September 5, 2024 – The Parent Encouragement Program (PEP) applauds the U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents, which calls attention to the importance of parental well-being and the critical link between parental mental health and child outcomes. We consider the Advisory to be an urgent call to action, and here’s something we can all do right now: promote (and fund) programs that give parents access to tools that help them help their children be confident and resilient. Make it as natural to take a parenting class, as it is for an expectant parent to take a childbirth class.
Positive parenting programs such as PEP’s help to strengthen parental skills around effective communication, emotion coaching, and encouragement. These programs equip parents to help their children become more capable and resilient – and alleviate parental stress too.
While parents have had to deal with stressors and challenges for generations, today’s parents are more isolated, without the benefit of important support networks. Parenting programs help create community, bringing parents and caregivers together to share experiences and support each other. Indeed, in 2023/24, PEP’s research partner NORC at the University of Chicago found that the PEP Family Resiliency Program had a large effect on strengthening the parent-child relationship, parent-child communication, cooperative child behavior, and parent adjustment (e.g. ability to cope with parental demands).
PEP believes, and the research shows, that there is a strong return to society when we invest in strengthening parenting and the family environment, which are key determinants in the healthy mental, emotional and social development of children. Let’s make positive parenting programs the norm, rather than the exception, and in the process, we will be helping to connect parents with each other, so that they don’t feel left alone, struggling to figure it all out on their own.