The research literature is characterized by a fundamental controversy about what parenting support is and what it aims to be: A health-promotion measure that supports child development or a “totalizing tendency […] of defining the relation between parents and children in technical terms” (Smeyers, 2010). This paper presents a study from Norway, where parenting support is offered as a “universal”, publicly funded service. It presents and discusses findings based on in-depth interviews with 45 parents from different social (educational, economic) and cultural (migration) backgrounds, focusing on how they perceived the purpose and outcomes of parenting support programs in which they participated. A key finding is that parents with majority backgrounds are less enamoured with the quality and usefulness of provision, and tend instead towards other sources for advice on parenting (primarily their social and familial networks). Many also express scepticism of broad approaches to parenting support provision. In contrast, minority parents lacking “Norwegian” social and familial networks genuinely find the courses valuable, both for their own integration and self-confidence and also the development of their children. The findings help address the need for further research into the effectiveness of parenting support and its potential role in reducing social inequality.

Evidence-based parenting support (EBPS) programs derived from social learning theory, cognitive behavioural principles, and developmental theory are among the most successful innovations in the entire field of psychological intervention. EBPS programs have been at the cutting edge of global dissemination efforts to increase community access to evidence-based parenting programs. Despite the widely recognised success of these efforts, existing models of parenting intervention are not a panacea, and much can be done to improved outcomes. Efforts to improve outcomes have included the emergence of a population-based approach to increase reach of intervention. This has included the development of flexible delivery modalities, including online parenting interventions, the incorporation of strategies to enhance cultural relevance and acceptability of programs, and more recently, applications with parents in very low resource settings. Further enhancements of outcomes are likely to be forthcoming as we gain a better understanding of the mechanisms that explain positive intervention effects and non-response to interventions. More cost-effective online professional training models are needed to disseminate and promote the sustained use of EBPS programs. New interventions are required for the most vulnerable parents when parenting concerns are complicated by other problems such as trauma, addictions, relationship conflict, family violence, mental health problems and intergenerational poverty. However, to scale effective programs, Commonwealth and state government policies and funding priorities need to respond to evidence about what works and make sustained investments in the implementation of parenting programs. Possible strategies to enhance the policy impact of intervention research are discussed.

This article examines the expansion and underlying aims of structured parenting support in Norway. Norway's approach to parenting support differs from that of most other countries (Glavin and Schaffer, 2014), in supposedly being universal and offered to all parents (Eng et al., 2017). However, it is difficult to determine whether parenting support in Norway is actually unique, since little is known about how it is implemented in practice (Bråten and Sønsterudbråten, 2016; Wesseltoft-Rao et al., 2017). This article contributes further knowledge of how parenting support travels from national-level policy-making down to the level of municipal institutions where it is implemented. The analysis draws upon insights from a comprehensive case study in Bergen, Norway's second largest city, that included fieldwork observations and service mapping over a period of two years (2015–2017), a large number of in-depth interviews with various stakeholders, and analysis of relevant documents (advertisements, project applications and project reports, budgets, etc.).

In Finland, parenting-related anxiety increased in the 1990s during a deep economic recession and subsequent widespread cutbacks to family services. Despite these cutbacks, resources allocated to services underlining the role of parents – namely, parenting support – increased, manifesting in the establishment of family support projects in the 2000s. Employing positioning theory and pragmatic modalities, I explore how key attributes of good parenting – responsibility and competence – are discussed within family support projects (n = 310). Given discussions regarding the relationship between parenting-related anxiety and the increasing number of parenting-related experts, this article explores parents’ positions within such discussions and overall parenting support in Finland. The analysis of projects clarifies the role of the parenting-related experts, but also provides a nuanced view of the position of parents. In some projects, for instance, parents are positioned as experts whose parenting responsibilities and competence are strengthened within peer-parent relationships and shared within the surrounding community.

Parent education surfaced as a political question in Sweden in the 1960s and support for parents has since remained on the political agenda. Despite different views on the ideal relationship between the welfare state, the family and children, support for parents has been advocated by parties from all over the political spectrum. By tracing the political debate, this article addresses the question of how the notion of support for parents was adapted to different political ideas, ideologies and ways of defining the relationship between state, family and children from the 1960s until the 2000s in Sweden. We analyse the arguments that different political parties offered and the varying meanings attributed to terms like ‘parent education’ (föräldrautbildning) and ‘parenting support’ (föräldrastöd) during three different phases in the transformation of the Swedish welfare state: the final period of its expansion in the 1960s and 1970s; the economic crisis and retrenchments of welfare services in the 1990s; and the era of individual responsibility in the 2000s. Support for parents has been actualised as a solution to different social and political problems and the notions of parent education and parenting support have proven the capacity to accommodate different political ideas, ideologies and visions.

