Do Parents Benefit? Perspectives of Low-Income Parents Who Received a Free Early Readiness Program for Their Child

Abstract

Do Parents Benefit? Perspectives of Low-Income Parents Who Received a Free Early Readiness Program for Their ChildIn my work with low-income parents, I have found they often experience stress and barriers to their parenting, despite their parental desire to be good providers and caretakers. As Hofferth (1995) has said, most of these parents do not have abundant resources or options to assist them in meeting their child's needs.Communities in America are attempting to serve these families and provide them with resources and options. One example is a local business/education partnership and a family literacy grant, which have provided funds for early educational opportunities for children who would not otherwise have the chance to benefit from an educational setting until they were in kindergarten.Even though this early readiness program is developed to help four and five year old at-risk children, it is really targeted to assist families. The philosophy of this program states that parents

A Study of Infant Developmental Outcome with a Sample of Korean Working Mothers of Infants in Poverty: Implications for Early Intervention Program

“…The most frequent users may be firsttime parents, parents whose ties to extended families have weakened, and parents who are lacking in informal social and observational sources of information needed in the parenting role. In fact, the primary concern among early childhood educators and developmental researchers has focused on the information needs of parents with children and the need to disseminate such information to these parents (Boger & Smith, 2000;Bruckman & Blanton, 2003;Massengill, 2004).…”