Eurotuesday

Inequalities in health are established from birth when differences in systematic experiences in distinct social environments lead to different biological and developmental states. These experiences influence health, well-being, learning and behaviour throughout the individual’s life cycle. Numerous studies have revealed the extent to which social and emotional environments are vital for a child’s development and that the parental environment is essential to the child’s health. All policies that affect the lives of children and their families therefore represent a window of opportunity for improving lifelong health in our communities, and in particular by caring after those who care for children. The parental environment, the child’s primary developmental environment, is therefore a major determinant of child health. Parenting is a complex process that presents challenges to forms of support. Considering parenting today means accepting that this phenomenon is multidimensional, is ecosystemic intertwined with biological, psychological and social elements. Thinking parenting support intervention with this dimension therefore means accompanying parents in a process of empowerment to explore learning processes that enable them to understand, build and transform their environments. This research proposed therefore a “realist” look at what is known about the conditions under which parenting support can be favourable to parental empowerment from pregnancy to the child’s third year.