Research that Benefits Children and Families—Uplifting Stories

Research has so many positive benefits on children and families. Without research, it would be difficult to understand the inner workings of data that we come across and how it affects our daily lives. I came across an article that discussed the grandparents role in childcare, and how having grandparents go through a parenting course to learn different parenting styles will help with anxiety, depression, stress, and relationships between the grandparent-parent and child. The reason for this particular research is because a lot of parents use grandparents as a form of childcare, but the grandparent-child relationship was more relaxed, hence making the parent-child relationship more taxing and stressful on both the parents and child. With that in mind, enrolling and following both grandparents and parents on a 6-month basis to see how effective the new parenting styles were that the grandparents learned, and how well it worked. The results found that the parent-child relationship was less stressful, the child’s behavior improved, as well as less anxiety between parent-child, as well as parent-grandparent. The same rang true for the grandparents who cared for the children; their levels of depression, anxiety, stress, and intense behavior from the child had decreased.

I think that this is such a great way to display the benefits of research on children and families because this study shows how important it is to have a balance of parenting styles between grandparents and parents, as well as teaching new and different parenting styles to help keep parenting styles between parents and grandparents cohesive. Grandparents can sometimes interfere with the parenting of the parents, thus making parenting children harder and more difficult, not to mention, confusing for the child. This helps others find that much needed balance, and help with keeping families together.

Reference:

Kirby, J. N., & Sanders, M. R. (2013). Using a Behavioural Family Intervention to Produce a Three-Generational Benefit on Family Outcomes: A Case Report. Behaviour Change, 30(4), 249-261. doi:10.1017/bec.2013.24