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European Journal of Developmental Psychology

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Promoting positive parenting in Europe: New challenges for the European

Society for Developmental Psychology
María José Rodrigoa
a
University of La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

Online publication date: 26 April 2010

To cite this Article Rodrigo, María José(2010) 'Promoting positive parenting in Europe: New challenges for the European
Society for Developmental Psychology', European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 7: 3, 281 — 294
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 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
2010, 7 (3), 281–294

Promoting positive parenting in Europe: New challenges

for the European Society for Developmental Psychology
Marı́a José Rodrigo
University of La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

This paper outlines the Council of Europe’s initiative of positive parenting as

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being of high importance for developmental and educational science, for

family and social policy, and society in general. It also describes how European
developmental psychology and its representatives may contribute to this
initiative by promoting research on the parents’ socialization role in modern
societies, on the effective ways of supporting parents to preserve families
under at-risk circumstances, and on the best ways to deliver parental
support by means of evidence-based parenting programmes. Evidence-based
programming also involves having the programme properly implemented and
integrated into the community. The transfer of this knowledge to best practices
is also emphasized, based on empowerment and partnership, to validate parent
support work. The paper ends with the contributions of ESDP to the initiative
on positive parenting and future directions to face this challenge.

Keywords: Positive parenting; Parental role; Parental social support; Evidence-

based parenting programmes; Best practices.

There is currently an increasing interest in developing child and family

policies in the European Union (EU) and a greater willingness to become
involved in areas previously regarded as the private domain of individuals.
Although European family policies are still far from following a unitary and
coherent schema, they offer an interesting resource to identify a variety of
programmes and interventions on parenting support currently carried out
by the EU Member States at national level. They also offer a way of
examining the increasing interconnectedness of European states at a

Correspondence should be addressed to Marı́a José Rodrigo, Department of Developmental

and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of La Laguna, Campus de
Guajara, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain. E-mail: mjrodri@ull.es
In a shortened version, this paper was presented as the Presidential Address at the XIVth
Conference of the European Society for Developmental Psychology in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 20
August 2009.

Ó 2010 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
http://www.psypress.com/edp DOI: 10.1080/17405621003780200
 282 RODRIGO

governmental and legislative European level by promoting the adoption of

common rules and recommendations.
As a major step in this direction, the Committee of Ministers of the
Council of Europe launched Recommendation 19 (2006) on ‘‘Policy to
Support Positive Parenting’’ as being of high importance for developmental
and educational science, for family and social policy, and society in general.
Positive parenting is defined as: ‘‘parental behaviour based on the best
interest of the child that is nurturing, empowering, non-violent and provides
recognition and guidance which involves setting of boundaries to enable the
full development of the child’’. In this Recommendation the importance to
children of growing up in a positive family environment is endorsed and the
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responsibility of the state to create the right conditions for positive

parenting is emphasized. The Recommendation also intended to encourage
parents to seek assistance if they encounter difficulties in bringing up their
children as well as to encourage them to eliminate the use of corporal
punishment in disciplining children and to acquire alternative methods.
Promoting positive parenting is of particular importance in the present time
of economic crisis, where tensions within families may increase due to
unemployment or general economic insecurity.
This paper highlights the major points of the Recommendation and
focuses on the new perspectives and challenges for European developmental
psychology in contributing to this initiative. In concrete, it is proposed that
developmental research is needed in at least three areas: (i) the changing
views of the child and socialization in modern societies; (ii) the effective ways
of supporting parents to preserve families under at-risk circumstances; and
(iii) the characteristics of evidence-based parenting programmes, and the
transfer of this knowledge to best practice. The final section refers to the
contributions of ESDP to the initiative on positive parenting and some
examples of future directions to face this challenge.

PRINCIPLES OF THE POSITIVE PARENTING

RECOMMENDATION
The Positive Parenting Recommendation considers that the task of
parenting should be defined within the framework of the children’s and
parents’ rights and obligations. The goal of parenting is to promote positive
parent–child relationships, founded on the exercise of parental responsi-
bility, to optimize the child’s potential development and wellbeing.
Therefore, parents need to become more aware of the nature of their role,
their children’s rights, and the responsibilities and obligations that derive
from these and their own rights. The Recommendation also emphasizes the
idea that parents, children and young people should be considered as
relevant actors in defining child, youth and family policies and should be
 POSITIVE PARENTING IN EUROPE 283

