A Brief Parenting Intervention to Enhance the Parent-Child Relationship in Hong Kong: Harmony@Home

Abstract

There is a dearth of high-level evidence for brief programs designed to promote positive parent-child relationships in nonwestern cultures. We present a pilot randomized controlled trial of a four-session intervention to enhance the parenting skills that promote a positive relationship with pre-adolescent children in Hong Kong. Our intervention, Harmony@Home, utilized Cunningham's culturally appropriate coping modeling, problem-solving approach to change parental behavior. Our objective was to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability and initial evidence of benefit of the intervention. We blindly randomized 150 Hong Kong parents of children 10-13 years of age to (a) a Harmony@Home intervention group, (b) a waitlist control group, or (c) a third active intervention which shared the control group. Immediately following the intervention, we report increases in satisfaction with the parent-child relationship, one of the targeted parenting behaviors and family harmony, for the Harmony@Home group versus control group. However, only the results from satisfaction with the parent-child relationship were significant at 3-months post intervention. Most respondents reported high levels of program satisfaction. The results provide preliminary evidence that this parenting intervention is culturally acceptable for a nonwestern general population, is feasible for implementation in a community setting and shows evidence of benefit. This intervention is concordant with public health priorities because of the global importance of the parent-child relationship as a protective factor for adolescent outcomes, the need for culturally-appropriate interventions for nonwestern populations, and design characteristics that promote dissemination.

Keywords: Family; Nonwestern culture; Parenting; Parent–child relationships; Prevention.

Fig. 1

Intervention model

Fig. 2

Flow of participants through each stage of the study