Valuing parenting
Most parents do the best they can to raise their children in strong, healthy families.
Parents and caregivers have told us they don’t think parenting is valued by society, and they feel unsupported. Being a parent/caregiver isn’t always easy and people don’t automatically have the skills and knowledge to do it well all the time.
The Families Commission is working to change the perception of parenting. We want to see it valued and acknowledged.
To bring about greater recognition of the vital contribution that parents and caregivers make, the Families Commission wants:
- all of society to acknowledge and value the parenting role
- support to be readily available to all people raising children
- parents and caregivers to participate shaping policies and programmes related to parenting.
Why focus on parenting
Families, iwi, whanau and hapu, experts, community organisations, and government agencies have all been asking for parenting to be valued and supported for some time. So we:
- conducted a review of parenting programmes
- spoke to parents as part of the What makes your family tick? project
- ran a poll on The Couch online panel asking about parenting education and support
- talked with people offering parenting courses and parenting support, through a series of workshops held in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
The clear message from this consultation was that government and society needed to value parents more highly. As one member of The Couch told us:
I feel that parenting isn’t valued either economically or politically. I would like to see parenting recognised as the 24/7 job or vocation that it is, rather than feeling obliged to work for an income, to be perceived as contributing to society…
Projects underway in 2007/08
Valuing parenting: Sending out positive parenting messages and supporting those who parent is at the core of new action we are leading to see that parenting is genuinely valued. One part of this is asking parents and caregivers to give us their input into our work. We also want to raise their awareness of how to get support, reinforce that it’s okay to "just ask" for help, and promote positive parenting. The Families Commission will work with other organisations in the parenting sector.
Relationship support: We want to better support couple relationships. This project covers the full spectrum of support for relationships: before people form a relationship; when people go through transitions in their relationship such as the birth of a child; and when a relationship fails. We are particularly interested in finding out more about how people find information and support for their relationships.
Post-separation care: A research project that looks into the decisions that separating parents make about living arrangements for their children, including how they reach those decisions, and how they work. The Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families at Victoria University has been commissioned to undertake this research. This report is now available [PDF, 1.1MB].
Parent panels: As one way of giving New Zealand families a voice the Families Commission is working with community organisations to hear the views of people raising children in different communities and different circumstances. Each group will meet three times to discuss what life is like for them and others in their communities. Read the report on the first four of these groups.
Free fun family activities
We asked the members on our online poll The Couch to give us ideas of free fun family activities they get up to. These great ideas have been turned into a set of activity sheets which cover all sorts of activities. We split them into themes to make it easier for you to grab the one you want. We have some great activities for wet days, outside the house, in the kitchen, crafts and even one where the whole family can get involved and will continue to developing more.
Find out more and download these activity sheets here.
Research reports related to parenting
Review of parenting programmes (June 2005)