Parents in modern society are not given proper opportunities to be educated and trained in parent role even though the parental responsibility and skills in rearing their children are still demanding Parent education which provides opportunities for p...
Parents in modern society are not given proper opportunities to be educated and trained in parent role even though the parental responsibility and skills in rearing their children are still demanding Parent education which provides opportunities for parental skill acquisition, started in the 1960's to maximize the effect of child education and preparent education for unmarried youths is emphasized throughout the world in light of the increasing number of unmarried mothers, which causes a lot of social programs.
The necessity of preparent education for adolescents as well as that of parent education have started to be recognized in korea since 1980's. However, there is little proper preparent education programs for unmarried youths with a theoretical framework, and little studies for developing such programs.
The purpose of this study was to develop a preparent education program for unmarried youths, which would have theoretical, practical, and emperical bases. Specific problems of this study was first, to clarify the meaning and present situation of preparent education and to reveal philosophical, social and psychological needs for preparent education; second, to develop a preparent education program for unmarried youths ; third, to verify the effects of the program by applying it to college students.
The conclusions obtained from this study are as follows:
Firstly, preparent education intents to help unmarried youth to think sincerely about the role of parents prior to their being actual parents and to effectively acquire knowledge and attitudes required by parenthood. Preparent education in korea is still in its beginning phase recognizing the necessity of preparent education programs, and the programs which have no theoretical framework are being practiced. Preparent education programs are needed to be developed on the basis of three aspects. Specifically, philosophical needs are respect for human life, the recovery of basic human values, and the establishment of democratic family relations; societal needs are the restoration of weakened family education, and the prevention of child abuse; psychological need are ego development of the youth and identity formation on marriage and family life.
Secondly, a preparent education program was developed which includes 5 thematic areas, self-recognition of youths, sex education, pregnancy and child-birth, family reations, development of infant. Five principles on which the program were developed are principle of comprehensiveness, principle of situational specificity, principle of correlation between the knowledge and the attitude, principle of emphasis on the thinking process, and principle of various methods of education. The program was also based on the analysis of thematic areas included in existing parent education programs and preparent education programs.
Thirdly, the effectiveness of the program, was verified by applying it to 52 college students. The results shows that college students' knowledge acquisition and attitude formation needed to become capable parents have been significantly increased after receiving the program. The effect size of knowledge acquisition was larger than that of attitude formation.