Peculiarities of Parental Education in Russia (USSR) (1980s to the Present): Historical and Pedagogical Analysis

Shik Sergey PhD in Pedagogy Associate Professor of the Department of Social Pedagogics at Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University named after V. P. Astafyev 660077, Russia, Krasnoyarskii krai, g. Krasnoyarsk, ul. Vzletnaya, 20, aud. 311 shik.krsk@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

Parental education is designed to improve children's upbringing and help them become smarter, more capable, and more educated. It encourages the new generation to consist of worthy citizens and patriots of the country. Parenting is critical in protecting children from the negative effects of congenital characteristics or the environment.

Education involves trust in the parent, assistance in understanding the value system, information, and dialogue rather than indoctrination of ideas, a positive outlook, general knowledge, and skills rather than correcting personal problems or imposing a new behavior model.

There are many traditions and innovations in parenting and various recommendations for building child-parent relationships. Education includes translating proven, time-tested practices and promising innovations that improve the effectiveness of working with parents.

Understanding the diversity of parenting education and analyzing existing trends in the development of family education is becoming increasingly relevant.

The formation of responsible and positive parenting is one of the main directions of the social policy of the Russian Federation, enshrined in the "Concept of State Family Policy in the Russian Federation for the period up to 2025," approved by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated August 25, 2014 No. 1618-R.

The system of value orientations is stated in the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation dated November 9, 2022, No. 809, "On Approval of the Foundations of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values." According to the Decree, the key instrument of state educational policy is "education in the spirit of respect for traditional values" (paragraph 24d).

Adopting Western pedagogical innovations—Westernization—should also correspond to our traditional values. It is possible to use certain productive Western educational technologies, taking into account domestic realities. It should be noted that "since pre-Petrine times, Russian pedagogical culture has been focused on borrowing new Western ideas in pedagogy, trying to choose the best from it whenever possible" ^{[63, p.42]}. Adopting elements of foreign pedagogical innovations can be productive. The issue lies in the synthesis of traditions and innovations—their balance ^{[26, p. 94]}.

A large number of studies have reviewed parent education. We note the most significant studies: I.A. Akhmetshina ^[3], T.A. Becker ^[6], A.A. Buyanov ^[9], L.N. Glebova ^[11], Yu.B. Gippenreiter ^[13], and N.M. Naumenko ^[45], A.R. Mustafayeva ^[42,43], S.A. Morozova ^[41], I. A. Lykova, A. A. Mayer ^[57], K.N. Polivanova ^{[50, 51]}, S.V. Shik ^{[65, 66]} and others.

There are not enough historical and pedagogical works: L.A. Gritsai ^[17], A.V. Kopytova ^[29], M.M. Shishkova ^[67], S.V. Shik ^[58].

The historical period under consideration, from Perestroika to the present, is a time of rejection of communist ideology, popularization of Western experience, and testing of domestic practices of working with parents. Studying this period allows us to better understand the impact of various approaches to the family and identify factors that help and hinder parents' education.

This article aims to present in chronological order the main pedagogically significant events and facts and to identify key ideas and features of the implementation of pedagogical education of parents in different periods.

1. Education of parents during the Soviet period (1980s–1991)

Parents' education in the USSR existed as universal education of parents (pedagogical universal education), mainly in schools and parent universities, and involved the transfer of knowledge about the child, relationships with them, and methods of influence. The main emphasis was on ideological issues. Soviet parents "checked their affairs with the purity of Lenin's ideas" ^[52]: problems of communist education of the younger generation, decisions of the party and the government on public education, popularization of Marxist-Leninist pedagogy, party influence on negligent parents [more: 64]. The psychological and pedagogical aspects were presented in a dry, scientific, formal, and banal manner. Parents' universities, parent-teacher conferences, teacher readings, question and answer evenings, and other forms of work were of little interest to parents. As one party functionary noted, "listeners simply run away" ^{[4, p. 2]} from lectures or seminars, and also negatively react to reproaches and teachings in individual work. Attempts were made to supplement classes with psychological counseling so that specialists could understand the family situation and provide real help to parents experiencing difficulties in parenting ^{[4, p. 3]}.

