Promoting Our Children’s Wellness

Abstract

Parenting is largely about the creation of a nurturing and caring atmosphere where children’s physical and emotional growth can take place. This entails facilitating the expression of feelings, maintaining open lines of communication, and ensuring that children feel loved and protected. It also involves providing a structured and predictable environment, setting behavioural limits, and fostering cooperative, pro-social behaviour. The pregnancy and early parenting experiences of study participants and their varied experiences with formal and informal supports were explicated in the previous chapter. This chapter focuses on (a) participants’ attempts to ensure the physical and psychological well-being of their children; (b) their child-rearing philosophies and practices; and (c) the overall nature of the parent-child relationship.