Involvement of the Personal Social Network as a Factor in Parent Education Effectiveness

• Author: Susan K. Walker,David A. Riley
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2001.00186.x
• Published date: 01 April 2001
• Date: 01 April 2001

186 Family Relations

Involvement of the Personal Social Network as a Factor in

Parent Education Effectiveness

Susan K. Walker*and David A. Riley

This study examined the impact of mothers’ involvement with their social networks upon their self-reported changes in behaviors and

attitudes due to a parenting intervention—in this case monthly, age-paced parenting newsletters. Path analyses revealed that discussing

and sharing newsletter copies with others was associated with greater self-reported change but did not significantly mediate the

relationship between newsletter use and parental change. Rather, individual use of the newsletter and social sharing of the content

had independent effects on parenting. The results support a general view that the advice of parenting programs is not accepted or

rejected in a vacuum, but often within the context of discussions within the participants’ existing social networks. This suggests two

practical implications for program developers: (a) Interventions might be more effective if they encouraged such social network

processing of program advice, and (b) programs might even target social networks rather than individual parents as their clients.

Aconsiderable body of research and theory exist on the

influence of social networks on parents (Cochran & Nie-

gro, 1995) and on the influence of parenting education

programs on parents (Carter, 1996). Few studies have attempted

to link these two domains by asking how the parent’s ongoing

social network interactions influence the impact of parenting pro-

grams, however. Consider, for example, the first-time mother

quoted by Riley, Meinhart, Nelson, Salisbury, and Winnett

(1991) in an evaluation of instructional newsletters for new par-

ents: ‘‘I use the articles to confirm what my doctor said when

relatives said they did it different, so it made me feel more con-

fident about what I was doing and my doctor’s advice’’ (p. 250).

This was a parent who balanced the advice of a parenting inter-

vention (the newsletters) with the advice she got from two other

sources: kinfolk and her physician. If this mother’s experience

is typical, then the impact of parenting programs should never

be studied as a ‘‘main effect’’ butrather as an ‘‘interaction’’ with

the other, preexisting sources of advice available to parents.

Evaluations of parenting education programs have rarely

considered the influence of preexisting personal social networks

on their outcomes, despite the advice of earlier scholars (Ooms,

1981; Weiss, 1987). Much of the research has examined the ef-

fect of the social network on program selection (Crockenburg,

1986), utilization (Birkel & Reppucci, 1983), or participation

(Unger & Wandersman, 1988). The findings from these corre-

lational studies indicate that parents belonging to smaller,denser

networks (i.e., those with fewer total members, those with a

higher degree of interrelationships) are less likely to use or ben-

efit from parent education programs or turn to professionals for

child-rearing advice and information.

Another body of research evaluates parent education pro-

grams that aim to create social support processes within the pro-

gram. McGuire and Gottlieb (1979) provided an excellent early

example of this strategy in a short-term experimental study of

social support groups for new parents. Although led by physi-

cians and their spouses (i.e., experts), the treatment groups ex-

plicitly avoided any curriculum and focused on learning from

each others’ experiences. Slaughter (1983) also studied social

support as a parenting intervention, but in a longer term inter-

*Address correspondence to: Susan K. Walker,Ph.D., Department of Family Studies,

University of Maryland—College Park, 1204 Marie Mount Hall, College Park, MD 20742;

(301) 405-8339; e-mail: sw141@umail.umd.edu

Key Words: infancy, newsletters, parent education, social networks.

(Family Relations, 2001, 50, 186–193)

vention that included mothers’ discussion groups lasting 2 years.

In her words, ‘‘Groups became ‘mini-families’ in which personal

and familial triumphs and problems were shared . . . a new form

of social participation was ultimately established by the mothers

themselves toward a common task-oriented goal: effective child

rearing’’ (pp. 72–73). Somewhat surprisingly, this ‘‘network-

building’’ intervention was found to be more consistently effec-

tive in producing maternal and child development gains (in a

low-income, African American sample) than was the other in-

tervention, a toy demonstration program that taught parenting

skills. Slaughter concluded that ‘‘socially engineered self-help

networks, as well as spontaneously generated ones (Stack, 1974),

can positively affect’’ the child rearing efforts of parents (p. 75).

Indeed, one of the tenets of the family support movement is that

every parent and family needs a supportive community and that

formal parent education may even be unnecessary in a function-

ing community (Garbarino & Kostelny, 1994). One widespread

example of this idea today is the nationally replicated Parents

Anonymous discussion groups (Rafael & Pion-Berlin, 1999).

Of interest here is the interaction of the two separate systems

of the personal social network and the parenting program. How

do parents integrate the content of a parenting program into their

preexisting network of influences and understandings? In turn,

does that integration affect the impact of the program? Some

scholars have suggested that the social network can influence

program outcome by acting as an interpreter or reinforcer of the

information provided by the formal program (Chrisman & Klein-

man, 1983; Warren, 1981). Cochran (1990) also suggesteda par-

allel rather than an interactive process in which social network

interactions could duplicate those of a parent education program,

thereby strengthening its impact on parenting beliefs and behav-

iors.Cochran and Henderson (1990) were the first to explicitly

hypothesize and then demonstrate that a parenting program

might have its impact indirectly by influencing social network

interactions outside the program. Their program of family sup-

port led to changes in the kin and nonkin support networks of

participating families which, in turn, led to differences in their

children’s school performance, in particular for single parent

families. Cochran, Riley, Gunnarsson, and Larner (1990) sug-

gested that ‘‘Rather than inventing new programs from whole

cloth, so to speak, one might instead concentrate on reinforcing

the naturally occurring social systems used by families and com-

munities to build on strengths and channel social behavior’’ (p.

311).

In the Cochran and Henderson (1990) study, social support