Center for
Native Child
and Family Resilience
Prevention. Intervention. Respect.
Tipis in a field

Parenting in Two Worlds

Summary
Preparando la Nueva Generación (FPNG) Latino parenting curriculum

The Parenting in 2 Worlds (P2W) intervention was developed to address the disproportional health disparities associated with substance abuse and risky sexual behavior that are experienced by AI families living in urban area and to test the efficacy of a culturally grounded parenting program specifically tailored to the social and cultural worlds of urban American Indian (AI) families.

"The Parenting in 2 Worlds (P2W) intervention was developed to create and test the efficacy of a culturally grounded parenting program specifically tailored to the social and cultural worlds of urban American Indian (AI) families. The intervention was produced through a partnership between the Urban Indian Coalition of Arizona, the Phoenix Indian Center, and the Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center at Arizona State University (SIRC). It is designed to address the disproportional health disparities associated with substance abuse and risky sexual behavior that are experienced by AI families living in urban areas, and the lack of evidence-based prevention approaches to prevent, reduce and eliminate health disparities among this rapidly growing population. Family disruption, stresses related to poverty and rural-to-urban migration, and loss of cultural and social connections frequently operate as pathways to adverse health outcomes among urban AI families.

The Parenting in 2 Worlds study has two main aims: 1) to develop, test and implement a culturally grounded parent education curriculum for parents of American Indian youth 10-17 years old who live in urban areas in Arizona;and 2) to build the capacity of parents, the community, and partnered agencies to prevent youth substance use and risky sexual behaviors. The parenting intervention, Parenting in 2 Worlds (P2W), aims to strengthen family functioning and communication to help parents strengthen culturally relevant parenting skills, promote their children's health and well-being, and reduce their children's risk of substance use and risky sexual behavior. P2W is an adaptation of an existing parenting intervention incorporating American Indian cultural values, communication styles and customs related to parenting unique to American Indian families living an urban experience. P2W is designed to be a 10-workshop curriculum, each workshop approximately two hours in length, administered over 10 weeks (one workshop per week) and facilitated by trained community members who represent the urban American Indian community where the curriculum is being implemented."

Retrieved from https://sirc.asu.edu/parenting-2-worlds
Details

A recent study (retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4939122/) examining Parenting in Two Worlds (P2W) outcomes indicated:

“P2W participants reported statistically significant improvements in their sense of parental agency, use of positive parenting practices, supervision of the child, and degree of family cohesion, as well as reductions in discipline problems and conflict with the child. A comparison group receiving an informational family health curriculum also reported better outcomes over time on all of these measures except family cohesion, but their improvements were statistically significant for only half of the measures. Moreover, when both groups showed better outcomes over time, the improvements for the P2W group were larger.”

“The promising evidence of the efficacy of P2W in improving parenting skills and parent-child relationships suggests it can help address the widespread need for evidence-based and culturally grounded parenting interventions for urban AI families. The positive effects of P2W, however, were made possible by the involvement of community members in all aspects of the research—developing the curriculum, training urban AI facilitators, creating procedures and policies for recruitment and retention, delivering the interventions, and disseminating findings – and because of their willingness to mobilize and expand the capacity of community-based organizations serving urban AIs to deliver and test interventions of this type. By involving urban AI parents and community-based organizations in the creation and implementation of this prevention curriculum, P2W capitalizes on parents’ readiness and willingness to strengthen family functioning and parenting practices. These findings also highlight the need for prevention interventions that are both culturally-specific and family-centered in order to strengthen and build upon the protective factors of AI families living in an urban environment.”

Full citation for the study:

Kulis, S.S., Ayers, S.L., Harthun, M.L. et al. (2016). Parenting in 2 Worlds: Effects of a culturally adapted intervention for urban American Indians on parenting skills and family functioning, 17(6), 721-731. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-016-0657-0
Tribally adapted
  • Child
  • Community
  • Family
  • Child perceived as problem by parents
  • Child temperament or behavior
  • Lack of access to prenatal support/Lack of social or parental pregnancy support
  • Low self esteem
  • Mental health problems
  • Parental temperament
  • Physical health problems
  • Social isolation
  • Substance abuse
  • Access to health and social services
  • Community support when faced with challenges
  • Concrete support for parents
  • Problem-solving skills
  • Self-efficacy
  • Social and emotional competence
  • Access to services
  • Community food/good nutrition
  • Cultural identity/sense of belonging to cultural group
  • Ethnic pride/self-esteem
  • Family commitment, safe and healthy relationships
  • Healthy lifestyles/activities
  • Increasing coping skills
  • Personal capacities
  • Physical health/fitness
  • Spiritual values/well-being
  • Support (family, friends, community)/interdependence
Resource