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ANTENATAL EDUCATION FOR PARENTHOOD, AS AN ASPECT OF PREVENTIVE PSYCHIATRY SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR PROGRAMME CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES
Author(s) -
Cook P. S.
Publication year - 1970
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.1970.tb116916.x
Subject(s) - psychology , value (mathematics) , psychiatry , developmental psychology , medicine , computer science , machine learning
Disturbances of the parent‐child relationship may develop at any stage from birth onwards. The emotional conflicts arising out of these disturbed relationships lead to much emotional ill health, which manifests itself in many ways. Some form of “educational” preparation for parenthood during the antenatal (and perhaps postnatal) period is a logical opportunity for primary prevention, and this can be combined with orthodox courses of preparation for delivery. A suitable programme might help many parents to establish more mutually satisfactory family relationships, with a lower incidence of emotional disturbance in their children. To expect any measure of success, however, a programme would need to cover those areas in which clinical experience has shown that difficulties are likely to arise, and these may vary from one culture to another. An endeavour has been made to obtain and present a consensus of child psychiatric opinion about an outline of the understandings which it would be desirable for average young partners to possess as they embark on parenthood. All these areas are important, yet most of them are overlooked by those programmes which have been described in the literature, and this may account for the doubt about their value. The effectiveness of a more comprehensive approach could be tested.