Improved Parenting for Incarcerated Mothers through Health Education

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a parenting class that teaches incarcerated females autonomy, social competence, interdependence, problem solving and resiliency. The focus was to determine if a parenting class taught to incarcerated mothers would improve their understanding of how expectations, empathy, corporal punishment, role responsibilities,and development of children's values and independence relate to effective parenting. These five constructs serve as the basis for assessing attitudes that contribute to child abuse and neglect. The prison where this research was conducted is home to 500 men and 500 women who are incarcerated predominately for crimes related to substance abuse. Of the 350 female offenders with children, 90 participants were randomly selected to participate in the study. Thirty participants each were assigned to the intervention group (parenting class), the life skills class, and the control group (no parenting class or life skills class). The Adult, Adolescent, Parenting Inventory (AAPI-2) was used to study the impact of the parenting curriculum on the offender mothers who took the class. A control group and offenders in the Life Skills program also participated in the AAPI-2 and their pre and post scores were compared to those of offenders who participated in the parenting project. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to compare the groups. MANOVA used numerical values collected for all three groups to generate a test of within-subjects contrast in each of the five constructs. Results indicated a significant improvement (0.05 level or better) for all constructs with the exception of corporal punishment.