Parent education has been gathering momentum in Hong Kong since its inception in the 1970s; however, much emphasis has been put on imparting childrearing knowledge and skills to parents rather than facilitating the reorganization of parents' lived experiences and their identity development. Based on the results of an exploratory study conducted in Hong Kong, this article discusses the possible outcomes and experiences of a parent enhancement group adopting a narrative approach. The group comprised three, 5-hour sessions held weekly. The participants included 20 Hong Kong parents with at least one child in preschool. Through the adoption of a pretest-posttest design coupled with a 6-month follow-up survey and three post-intervention focus groups, the study attempted to examine the effects of the program and the subjective experiences of the participants.Findings: The quantitative results showed that the group might have positive impacts on the enhancement of parental satisfaction, parental efficacy, and parent-child relationships. The qualitative findings indicated that the group might help develop the parent identity through strengthening the parent-child relational connection and integration of parents' life stories. The participants also had a deeper understanding of the impact of parents' personal growth on their parenting practice and children's development.Applications: The findings offer a knowledge base for evaluating this approach to parent enhancement programs. Of particular importance are its transformative effect, retention effect, ripple effect, and empowerment effect. The findings also provide reference materials for practitioners to rethink the direction of parent education.
While the increasing awareness of risk in late modernity has resulted in the proliferation and complication of parental roles and choices, few attempts have been made to explore how parent education can empower parents to reconstruct parenthood and transform parental lives. Based on the results of a mixed-methods study conducted in Hong Kong, this article discusses the possible outcomes and experiences of a parent education program that aimed to facilitate parents' holistic growth in dealing with the prevailing culture of intensive parenting. The program was composed of 30 h of seminars and workshops. The participants included 387 Hong Kong Chinese parents recruited from seven primary schools and 27 nursery schools. A pretest-posttest assessment survey and postintervention focus groups were adopted for the evaluation methods. Findings: The quantitative results showed that the participants experienced an enhancement in confidence, understanding, and trust in parenting. The qualitative
Although numerous studies have indicated the significance of parental support and parent-child communication in alleviating the adverse effects of parental departure on left-behind children, researchers have rarely addressed the impact of parent education on migrant parents. On the basis of the results of a pilot randomized controlled trial, the study reported here involved examining the possible outcomes and feasibility of a parent education program for rural-to-urban migrant mothers of left-behind children in China. Informed by an existential-narrative approach to parent education, the program was composed of six 2.5-hour sessions. The sample included 56 migrant mothers recruited from a social service center in Shenzhen, China, who were randomly assigned to either the immediate group (n = 28, M = 34.82 years, SD = 4.12, aged 23-43) or the waitlist control group (n = 28, M = 34.68 years, SD = 4.53, aged 28-43). The hypotheses of the trial were twofold: that the program would positively affect participants' parental identity and that it would improve mother-child relationships and parenting practices. The results revealed no significant difference in parental identity between the intervention group and the waitlist control group at the post-test assessment after ruling out the effects of pretest survey scores. However, significant differences did emerge in parent-child relationships and parenting practices. Overall, the results corroborate the feasibility of examining the current program for migrant mothers in China in a full trial. The findings also offer insights into developing empirically supported parent education programs for migrant parents.
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