brought into decision-making processes. There is a strong emphasis at EU

level on children and young people’s rights with the introduction in
February 2007 of the European Commission’s Communication ‘‘Towards a
European Strategy on the Rights of the Child’’. However, few Member
States have referenced children’s rights in their National Action Plans for
Inclusion and there was virtually no recognition of parents and children as
‘‘relevant actors’’ in the planning process.
The Recommendation aims to make member states aware of the necessity
of providing parents with sufficient support mechanisms to meet their
important responsibilities in bringing up their children. Member states are
called upon to support parents in their upbringing tasks through: (a)
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adequate family policies that provide the necessary legislative, adminis-

trative and financial measures to create the best possible conditions for
positive parenting; (b) the provision of services to support parents such as
local counselling services, help lines and educational programmes; and (c)
specific services for parents in situation of risk to prevent the unnecessary
displacement of children due to maltreating parental behaviour. Creating
the right conditions also means taking steps to remove barriers to positive
parenting, such as policies to promote a better reconciliation of family and
working life, and, importantly, raising awareness of the value of positive
parenting.
The Recommendation also emphasizes the best ways to deliver parental
support. Parent support programmes should be based on empowerment and
partnership, not deficiency and punishment; they should be needs led and
not prescriptive in approach; they should be evidence based and reflect best
practice. Member States should promote more robust research on effective
parenting programmes. It is also very important to validate parent support
work, whether this takes place at an informal, semiformal or formal level.
Defining appropriate standards, training programmes and quality of
workers is as important as the quality of programme content itself,
according to the Recommendation.
Finally, diversity must be recognized and respected in relation to family
patterns, cultural and gender differences, in keeping with the best interests of
the child; there should be positive policy adjustments for particularly
vulnerable groups such as immigrant families; there should be greater
recognition of fathers’ responsibilities in the family, and support for
children’s involvement with both parents in the event of separation
(provided it is safe to allow this).

THE CHANGING VIEW OF CHILD AND SOCIALIZATION

The concept of positive parenting focuses on a view of parenting that is
respectful of the child’s best interests and rights as articulated by the United
 284 RODRIGO

Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989. The

UNCRC affirms a view of the child as agent, a subject of their own life and
development. In this view the child is competent and capable and the role of
parents is to facilitate the child to exercise his or her rights, by providing
direction and guidance appropriate to the child’s evolving capacities. When
translated into the family setting, values of mutual respect, equal dignity,
authenticity, integrity and responsibility are foundations for developing
parent–child relationships that promote children’s rights (Daly, 2007). In
accordance with this view, the Recommendation places a focus on the
development of positive parent–child relationships to optimize the child’s
development and wellbeing, rather than the exclusive focus on the exercise
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of parental authority and the identification of the different parental actions

involved in the up-bringing of children.
In this sense, the recommendation diverges from traditional theories of
socialization that have emphasized parental authority instead of parental
responsibility. The first one places an emphasis on the parent’s side whereas
the second one places an emphasis on the child’s side. The predominant view
has been that children are shaped by unidirectional influences from
significant others and by the intergenerational transmission of beliefs and
behaviours that they have to imitate and internalize to ensure the
preservation of their cultural values. Consequently, research has been
aimed at connecting static characteristics of parents (e.g., the parenting
styles model; Baumrind, 1968) to static characteristics of children (e.g.,
child’s social competences), conceived as consequences of parental actions,
without any insight on the interactional processes linking both aspects
(Darling & Steinberg, 1993). The triumvirate of ‘‘good’’ parenting
behaviours consisted of parental nurturance, consistent discipline and
appropriate balance of control/autonomy. Among the parental strategies
recommended are providing reasons and explanations to explain the norms,
removal of privileges, and praise. However, the child’s views and actions
towards the parents during the socialization process were completely
disregarded as only the child’s global characteristics such as age, sex or
temperament were considered to influence on the parents’ views and
behaviours. How could children’s rights be served and enhanced with this
traditional, unidirectional view of parenting?
Recent socialization theories are more akin to the rights-based approach
adopted in the recommendation. These theories consider socialization as a
process of mutual adaptation, accommodation and negotiation performed
during complex, ongoing, bidirectional exchanges of parents and children
(Grolnick, Price, Beiswenger, & Sauck, 2007; Kerr, Stattin, Biesecker, &
Ferrer-Wreder, 2003; Kuczynski & Parkin, 2007). These interactions are
embedded in a history of parent–child relationships that constrains the
meaning given by the actors during the process of mutual exchanges, as has
 POSITIVE PARENTING IN EUROPE 285

