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Educating Vulnerable Pupils
VUE Number 12, Summer 2006

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EXCERPT:
The Baby College Program: A Parenting Intervention Nested within the Harlem Children's Zone

 By Beatrice L. Bridglall
Beatrice Bridglall is a research scientist and adjunct assistant professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.
> Author's Biography


illustration A program under way in Harlem helps parents bring up young children who are healthy and ready to learn.

The decline in two-parent families since 1960 has had profound effects on children. This significant change in family structure appears to contribute to child poverty, which is more salient in singleparent families than in two-parent families. Differences in parenting practices and, by extension, parental investment are also associated with family structure and family socio-economic status.

Regardless of family structure, however, the quality of parenting is one of the best predictors of children's emotional and social well-being (Amato 2005). Nonetheless, many single parents find it difficult to function effectively as parents. In comparisons with continuously married parents, single parents are "less emotionally supportive of their children, have fewer rules, dispense harsher discipline, are more inconsistent in dispensing discipline, provide less supervision, and engage in more conflict with their children" (p. 83).

By contrast, high-investing parents have some distinguishing characteristics (Barber 2000):
  • a warm, trusting relationship with their children;
  • minimal use of punishment and scolding and a corresponding reliance on explanation as a method of control;
  • the provision of intellectually stimulating activities and toys;
  • spending time talking to and listening to children; and
  • an emotional commitment between parents and children.

Strengthening the quality of parenting, therefore, could provide significant benefits to children, including reduced poverty, increased social and emotional well-being, and higher academic performance. The field, however, is still struggling with how to
  • conceptualize and design interventions that increase parental investment and, by extension, student academic development;
  • design research in a rigorous enough way to establish causality and to influence meaningful and timely interventions; and
  • distill from the several models that have not been rigorously tested.
One such model is the Baby College program, nested within the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ). The HCZ is considered one of the largest social experiments in the United States. The mission of Geoffrey Canada, the president and CEO of the HCZ, is to change the odds for children and parents in a sixty-block zone in central Harlem, an area with about seven thousand children, more than 60 percent of whom live below the poverty line and three-quarters of whom score below grade level on statewide reading and math assessments. Mr. Canada's strategy is comprehensive, rather than narrowly focused on academic achievement. That is, academic excellence is one of the outcomes, while the mechanisms through which it is achieved include the nurturance of family stability, family well-being, opportunities for employment, decent and affordable housing, youth development activities for adolescents, and a quality education for children in the sixty-block zone.


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