Parental skills are no longer transmitted solely through the family model. Blended families, geographical isolation, and school pressure have fragmented educational references. Supporting parents in raising their children today requires mobilizing structured resources, linked to local policies and recent data on child development.
Perinatal mental health and parenting: an underutilized angle
Most parental support programs focus on education, schooling, or conflict management. The identification of perinatal mental health issues remains underrepresented, even though it conditions the quality of the parent-child bond from the very first months.
The parenting pathway 2025-2027 now explicitly includes the identification of perinatal mental health issues as a key focus. Referral to primary care professionals (midwives, general practitioners, PMI services) becomes a structural link in supporting families.
We observe that this dimension remains little visible in guides aimed at parents. Signs of parental burnout, postpartum depression, or severe anxiety are often trivialized or confused with normal fatigue in the early months. Identifying these situations early allows for appropriate support before difficulties crystallize in the educational relationship.
For professionals in the sector, it is possible to access the parents’ page of Douceur Enfance to consult additional resources on these topics.
Public early childhood service: what municipal competence changes
Since January 1, 2025, municipalities are responsible for public early childhood services. This evolution transfers to municipalities the responsibility of guiding families towards childcare options and parenting support services.
This transfer has a concrete impact on access to educational resources. Parents are no longer solely dependent on national programs (CAF, REAAP) to find a contact person. The municipality becomes the first point of entry.
The departmental schemes for family services, renewed in 2026-2027, locally translate national guidelines related to young child care and parenting support. The instruction published on September 8, 2026, frames this translation. For families, this means that the support offer now varies significantly from one territory to another.
We recommend that parents directly contact their municipal early childhood service or social center to learn about active local programs, rather than relying on national directories that do not always reflect the reality on the ground.
Screens and children: equipment levels replace simple hourly quotas
Recommendations on screen exposure have evolved. The tiered equipment approach takes over from the simple daily time quota. Instead of setting a maximum duration by age group, recent guidelines suggest conditioning access to each type of screen based on the child’s maturity level.
This logic changes the parental stance. It is no longer about monitoring a timer, but about deciding when a child accesses a phone, a personal tablet, or a social network. The focus is on the nature of the tool, not just the duration.
- Starting from middle school, the question of the first mobile phone arises. The choice between a simple phone and a smartphone conditions exposure to social networks and unfiltered content.
This type of local resource usefully complements general recommendations by helping parents structure their child’s progression towards digital autonomy.
Parental skills: what educational support really encompasses
The term “parental skills” is often used in institutional programs without a clear operational definition. The National Council for Parenting Support breaks it down into material, psychological, moral, cultural, and social aspects of the adult-child bond.
In practice, educational support targets three distinct areas:
- The organizational area: managing the child’s rhythms, balancing school time and family time, sharing responsibilities between co-parents.
- The relational area: communication with the child according to their age, conflict management, posture in the face of strong emotions.
- The orientation area: the parent’s ability to identify when a difficulty exceeds their skills and to seek a professional (psychologist, speech therapist, specialized educator).
Parent exchange groups, collective workshops, and parent-child welcome places (LAEP) work on these three areas in a complementary manner.
Support works when the parent identifies their own resources rather than applying a prescribed model. The most effective programs are those that start from the concrete questions of families, not from a top-down theoretical program.
The growing commercialization of parental coaching offers, noted by the HCFEA, raises a quality issue. Parents seeking educational resources benefit from prioritizing structures linked to institutional networks (CAF, PMI, social centers) rather than services without verified ethical frameworks.