been largely recognized (e.g., Hinde, 1979). In these circumstances, it is

crucial to know the interpersonal schemas that parents have as a guidance
during their interactions with their child (Bugental & Grusec, 2006). But it is
also crucial to reveal the child’s agency in reading and interpreting the
parental messages (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994; Rodrigo, Janssens, &
Ceballos, 1999) and in promoting the parent personal development, as it
is recognized by parents and children (De Mol & Buysse, 2008). Family
conflicts are not seen as negative outcomes but as a logical result of
dialectical forces operating during the respective interpretive process. In
fact, family conflicts provide means for expressing concern and dissatisfac-
tion, bringing opportunities for individuals’ development and the ongoing
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construction of parent–child relationships (Smetana, 2005).

Results from this line of research may help to delineate the task of
parenting in modern societies (Daly, 2007). Enabling the establishment of
secure bonding for the child and providing structure and guidance for the
learning of parental norms are two primary aspects of the parenting task
that have already been proposed in former theories of socialization. The
child needs from its parents warmth, acceptance, sensitivity, responsiveness,
positive involvement and support. The child also needs borders and
guidance for his or her physical and psychological security and the
development of his or her own values and sense of personal and social
responsibility. However, two new facets of the parenting task, linking to the
child agency and to the new theories of socialization, have emerged:
recognition and empowerment.

Recognition. This refers to the child’s need to be acknowledged and have

his or her personal experience responded to and confirmed by its parents.
From the parents it requires the showing of interest in the child’s reality or
life as well as a willingness and capacity to listen to the child, to try to
understand his or her point of view, and the allowance of the child playing
an active part in family life and decision making.

Empowerment. This refers to behaviour that fosters the child’s capacity

to combine a sense of personal control with the ability to affect the
behaviour of others. Empowerment implies a parental focus on enhancing
existing strengths in a child, respect for the evolving capacity of a child and a
recognition that childhood and parenthood are both dynamic processes.
Finally, to adequately perform the parenting task, new capacities and
competences, other than controlling the child’s behaviour, should be
proposed as potential targets of parental interventions. Some of these are
the following: observing the child’s characteristics and needs and the
situational constraints for actions; promoting cognitive and emotional
perspective taking; ‘‘mentalizing’’, that is, attributing mental states to the
 286 RODRIGO

child to individuate him/her; being flexible in the application of the parental

actions according to the child’s characteristics and needs; using different
communication formats to convey the parental messages, as for instance
conversational and argumentative formats, and not only direct orders;
placing parental practices within a framework of mid- to long-term
educational goals instead of using only short-term goals based on immediate
child compliance; and promoting parental reflections on the consequences of
their educational practices on child and family outcomes (Azar, Lauretti, &
Loding, 1998; Reder, Duncan, & Lucey, 2003; Rodrigo, Máiquez, Correa,
Martı́n, & Rodrı́guez, 2006; Rodrigo, Máiquez, Martı́n & Byrne, 2008).
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CREATING THE RIGHT CONDITIONS: SUPPORTING

PARENTS UNDER AT-RISK CIRCUMSTANCES
One clear message of the Recommendation is that the parenting task cannot
be adequately performed in social isolation. The task of parenting is
predominantly seen within an ecological framework that considers children
in relation to their family, neighbourhood, the larger social structure and
economic political and cultural environment (Belsky, 1984; Bronfenbrenner
& Evans, 2000). Therefore, the parenting task needs social support to be
adequately performed.

Social support. This is defined as the process by which the social

resources provided by the informal and formal networks allow instrumental
and expressive personal needs to be met in everyday situations as well as
under crisis conditions (Lin & Ensel, 1989). The informal networks comprise
the intimate and confiding relationships with relatives, friends and
neighbours. The semi-formal support includes the individual’s participation
in voluntary organizations, clubs and services, and political and civic
organizations. The formal network is comprised of the services provided by
professionals belonging to institutions (e.g., schools, day-care centres,
churches, and social services).
All families need social support but this support is especially crucial for
families experiencing negative psychosocial conditions (e.g., marital
violence, low educational background, poverty, substance abuse). These
families are typically on social assistance and receive many forms of support
delivered by the social agents of the municipal services in terms of cash
assistance, work activities, education, and health-related services, among
others. However, researchers and practitioners are only starting to know the
influence of informal and formal sources of help on parental functioning in
at-risk families. Informal and semi-formal support consists of a rich system
of private exchanges embedded in a natural framework of mutual assistance
and obligations in the primary group, the neighbourhood and the
 POSITIVE PARENTING IN EUROPE 287