This article analyses and problematises central assumptions in Sweden's National Strategy for Developing Parenting Support, a document that addresses children's deteriorating psychological health. The analysis was performed with Bacchi's (2009) approach to policy analysis. The results show how parental determinism is expressed; psychological ill health among school-aged children is described as an individualised problem caused by insecure parents, who are represented as the most important persons in a child's life and, therefore, are considered to be risk factors that require continuous support. Evidence-based parenting support programmes in particular are described as a central tool for improving parents’ sense of responsibility and parenting skills. While the strategy aims to offer all Swedish parents support, it underlines ideals that have been related to gendered, middle-class notions of parenting. The issue concerning children's psychological health is problematised and discussed in relation to parental determinism, the risk society, equality, equity and psychological health.

This article examines developments in parenting and family support services in France. Drawing on qualitative empirical studies, the article considers two types of initiatives ‒ the Programmes for Educational Success (PRE) and parenting interventions delivered alongside child protection services. Both of these services are examples of new types of parenting and family support interventions in the French context targeted at ‘children at risk’, seeking to address and prevent problems of educational underachievement, youth offending, poor health in children and young people and child neglect and maltreatment. The article critically reviews tensions between principles of more responsive, partnership-based family support and more prescriptive parenting education and family interventions. Drawing on empirical findings, the article examines frontline practice and professional‒family relationships, highlighting the significance of ‘parental involvement’ practice and conflicting professional and parental perspectives about children's needs, family support and professional–client relationships.

This article focuses on ‘the turn to parenting’ in the Netherlands and embeds it in a major reform called ‘transition and transformation’. While support for parenting by way of public healthcare and denominational family care and advice has a long tradition in the Netherlands, the field gained new importance in the 1990s under the influence of medical and psychological ‘scientification’ and the introduction of evidence-based methods. Current reforms are modulated with a critique of specialised forms of parent support and (re-)introduce a community- and family-based approach in which professionals are charged with helping families to help themselves and with guiding and supervising volunteers who actually do the job of parenting support.

The long tradition of parent education and support in German social welfare provision has recently acquired a new importance. As in the recent expansion of public early childhood education and care, the current emphasis on supporting parents highlights altered definitions of childhood, shifting boundaries between ‘public’ and ‘private’ in parent‒child relations, and new local welfare mixes in service delivery. The article uses a literature review and qualitative interviews with experts, decision makers and service providers: first, to explicate older policy ideas in the new turn to parenting and the strong role being given to model projects for policy reform in the German institutional setting; second, to present recurrent themes in the interviews with professionals working on the ground, such as the new role of childcare centres in accessing parents, ongoing problems of coordination and cooperation in parenting support and issues of evidence and evaluation.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, a set of measures and interventions has been progressively implemented in France under the heading of ‘parenting support’ (soutien à la parentalité). This article describes this policy process in order to understand the drivers, instruments and actors at work, and also to highlight the controversies and ideological roots of the policy and its framing. It is argued that parenting support policy is the result of a complex process engaging a potent combination of old and new ideas, objectives and instruments which involve political and ideological contestation. The current turn to parenting in France is mainly a recalibration of previous experiences that were themselves also the site of important contradictions and controversies.

This article enquires into how parenting support, as concept, policy and provision, has penetrated the English social policy landscape, and critically considers why it has proved so popular with policy makers. It first outlines the existing policy configuration. The second section identifies some key factors precipitating the roll-out of parenting support and the third section takes an overview of the significance of the developments from a social and family policy perspective. The argument advanced is that the growth and expansion of parenting support is explained by a coming together of a set of political exigencies around ‘risk’ and the healthy child, and a set of policy ‘solutions’ which are seen to have high promise. In particular, parenting support has the advantage of being relatively easily generalisable (especially in the form of programmes) and aligns with several current developments of the welfare state, towards activation, provision of support through services and an interest in localism.

This article sets out to investigate the political development and implementation of parenting support services in Sweden. The object of the analysis is on how parenting support has been organised and how it has been articulated in policy debates, and also key elements of parenting support in practice. The analysis shows that parenting support builds upon a century-long tradition of, for example, pre-emptive health care check-ups and services to parents, counselling and parenting education. There are, however, elements in parenting support policy which mark a clear deviation from this policy legacy. These include the introduction of structured parenting programmes, the growth of the idea of parents as autonomous beings, and the partial relocation of parenting support into new public health goals.