Featured Research

Positive parenting holds the key

27 June 2018

This article was originally published in July 2017.

 

The circumstances into which we are born can influence our lives right through to adulthood. Research has shown that children born into a poor family environment often have poorer health, and a poorer education, which in turn can effect employment prospects and income in adult life. Therefore, suggests Life Course Centre Partner Investigator Dr Orla Doyle, if a child’s environment can be improved it may help to reduce inequalities in society.

Dr Orla Doyle has released a working paper titled ‘The First 2,000 Days and Child Skills: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment of Home Visiting’. Her research ‘explores the role of intensive and continued investment in parenting from pregnancy until entry into formal schooling … in a highly disadvantaged community in Dublin, Ireland’.

Using a community-based program called Preparing for Life (PFL), a group of pregnant women were divided into two groups. One group received ‘high treatment’, begun in the prenatal period, continuing until school entry age, which included a five-year home visiting program, a baby massage course in the first year, and the Triple P Positive Parenting Program in the second year. The other group received none of these services but did have access to a PFL support worker, if required.

Dr Doyle reports that those children ‘who received the high treatment had better cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioural skills than children who received the low treatment. The program raised the children’s cognitive ability by 0.77 of a standard deviation.’

Moreover, the program had a significant effect in reducing the number of children scoring in the clinical range for behavioural problems by 15 percentage points, with the effect being spread equally on girls and boys.

In sum, Dr Doyle’s research shows that providing support to parents in the early childhood years can have large effects on children’s development and can help to reduce social inequalities.

Read the working paper summary and download the full paper, here.