The impact of a parenting training on parental monitoring in rural Ethiopia

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the impact of the pilot of ‘We are Parents’, a parenting training from the Dutch non-profit organization Red een Kind, on parental monitoring. The pilot was conducted in rural Ethiopia and given by local ‘facilitators,’ (i.e., trainers), who were trained by Red een Kind. Parental monitoring is often low in rural Ethiopia; parents often do not know about their children’s whereabouts or activities. In this study, several aspects of parental monitoring were investigated: general monitoring behaviors, monitoring of the social and school life of the child and monitoring related to the risk behaviors of the child. To measure the impact of ‘We are Parents’ on monitoring behaviors of the participants, a mixed method approach was used. A quantitative questionnaire with Likert-scale items was administered to 31 participants before and immediately after the training. Qualitative interviews were held with the facilitators and 10 randomly selected participants after the training. Paired samples t-tests were run to compare pre-training and post-training scores on the three parental monitoring dimensions from the questionnaire. Significant increases in scores in monitoring the social and school life of the child (p= .034) and in monitoring the risk behaviors of the child (p < .001) were found. No significant increase in general monitoring was found (p= .494). In the qualitative interviews, facilitators and participants reported an increase in general monitoring behaviors and an increase in monitoring the social and school life of their children. These findings indicate that ‘We are Parents’ may help improve parental monitoring.