Educating Students for Their Future Role as
Parents
Harriet Heath, Ph.D., The Parent
Center , Bryn Mawr
College
and Dana McDermott, Ph.D. School for New Learning, DePaul
University
Intro: Why Teach Parenting to Students?
Educating students for their
future role as parents is a preventive measure. Students learn that there are
multiple ways of nurturing a child. You can rock a crying infant, walk with
her, sing to her, even go for a drive. You do not need
to physically hurt the child. Students studying parenting also learn what to
expect of infants. They learn that babies’ cries are their expressions of their
needs. In addition, students learn that nurturing a child is a twenty-four-hour
job seven days a week that they are not ready to undertake.
Traditionally, parenting is
a subject that has not been routinely taught. People used to gain knowledge
about child development and nurturing children by observing younger siblings
being cared for or watching aunts and uncles in the extended family. As families have become smaller or no longer
live near each other, these early experiences, and the knowledge gained from
them, have become limited.
Read the comprehensive
article in pdf format at:
www.preparetomorrowsparents.org/EducatingStudentsFutureParents.pdf
(originally
published by Family Support
