Franco-Ontarian parenting couples living in the Ottawa region and their perceptions regarding the usefulness of prenatal classes

Research
By Denise Moreau, Viola Polomeno, Catherine de Pierrepont, Jocelyne Tourigny, Marie-Christine Ranger
English

In the last few years, there has been an important decrease in parents’ interest and participation in prenatal classes in Canada and elsewhere in the world. Partial results were obtained on parenting couples’ participation in and satisfaction with prenatal classes, from a larger study involving 103 francophone couples living in Ottawa, using a mixed methods descriptive and longitudinal research design. This article aims to present the reasons why parents do not participate in prenatal classes and their suggestions for improving them. Several parents indicated that subjects such as pain management, birthing with a midwife, labor support from a doula, breastfeeding, and postnatal sexuality should be added to the classes. Also, they would like to have more flexible hours, more interaction during the classes, more emphasis given to expectant fathers, more access to a variety of resources and content, and teaching methods that are more dynamically delivered. These research findings will provide recommendations for the delivery of prenatal education, for nurses’ training in this domain, and for future research.

Keywords

  • prenatal education
  • parents
Go to the article on Cairn-int.info