However, until the 1980s, against the background of general stagnation in the country and a formal attitude toward the initiatives of the pedagogical and parental communities, it was challenging to implement something new in the field of education, except for repeating the party's demand to "ensure an increase in the effectiveness of the system of pedagogical universal education for parents" ^[36]. There was a lack of empirical facts and specific, non-ideological, practical advice. The appeal to the Western experience was a resource for improving pedagogical education.

Western (bourgeois) working practices with parents were little known in our country until the 1980s. The bourgeois families themselves were exposed in a negative light. Thus, the behavior of parents in Great Britain was characterized as excessive moralizing, constant tugging, ridicule, and punishment ^{[2, p.38]}, and families in the United States condemned children to starvation, beatings, peers with knives, and drug-addicted parents ^{[8, p.42]}. The state sought to prevent alternative sources of information with positive descriptions of bourgeois families, work with them, and protect the population from the dangerous effects of foreign literature.

The exception was B. Spock's officially published book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (published in 1970 and 1971), which in many ways went against the existing ideologized images of "proper" parenting. "You know your child well, and I know them well."

In the 1980s, the policy of information isolation began to soften. Books began to appear describing the Western experience and allowing for its use, albeit with caution and amendments. Let's look at some important publications.

The first milestone was the publication in 1984 of the book Mistakes of Parents by the Italian progressive educator (antifascist, partisan during World War II) A. Torre Della ^[62]. It raises important issues related to parents' understanding of parenting: what to do when a child is moody, childish jealousy, parental inconsistency, excessive promises and threats, tactlessness, bad company, etc. At the same time, in the afterword, the scientific consultant Yu. Azarov emphasizes that "difficulties await the true educator of children in a bourgeois society" ^{[62, p. 134]}.

With the beginning of Perestroika (1986), when the glasnost policy was proclaimed, interest in Western innovations increased. The arrival of the famous American psychologist Carl Rogers in the USSR in 1986 launched the rethinking of work with the family. In 1987, Family and School published his article with editorial comments containing the basic principles of humanistic psychology: "active listening, the ability to take the position of another, open self-expression" ^{[54, p.22]}, which are at the same time the basic skills of parents. These provisions are consistent with the principle of pedagogy of cooperation, founded in 1986: "We do not need uniform requirements ... and friendly, companionable relations with children in the family" ^{[48, p.20]}.

The Happiness of Your Child (1986) was published by one of the pioneers of parental education, the Austrian-American psychologist and educator Rudolf Dreikurs and his co-author V. Zolts. The book examines ideas about democracy as a political idea and as the basis of family life. In their opinion, children's bad behavior arises from a sense of relationship inequality. The authors show ways to correct undesirable behavior using examples of the most common situations from family practice ^[61].

Another published work by the American educator and psychologist J.J. Jaynott, Parents and Children (1986), provides specific advice based on the basic principles of communication that will help parents live with their children with mutual respect and dignity. Parents need to listen to their children and reduce the number of lectures, orders, and instructions. You need to talk to children in a way that they understand. An adult should become a "mirror" of the child's emotions ^{[19, p.17]}—this is the key to a new relationship. And here, too, in the preface, N.N. Poddyakov and L.A. Wenger note that "not all of the author's ideas about the child... have a sufficient scientific basis" ^{[19, p.5]} and point to the lack of a system of requirements for the child as a reaction to harsh, authoritarian parenting systems ^{[19, p.6]}.

In the book by E. Bern, the founder of transactional analysis, Games Played by People (1988), he reveals the main ideas: a model of ego states, transactions, affection, games, a scenario that allows you to understand better your behavior and the behavior of other people, including child-parent relations. In the afterword, L.G. Ionina and M.S. Matskovsky warn that "the examples and situations considered by E. Bern relate to realities far from us, based on the American style of behavior, on the relationship between parents and children specific to Western society" ^{[7, p.390]}.

