Involvement of the personal social network as a factor in parent educationeffectiveness

This study examined the impact of mothers' involvement with their social ne tworks upon their self-reported changes in behaviors and attitudes due to a parenting intervention-in this case monthly, age-paced parenting newslette rs. Path analyses revealed that discussing and sharing newsletter copies wi th others was associated with greater self-reported change but did not sign ificantly mediate the relationship between newsletter use and parental chan ge. Rather; individual use of the newsletter and social sharing of the cont ent had independent effects on parenting. The results support a general vie w that the advice of parenting programs is not accepted or rejected in a va cuum, but often within the context of discussions within the participants' existing social networks. This suggests two practical implications for prog ram developers: (a) Interventions might be more effective if they encourage d such social network processing of program advice, and (b) programs might even target social networks rather than individual parents as their clients .