community. Therefore, people tend to seek informal support to increase

their feelings of competence, personal worth and self-confidence in their
personal resources. By contrast, formal support is embedded in a framework
of unidirectional exchanges, guided by protocols and applied by experts in
accordance with standards of quality. When help giving is unidirectional, it
can make the recipient feel inferior and vulnerable, experiencing both a loss
of control and interference that could be intolerable and humiliating (Ghate
& Hazel, 2002). Therefore, there should be a certain balance between the
two systems of help provision to avoid recipients developing feelings of
inadequacy.
Which is the combination of informal and formal support exhibited by
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at-risk mothers in comparison with those used by non-at-risk mothers? In a

recent study, Rodrigo, Martı́n, Máiquez, and Rodrı́guez (2007) examined
the differences between the social networks called on to solve problems of at-
risk and non-at-risk mothers. At-risk mothers were referred by the Social
Services because they lived under adverse psychosocial circumstances that
affected the way they treated their children, whereas non-at-risk mothers
were not referred by the Social Services as they did not live under negative
circumstances and were not known to have shown inadequate behaviour
towards their children. Results indicated that, compared with the at-risk
mothers, the social support for non-at-risk families relied heavily on the
partner and the school. Partner support is not as important in at-risk
mothers because they tend to live more in one-parent families and they have
a story of repeated ruptures and reconstitutions of relationships. At-risk
mothers do not rely upon the school for support as they also have a history
of poor relationships with the school system, starting with their own
negative experiences as pupils and following with the school failure of their
children. However, for at-risk families, a supplementary network emerged,
consisting of the social services, voluntary associations, neighbours, friends,
the police, other person supports and the child protection agency. Among
this at-risk group, high-risk mothers, as compared to low-risk mothers, only
relied upon sources of formal support and grandparent support. Grand-
parents play a substitute role of parenting when at-risk mothers are in
trouble. It seems that they have to open their personal and family space to
the external sources of support, which makes the wellbeing of vulnerable
families more dependent on the quality of the neighbourhood (Garbarino &
Kostelny, 1992). They are also more in danger of suffering the negative
consequences of a poor coordination among different agencies and social
providers (Matos & Sousa, 2004). The existence of multiple help providers
from outside the natural networks may also interfere in the everyday life of
the family, diminishing the sense of privacy in its members and encouraging
a lack of responsibility for their own lives. In conclusion, according to
Rodrigo et al. (2007), at-risk families have an unbalanced network of
 288 RODRIGO

informal and formal supports, which is heavily dependent on efficient

planning and management of personal and community resources.
To improve the way support is delivered to at-risk families experts
recommend several measures: (a) parent support should be provided as an
integrated part of policy development; (b) formal support should be
universally available and provided in a non-stigmatizing way; (c) informal
support should be promoted by creating and strengthening existing social
bonds and encouraging new links between parents and their family,
neighbours and friends; and (d) vulnerable families also need to strengthen
their bonds to community life by empowering parents’ and children’s
associations and NGOs and activating a range of self-help and other
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community-based groups and services.

From the parent’s point of view, vulnerable parents define the right kind
of support to be non-judgemental and non-stigmatizing, promoting values
such as trust, reciprocity, informality and mutual respect when interacting
with support providers and encompassing their own experiences of living
through a variety of difficult situations (Williams, 2004). Therefore, at-risk
parents emphasize those qualitative aspects of support that may empower
them to fulfil their basic role in the upbringing of children.