Another popular book translated by American author Le Shan E. continues humanistic traditions. When Your Child Drives You Crazy (1990), parents will learn many important things that they can teach their child: what to do if the child is scared, nagging, rude, or prone to accidents; the pros and cons of spanking; saying "no" and sticking to it; and much more ^[34]. A characteristic line in the reviews: "Just don't forget that it was written in the 1980s and for Americans, so some aspects of life are completely different ^[46].

Finally, the last practical guide for parents, published in the USSR, was the work of American psychologists R.T. and J. Bayardov's Your Troubled Teenager (1991). It reveals the background of working with teenagers' parents in Western reality: transferring responsibility for their own lives to a child, taking responsibility for their own lives, and related problems of the relationship between a teenager and parents ^[5].

However, the overly bureaucratic and cumbersome Soviet pedagogical system itself took a very long time to accept any innovations, both domestic and, especially, those coming from the West ^{[63, p.45]}, so implementation was usually delayed.

Nevertheless, some domestic educational practices and parenting training used Western approaches. For example, Y.B. Gippenreiter organized courses for parents based on the ideas of K. Rogers, R. Dreikurs, and T. Gordon. In her opinion, parents should be educated and trained in proper communication with children" ^{[15, p.26]}. The results of the work were presented in a series of interviews and articles in the journal Family and School (1989­–1990).

Thus, during the period under review, official pedagogical universal education with a formal approach and party postulates, as well as individual practices based on Western ideas (attention to the feelings of the parent and positive child-parent communication), coexisted. The specific psychological and pedagogical knowledge needed by the parent did not fit well with the communist ideology. The use and adaptation of Western ideas to Soviet reality was difficult.

2. Education of parents in the post–Soviet period (1992–late 2010s)

After the collapse of the USSR and communist ideology, according to the teacher and writer S. Soloveitchik, "the time has come for recognition and comprehension of contradictions" ^{[59, p.12]}. The education reform in 1992 proclaimed parents to be the first teachers (Article 18) and the de-ideologization of education (Article 1, paragraph 5). New social institutions replaced the Soviet state system. Pedagogical universal education ceased, and parents' education has lost its centralized character. Psychologists, social educators, social workers at schools, social protection institutions, and private organizations took over the work with parents.

In the 1990s, the popularization of Western works continued: R. Campbell ^[33], P. Ekman ^[69], and others, the adaptation of Western experience to domestic reality. An example is the work of the author's team called Baby, Baby, Boy: Good-Natured Instructions to Parents (1995). The book's authors paid great attention to the need to respect children's rights in their upbringing, respect the principle of freedom in parental education, and point out the inadmissibility of imposing one's own judgments and opinions ^[39].

The Russian psychologist Yu.B. Gippenreiter published the book Communicate with a Child. How? (1994), which has been reprinted many times. In it, the author, based on Western technologies and domestic ideas, reveals the ways of teaching parents unconditional acceptance of the child, active listening, participation in joint activities, support for success, expression of one's own feelings, constructive conflict resolution, friendly phrases, hugging children, and others ^[14].

However, according to A. Garey, "the end of the Soviet regime did not mean the end of the Soviet era" ^[70]. Westernization based on freedom and the democratization of personality was perceived (and is perceived) by many educators and psychologists as an indulgence for children's shortcomings. Instead of false humanism, the need for pedagogical influence, demands, and punishment was pointed out ^[35].

In addition, Westernization has been viewed by some authors as a threat to traditional ideas about parenting. According to I.Y. Medvedeva and T.L. Shishova (1994), most parents who follow Western practices experience negative feelings. "What should I do with you—gloomy, irritable, tired, indifferent, always in a hurry, and always busy? What should your child do with you? How can you protect yourself from your chronic dissatisfaction with life?" ^{[38, p.5]}. A child raised outside of tradition will feel uncomfortable ^{[38, p.72]} The beloved Russian myth of "paradise on earth," identified with communism, has found a new incarnation today: America ^{[38, p.76]}; Western practices are "foreign, second-hand" ^{[38, p. 117]}; a tribe of outcasts is growing ^{[38, p.82]}, etc.

