An eclectic approach to parent group education

Many factors contribute to a need for parent education today. Parent education has changed over the past centuries as a result of our changing values, our increasing knowledge base, and changes in family structure. The parent education group attempts to meet the parents' need to validate their concerns and offer them process and skills that promote mental health in children. Two popular models of parent education, the reflective model and the behavioral model, stem from two schools of psychologic thought-the phenomenologic school and the behavioral school. Because of the weaknesses and strengths of each model, an eclectic model of parent education is proposed which facilitates an authoritative patern of parenting correlated with self-reliant, explorative, and self-controlled children. This eclectic model of parent education is perceived as being within the role description of the generalist nurse who has access to back-up specialists in the health care system. Many opportunities exist for the nurse to offer this type of health education.