EVIDENCE-BASED PARENTING PROGRAMMES IN

EUROPE AND BEST PRACTICE
Europe is facing major challenges to promote evidence-based plans of action
and programmes and to arrive at common definitions of process and
outcome indicators for evaluations based on international norms and
research. This is an important obstacle in the process of full implementation
of the Council of Europe Recommendation on positive parenting. Given the
increasing interdependency among countries with regard to policies and
actions to support families, there is a growing interest in gathering data
about these policies and actions across countries.
An important step in this direction is the Survey on the Role of Parents
and the Support from the Governments in the EU carried out by the
ChildONEurope Secretariat in October 2007. ChildONEurope is the
European network of National Observatories on Childhood of each state
member. The objective of this survey was to identify the different kinds of
state support to the family provided in the EU Member States in recent
years, focusing in particular on the support given to parents though parental
education programmes and counselling. Few European countries have
specific legislation concerning parenting programmes, although references
can be found in more general legislation. Generally, central authorities, such
as government departments, and local government are responsible for
planning and financing services, while their implementation is entrusted to
 POSITIVE PARENTING IN EUROPE 289

local agencies and private and voluntary sector organizations. Local

authorities, schools and voluntary organizations run a wide range of
parenting programmes, mostly using funding provided by the government.
From the analysis undertaken, a rich variety of ways of providing
parenting support programmes in Europe emerged: parental group
education and counselling; telephone help-lines; e-parenting; family
preservation services; and parent-association networking. EU Member
States are devoting increasing attention to parenting support policies and
programmes by introducing a family support dimension in the provision of
health services, in particular those related to family planning, pregnancy and
the rearing of new-born children. The universality and gratuity of health
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services and social services is also a clear asset in Europe. There is a focus on
empowerment of parents and families in the context of family–services
partnerships in order to avoid services becoming a substitute for parents and
their responsibilities. Finally, services are usually provided by professionals
and mostly delivered through community centres. Two limitations are also
mentioned in the survey: the lack of consolidation of these initiatives and
their limited availability in terms of geographical distribution due to budget
limitations and the difficulty in networking among the different help
providers.
However, the survey did not give information concerning the quality of
the services. Thus, many initiatives have been developed across Europe but
the majority are not evidence-based practices, have not undergone scientific
evaluation, or have failed to demonstrate effective prevention when they
have been rigorously evaluated. There is, in general, a low recognition of the
importance of reaching consensus on quality standards and on the ways of
promoting and disseminating evidence-based programmes and practices.
International standards for research leading to evidence-based practice have
been defined. For instance, the Society for Prevention Research has designed
standards to assist practitioners, policy makers, and administrators in
determining which interventions are efficacious, which are effective, and
which are ready for dissemination (Flay et al., 2005). However, in the area of
parental education standards of evidence are not extensively implemented
and in most European policies an evidence-based reform has not been
attained, just as Spiel (2009) has claimed for the area of education in general.
Policy makers and funders are increasingly asking for research evidence
about programmes and services aimed at children and families mostly in
Anglo-American contexts. Extensive research on programme evaluations
has been conducted both for home-visiting programmes (e.g., Daro &
Donnelly, 2002; Family Strengthening Policy Center, 2007; Olds, Kitzman,
Hanks, et al., 2007; Sweet & Appelbaum, 2004), and centre-based
programmes (e.g., American Psychological Association, 2009; Chaffin &
Friedrich, 2004; DePanfilis & Dibowitz, 2008). Thanks to the extensive
 290 RODRIGO

evidence the scientific community, policy makers and funders may know
which programmes work and which do not, taking into account the
standards mentioned above.
However, evidence-based programming and policymaking is more
complex and comprehensive than simply replicating ‘‘proven programmes’’
(McCall, 2009). The process of getting communities and practitioners to
want the programme, modifying the programme to fit local circumstances if
necessary, and having the programme implemented with fidelity by agencies
and staff is equally important to ‘‘bring the programme to scale’’. Assuring
competent implementation of the programme is an ongoing process that
includes fidelity to the core structure of the model, the capacity to adapt the
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model to changing needs, and the ability to deliver the model fluidly and
expertly. Integrating programmes into communities also means under-
standing attrition. Barriers to enrolment, participation, and retention are
both systemic (e.g., uncoordinated care, failure to co-locate services, and
staff turnover) and familial (e.g., chaotic family circumstances and family
stress, language barriers, lack of transportation, poverty, and competing
demands on time and attention). Equally important is expanding cost-
analysis measures in the process of identifying the core elements of the
programme that works well and at a reduced cost. Finally, it is crucial to
integrate the programme into the existing network of resources as a way to
contribute to community development. We still know very little about most
of these aspects.
In the process of integrating the programme into the community another
important aspect is promoting and validating the professional work with
parents. Most European countries show a strong interest in investing in
training and research, in order to guarantee adequate and effective support
to parents. Moreover, the schema of positive parenting described in previous
sections should be properly transferred into practical knowledge to be
applied in real-life settings of family and children services. And this is quite a
challenge. Let me illustrate with one example the big gap that frequently lies
in between the two worlds. The positive parenting initiative involves a focus
on the empowerment of parents and families in the context of families–
services partnerships and aims to strengthen social networks as well.
Research has shown that effective parenting programmes have a positive
focus on strengthening the capacity of parents and societies to care for
children’s health and wellbeing (see, for instance, Family Strengthening
Policy Center, 2007; Kumpfer & Alvarado, 2003). However, the new schema
of strengthening and empowering families and children is still quite
unknown in many child protection agencies and local services where at-
risk families are still considered the causal factor of many child problems,
where the evaluative focus is biased to the negative side of the families and
not to their assets and resources, where low attention is given to the family
 POSITIVE PARENTING IN EUROPE 291

