I don't think there will be much progress ending child abuse until it is recognized as just a particularly heinous kind of parenting...one that is passed from generation to generation and one that will take a generation or two to fix. In our communties the quality of parenting varies tremendously and child abuse is at the dark end of the spectrum. Also on that spectrum are a lot of other kinds of parenting that are unsupportive and harmful, but not illegal. Shouldn’t we care about those children too? If we want to end child abuse and other forms of unsupportive and harmful parenting we need to frame the solution in terms of improving the overall quality of parenting. How do you improve the overall quality of parenting? Parenting education! A kind of parenting education that reaches everyone, everywhere, all the time. It’s a public health approach akin to the not smoking and seatbelts campaigns. Messaging that teaches parenting behaviors and practices generally recognized as supporting the healthy development of children will in time improve the overall quality of parenting five, ten, twenty, fifty years down the road.
The concept of continuous quality improvement saved the automotive industry. We now drive cars that are much more reliable than they were fifty years ago. Shouldn’t we be striving to continuously improve the overall quality of parenting? Don’t children, families, and communities deserve as much?
Another benefit of this new kind of parenting education is equity. The variability in the quality of parenting is a powerful source of inequity. Public health approach parenting education will elevate and level the quality of parenting in communities.
Visit advancingparenting.org.
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