increases and our understanding of what parents need becomes clearer. Our greatest hope is that NEPEM be continuously recreated by all those who use it, in a permanent process of negotiation across our extension system. The pictured model will always be accompanied by the date of its most recent revision. Users are encouraged to note this date and discard or update old copies as revisions in the model are made. If you would like to suggest additions or revisions to the model contact any of the authors. Feel free to send your comments to Charles A. Smith, 343 Justin Hall, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas 66502.
NEPEM emphasizes parent strengths and empowerment.
Focusing on what parents can do well is a more effective teaching strategy than emphasizing what they are doing wrong. Accentuating the positive promotes parental empowerment, the self-confidence that comes from understanding the implications of one's actions and having alternatives for putting one's options into action.
Parent strengths emphasized in the model should be sufficiently broad and flexible to be useful in developing programs across the cultural spectrum.
Any educational model is influenced by the culture of its creators. The NEPEM team represents different regions of the U.S. and somewhat varying European-American cultural backgrounds. We strove, however, to create a model that would be as free as possible of cultural bias for its intended U.S. audience. This model was validated by professionals from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. Ninety percent of those surveyed responded "yes" to the statement "Are the words and phrases in the model free of cultural, racial, and sexual bias?" Of the seven respondents who said no, several indicated it would be impossible not to have some bias.
We believe that the more abstract practices we identified are critical for U.S. children regardless of the culture that nurtures their growth. We attempted to state priority practices at a level of abstraction that allows parent educators to create more specific objectives appropriate for their parent audience. For example, the critical practice Express affection and compassion in the Nurture category will be expressed differently by parents from different socio-cultural backgrounds. Some may be more comfortable with physical contact while others might prefer to respond verbally. We leave it to the parent educator implementing a program to decide how this skill is imbedded within the culture of the participating parents.
Keep in mind that our intent was to identify the priorities worthy of our commitment as extension professionals, not to describe what every parent does regardless of the socio-cultural context. The critical issue is not whether every conceivable culture "expresses affection and compassion," but whether we want as a group to commit ourselves to promoting this parent skill in the most culturally sensitive manner possible.
Implications for Extension Parent Education Programs
Planning. NEPEM can be used to communicate parent education priorities to county planning groups or advisory boards. County extension home economists and 4-H agents can use the one-page summary as the basis for a brief overview of parent education for these groups. The curriculum guide can provide examples of resources available in the extension system. Additional programs based on NEPEM also can be created or located by state, area, and county extension professionals.
Collaboration. NEPEM can be used by county and area field faculty and state Extension specialists to inform other agencies and organizations of our common goals. Because collaboration depends on finding mutual goals, better understanding of our priorities will make more effective collaboration possible.
Programming. Specific educational programs can be developed to encourage specific parent practices identified in NEPEM. New materials can be created to fill gaps in current resources.
Organizing and filing. NEPEM categories can provide a convenient way to organize and file a variety of resources: research articles, leader guides, fact sheets, reports, and other types of information.
Common language. The parent practices described in NEPEM provide the basis for a common language extension professionals can use at county, state, and federal levels to describe their programs to each other. Common goals and the terms used to describe them can build a sense of shared community among extension professionals committed to parent education.
Evaluation. Programs implemented to reach common goals provide powerful evaluation opportunities for the system. Evaluations can be synthesized and organized more effectively when programs share priority goals. The NEPEM team hopes that common evaluation instruments and strategies will be created and distributed throughout the extension system.
Extension initiatives. Specific Cooperative Extension Service initiatives like Plight of Young Children and Youth at Risk can draw from NEPEM as a guide to focus their efforts on parent education. More specific parent education objectives could be created within each initiative consistent with its emphasis.
NEPEM could also have implications for professionals outside of the
extension system. High school and college teachers might find the model
and this report useful for students in their classes. Researchers might be
encouraged to investigate areas of the model that could be investigated
more thoroughly. Parent educators could find common ground with their
extension colleagues and discover new resources for use in their work
with parents.
Preface
Part 2: The Model In Depth
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