support system and the quality of the neighbourhoods, and where service
provision is delivered following unidirectional formats without a real
participation of the families during the whole process (Rodrigo et al., 2008).

CONTRIBUTIONS OF ESDP AND FUTURE

DIRECTIONS
The ESDP, as a scientific society, has recently defined positive parenting as a
central topic for Europe and for European developmental psychology.
ESDP as an international society could facilitate scientific exchanges of
knowledge, experience and good practice in the application of the guidelines
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on positive parenting in several European countries. Therefore, ESDP is in

the position to contribute to the successful implementation of the positive
parenting initiative in Europe.
The contribution could be articulated in several ways. First, lines of
research congruent with the new view of socialization can be promoted and
disseminated in the biannual international conferences and publications. In
fact, the promotion of positive parenting by means of parenting
programmes developed in different European countries has already been
the topic of several symposiums organized in previous ESDP conferences.
Second, some relationships can be established with other societies and
agencies to state the need to support positive parenting in Europe. For
instance, ongoing contacts with other European psychological organizations
and the Association of Psychological Science are in progress with the goal,
among others, of furthering public interest in and awareness of psycholo-
gical science and its policy implications at the individual, community, and
societal level. The establishment of these links will probably create new
opportunities to further promote the initiative of positive parenting in the
near future.
Third, ESDP can support the collection of research evidence about
parenting programmes and services in different European countries, helping
to identify and disseminate evidence-based programmes in Europe. Once
such evidence is collected it is important to reach consensus among
researchers, practitioners, agencies and policy makers on the standards for
research leading to evidence-based practice and successful implementation
of programmes at a community scale.
Fourth, it is very important to promote research on professional
development, defining the competent skill set necessary to work with
parents and providing recommendations to professionals to validate parent
support work. For instance, concerning the promotion of evidence-base
programmes and transfer to best practice, the ESDP could create spaces for
a proactive platform of information exchange between research–policy–
practice. Some of these spaces could be created thanks to the organization of
 292 RODRIGO

summer or winter schools for young scholars coming from several European
countries to present their research projects and to promote discussions
around topics of interests for the ESDP membership, such as migration or
positive parenting. In fact, a summer school for young scholars on
‘‘Immigration and development: Conceptual and methodological considera-
tions’’ was successfully organized under the auspicious of the society in
2008.
Finally, the ESDP can participate in different campaigns to raise public
awareness around topics of importance within the developmental perspec-
tive. For instance, a declaration can be prepared concerning adherence to
the campaign against corporal punishment of children as the most
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widespread form of violence against children and a violation of their rights.

The Council of Europe campaign ‘‘Raise your hand against smacking’’,
launched in Zagreb in June 2008, targets government decision makers and
the general public, including professionals working in contact with children.
The campaign’s objective is to eliminate corporal punishment of children
through the introduction of a specific ban in all European legislations (some
of the northern European countries have already enacted bans several
decades ago as Sweden in 1979 or Norway in 1987), through the promotion
of the development of positive, non-violent parenting techniques, and
through awareness on children’s rights in general. The promotion of positive
parenting is closely linked to this objective to abolish corporal punishment
of children. The realization of the child’s right to physical integrity goes
hand in hand with the support to parents in bringing up their children in a
non-violent manner.
In conclusion, the participation in these activities can enhance the
visibility of the ESDP in the international forums as well as its recognition
as a relevant interlocutor in the development and promotion of family
policies in Europe.

Manuscript received 14 October 2009

Revised manuscript accepted 15 March 2010

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