Happy (confident) mum, happy baby: Postnatal learning study
How our Understanding your baby pathway is significantly improving parental confidence.
The early weeks and months with a new baby can be joyful, overwhelming and full of change, as parents are learning about their baby whilst finding confidence in themselves. Understanding your baby, Togetherness’ online postnatal parenting programme, is designed to offer practical guidance, reassurance and a space for reflection during one of life’s most important transitions.
Contributing to parental confidence
It has now been proven to help build parent confidence – an important contributor to both a parent and child’s mental health. In our 30th anniversary year, Togetherness researchers presented recent study findings to the World Congress of Infant Mental Health, with encouraging evidence of the pathway’s impact. A UK study of 2,322 parents and caregivers who completed the pre- and post-course questionnaire (Karitane Parenting Confidence Scale) found that those who followed the online course, Understanding your baby reported significant improvements in their confidence across a range of parenting skills by the end of the course. As parents’ belief in their own abilities grew, they felt better equipped to understand and respond to their baby’s needs. Published in the Community Practitioner with research led by Renata Sanchez Egaña, the report, Understanding your baby: Evaluating a web-based postnatal parenting programme, demonstrates the online course leads to significant improvements in parents’ self-belief across various aspects of parenting such as feeding, soothing, establishing routines, and understanding their baby’s needs.
Why self-efficacy matters
Research has long shown that low parental confidence can be linked to poorer parental mental health, including postnatal depression. Supporting parents to feel more capable is therefore an important investment in the wellbeing of both parent and child.
The findings also highlight the value of accessible digital support. By making trusted, evidence-based guidance available online, Understanding your baby gives parents the flexibility to learn at a time and place that works for them, helping more families access the support they need when they need it most. Part of a suite of postnatal courses to support parents in their journey, these results reinforce the impact of our resources and effectiveness of our approach: when parents feel more confident, they are better able to build strong, responsive relationships with their babies. And those early relationships can make a lasting difference, laying the foundations for healthier, happier futures for children and families.
Building parental confidence matters. During the postnatal period, caregivers experience significant emotional, psychological and social changes, while babies rely on warm, attuned relationships to develop secure attachment and healthy emotional regulation.
Tenesha’s story
Understanding your baby is a learning pathway for all parents, carers and grandparents of young babies, helping them to understand emotional health, wellbeing, behaviour, and more – so they can raise confident, kind, emotionally aware and resilient people. As a first-time mum, Tenesha grew her own parenting confidence with the Togetherness online pathways.
Watch: NHS emotional health support for parents
Mum, Tenesha, shares how our online learning pathway brought reassurance in the early days of parenthood, giving her an insight into her brain development and rhythms.
“It’s three words: look, think, say, to help you stop and address behaviour in a rational way.”
Tenesha’s experience
“Having your first baby, there are times where you think, ‘Oh my gosh! How am I going to make it through the end of this?’ It feels never-ending. Taking this course has shown me that I’m not alone. It’s reassuring to know all these things are normal. I’m always looking for new things to try out to help me be a better parent. This course was free to people in my area so I jumped on it! I wanted to have more of an insight into Vienna’s mind, what’s going on, and the different stages she’ll be going through. It’s shown me that my growing baby is going through all these new emotions and feelings, and having that bit of reassurance is really helpful. You take a step back and see that it all makes a lot of sense. Rather than having an overwhelming amount of conflicting information – which I think you definitely get a lot of through social media and other routes – knowing that Togetherness is part of the NHS fills you with confidence. It’s accurate and it’s safe.
Putting learning into practice
One of the things that stuck with me was behaviours; about you, as an adult and parent, taking a step back. It’s three words: look, think, say, to help you stop and address behaviour in a rational way. That was definitely something that stuck with me and is going to help, probably more so when she’s older. It’s something that’s etched into my brain, and I keep using it. Visiting a farm recently, Vienna got frustrated at having something taken off her, experiencing these big feelings but not knowing how to properly communicate them. I took a step back, got down to her level and explained what I was doing, and why – even if she doesn’t fully understand yet! Putting it into practice with real life situations, especially out of the comfort of home, definitely allows us to prepare for the future when she does understand more, and we can both regulate our emotions. What I’ve learnt on the Togetherness course shows me I can stay grounded and work through these things, and I feel confident as a mum to Vienna – I know I’m making the right decisions for her.”
