Helping parents to be parents? Evidence-based parenting programs models and practices

Objectives. - In France, these last years have been characterized by the emergence of a new public health movement aiming at promoting children and parents' mental health through the implementation of evidence-based programs. If a certain number of interventions tend to be developed under a similar terminology, their contents are not homogeneous. This phenomenon compromises the clarity of the political recommendations made for this matter and engenders difficulties in regard to political decision-making. This article seeks to clarify the different types of parenting programs that can be found in international scientific literature and to present their conceptual, practical and epistemological frames. Material and methods. - A literature review has been performed on articles published between 1992 and 2012 focusing on preventive parenting programs. A qualitative approach using thematic, lexical and content analysis was used to describe the operational and specific objectives of the interventions, their contents (mode and place of intervention), the targeted populations (parents and children) and their theoretical framework. Results. - A diversity of approaches have been identified. The analyses revealed the existence of six fields of interest within parenting programs (physical health, mental health, positive parenting, substance use prevention, violence prevention and cognitive development). Seven distinct theoretical approaches emerged from the data (cognitive, systemic, psychoeducational, psychoanalytical, coaching, community and ecological). Different thematic of interventions as well as different modes and places of interventions were found within the 785 publications. Finally, social regulation and health promotion were identified as two polar social objectives in preventive parenting programs. Hence, within a typology, we defined parental education and parenting support as two global categories of preventing parenting programs. This paper summarizes the principal characteristics of the two categories that emerged from empirical data. Five examples of parenting programs are proposed to illustrate these categories. Conclusions. Whereas most of the identified programs refer to health promotion model, their different modes of interventions do not cover all the objectives of health promotion values (i.e., strengthening community action, creating supportive environments, reorienting health services...). The reference to epidemiology and public health demonstrates the focus on risk and preventive logics. By privileging evidence based studies, scientific literature tends to promote educational programs aimed at developing individual parenting skills rather than global community actions or other types of individual interventions, which are difficult to translate in scientific experimental disposals (such as clinical interventions relying on psychodynamic models). (C) 2013 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.