Does the ACA Provide an Opportunity to Introduce Mandatory Parenting Classes?
The nanny state could help teach parenting skills…
The Supreme Court upheld the majority of Obama’s Affordable Care Act last week, which means all Americans will be required to carry health insurance by 2014. The ACA also includes a $15 billion Prevention and Public Health Fund which “invests in proven prevention and public health programs that can help keep Americans healthy – from smoking cessation to combating obesity.” Public Health Fund programs where I live in New York State include HIV/AIDS prevention, detecting and responding to disease outbreaks and expanding suicide prevention activities and screenings for substance use disorders. But none of the preventative measures involve promoting pre-natal or infant care, childhood well-being or good parenting initiatives. Why not?
In my recent post about marriage readiness, I wrote, “There’s something wise about trying to prepare people for marriage, in the same way that most of us try to prepare for childbirth. Though I think what we could all use is more training for parenthood.” Most people who receive pre-natal care take some kind of childbirthing class before they deliver their first baby, but how many of us received any parenting training before our children came into the world? Oh sure, I’d babysat kids before, babies even, and I knew how to change a diaper and give a baby cereal, but was I prepared for the incessant crying, the sleep deprivation, the things that make even reasonable adults want to shake a baby? Nope. Very few people are, I think.
Experts suggest that basic parenting classes would go a long way to preventing child abuse, but as Dr. Robert Block, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told TIME in April, “we seem to be not very interested as a country in teaching parenting skills.” That’s unfortunate, because child abuse is still very much a problem in this country, and the results of physical abuse can be “depression, mood disorders, phobias, drug problems or major disorders,” as Meredith Carroll noted earlier this week. 7 percent of mental illnesses can be attributed to spanking alone, according to the medical journal Pediatrics. So why not take the passage and upholding of the ACA as an opportunity to introduce mandatory parenting classes for everyone receiving pre-natal care? Classes that focus on child-abuse prevention and address post-partum depression should be offered for free. We need to remove the stigma from having difficulty with parenting and stop making new parents feel like they should automatically know what to do with a baby or a child of any age, really.
There are programs already in existence meant to “assist new mothers with the adjustment to parenthood, to assure that the infant is living in a safe environment, to provide topic-specific education, and to identify health and/or social issues that require referral with community-based services,” such as the Newborn Home Visit Program in New York City. The problem is, the program as it exists now targets only ”first-time parents living in neighborhoods with the highest social, health and environmental needs.” In other words, the socioeconomically disadvantaged. The uneducated. The poor. That kind of targeted outreach is working on two false premises: that only poor, uneducated and incapable people live in said neighborhoods, and that only poor and uneducated people need help learning parenting skills. People of all socioeconomic strata living in all areas of the country should be given the opportunity to prepare for parenthood, and the presumption should be that all people are capable of parenting well, not that being low-class leaves you at risk. Child abuse occurs in all types of families, and new parenthood is scary no matter how much money or education you have.
I was contacted by the Newborn Home Visit Program when I was living in East Harlem and pregnant with my daughter, who is now 6. A friend of mine who lived nearby and who has a daughter the same age was contacted as well. Because the visits are optional, we both declined when called. But that’s not the only reason we declined; the program only exists in the predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods of East/Central Harlem in Manhattan and Bushwick/Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, and that’s just racist, classist bunk. My friend responded by saying, among other things, “Hey lady, when you start going into homes in Tribeca or handing out condoms, give me a call back.”
When it comes to parenting, most of us only know what we gleaned from the way we were parented. And for those who’d like to make some changes in their own parenting methods based on their childhood experiences, the support of a parenting class would be extremely helpful. Pre-natal (and maybe even post-natal) parenting classes would also help create a sense of community for new parents who can otherwise feel totally isolated and unsure of who to reach out to for help. I would love to see the sweeping changes that will be ushered in with the ACA include more support for all parents, regardless of economic status or race. What do you think?
Photo via iStock
Sorry. Sounds like more Nanny State to me. I mean, when you use the word mandatory and all. I’d rather see reductions in deductibles (mine’s $10,000.00 a year), premiums and co-pays, than to spend more on things people can learn very easily from books, the internet- their own families.
Our local hospital serves a predominantly lower income population, and it has a breastfeeding support group 3 days a week that has essentially become a parenting class as well. It gives new moms a chance to talk to nurses regularly as well as other new moms, and we also have a facebook group where breastfeeding and parenting questions are often asked, and again answered by nurses, IBCLCs and other moms. It’s an awesome (and FREE) program that is a great resource for moms of all income levels. I think the model of “new parent support group” might work better than “parenting classes” to get the word out and get parents in the door.
The problem is whose values would these mandatory classes be teaching? Once you get beyond the very basics like how to change a diaper and never shake a baby, you’re starting to get into value judgments. You are clearly against the use of any corporal punishment whatsoever, but plenty of people (even scientists!) disagree with you. Here’s a research review finding NO scientific evidence to support bans on spanking: http://humansciences.okstate.edu/facultystaff/Larzelere/nztabconts.47.pdf
In the nineties I taught some parenting classes in connection with a grant from the state of California that I titled “parenting for prevention” and the thrust was to help parents in their efforts to help their children to stay drug free. I thought then, and believe now more than ever that mandatory parenting classes would be one of the best things we could do to raise happier, healthier children. Parenting is the most important job any of us will ever have, and we have precious little or no preparation for the job. My experience was that parents wanted to do the job well but needed some skills in order to do it.
So you were offered similar assistance for free and turned it down, but want it to be mandatory? Myself and others I know paid for such classes. If some can afford them and others cannot, why not put the limited funds towards the economically disadvantaged?
Smacks of more Nanny Government to me. I’d rather DEcrease our deductibles, premiums and co-pays in health care costs than ADD to them with classes that offer info anyone with can find easily in books, on the internet or from family. At some point, the villagers need to take personal responsibility for themselves.
I don’t think that the government should mandate parenting classes. Certainly there are people who could benefit from them, but just because it would benefit some, I do not think it should be required for all.
I think parenting classes should be available for anyone who wants them and I think it’s a fantastic idea if there is a follow up program post natal as well. In fact, I’d take it a step further and also incorporate those “real life babies” to every hs student in the country. Even one wknd of caring for these “babies” would surely give these teens a real dose of reality and would most likely bring down the teen pregnancy rate to boot. It still amazes me that we have to be licenced and take classes for a million things in this world but anyone who can fertilize an egg/give birth can be responsible for raising another human being without so much as learning how to change a diaper.
Considering that the federal government can, according to the majority opinion, tax inactivity, they can make just about anything they please mandatory.
sanriobaby- I have to disagree with you about those “real-life” babies. we have 6 peopple living in this house, and there is no way I am going to tolerate noise in the middle of the night waking my husband (who drives 35 miles each way to work each day), my elderly mother, whose room is right up there with all the kids, or ME, ( who works 7 days a week from home). Um no. And you might ask what if my daughter got pregnant? Well, if she chose to continue the pregnancy, she’d better have the place for them to stay lined up. She;s been taught about birth control for YEARS now, and there’s no excuse for her to not use it if she decides to become sexually active. But babies (real or digital) will NOT be living in this house any more, LOL!
BTW- as an 8th grader, she said she’d actually refuse to do this sort of activity at school on the grounds that she WOULD choose to abort.