In his final work, Family Pedagogy (2011), the famous scientist and publicist Y.P. Azarov argues that the ideology of Soviet education should be replaced by the pedagogy of Love and Freedom ^{[1, p. 173]}: attention to the child's feelings and experiences, tact in dealing with the inner world of the child, and encouragement of the desire for independence and freedom. Along with this, the educator himself should enjoy communicating with the child.

"The so-called 'homo sovieticus' in pedagogy is irrepressible arrogance, contempt for the weak, and moral despotism" ^{[1, p.31]}. These features may appear in parents' behavior: absolutization of their power, irritability, shouting, threats. The development of democratic principles overcomes authoritarianism, the education of citizenship and humanity, only then will we raise a good family man and citizen.

The author urges parents to enrich the upbringing of their children with the pedagogical virtues of all nations ^{[31, p.52]}. At the same time, it is important to remember that "when we focus on the West, we often forget our strengths" ^{[31, p.37]}. Since each nation has its own unique education system that has been developing over the centuries, it is necessary to "borrow an idea rather than an experience" ^{[31, p.367]}. In other words, it is not mindlessly copying, but evaluating the reasonableness of an idea and correlating it with a way of life.

At the same time, de-ideologization is perceived by several authors as disorientation and misalignment of the processes of upbringing in the family. Thus, according to V.G. Ryndak, we have "lost the traditions of family education ...moral ideas about marriage and family have been destroyed" ^{[56, p.8]}, and the family has been alienated from educational institutions. To solve this problem, the author suggests, in fact, the Soviet model of pedagogical universal education with a strict binding of psychological and pedagogical topics to the educational institution (features of development and achievements of children of the appropriate class). Classes are structured so that parents, as it were, move with their children from class to class, mastering the necessary material for the proper upbringing of children in the family.

Another well-known author, P.A. Gritsai, is somewhat wary of Western practices, considering them a manifestation of the "globalist paradigm of parental culture" ^{[17, p. 349]}, the imposition of "Western culture and Western educational values and liberalism toward the child" ^{[16, p. 182]}.

In 2016, under the guidance of renowned psychologist K.N. Polivanova, the "concept of a system of professional assistance to parents in raising children" was developed. It indicates that education and parenting programs should be based not on a system of prescriptions and the only correct decisions transmitted to students, but on the ideas of open education, on the diversity of parenting models in different countries and current trends, and envisioned the creation of a network of parent universities ^{[28, pp.6,8]}.

However, the concept was rejected, as it caused a sharply negative reaction from experts of the All-Russian Public Organization for the Protection of the Family "Parental All-Russian Resistance." They noted the danger of using foreign parenting models.

Nevertheless, in the 2000s and 2010s, many reputable practice—oriented works by foreign researchers continued to be published, particularly those by T. Gordon ^[18], K. Kvols ^[25], R. Dreikurs ^[20] (re-edition), G. Eyestad ^[68], and others, which offer a variety of models of working with parents.

The mass media are beginning to play an increasingly important role in educating parents. Programs based on Western ideas appear on television (Dr. Phil, Nanny 911, and Super Nanny): Mama's School (2006 – 2016) on the First All-Russian Educational TV channel, Supermama, Special Purpose Nanny (with Victoria Dmitrieva) on the Yu TV channel. The Mama TV channel has been created especially for parents (since 2007), with family TV shows, educational programs, and documentaries on motherhood, age psychology, and family relations.

A lot of popular magazines for parents are published: My baby and me, Pregnancy, Mom and baby, 9 Months Old, Raising a child, Schoolboy's health, Happy parents, Stork, Lisa, My baby, Mom and Baby, Babysitter, My little one, Game and Kids, and others.

Parenting seminars, trainings, parenting chats, and forums are gradually becoming fashionable (littleone.ru, eva.ru, chado.spb.ru, babyforum.ru, and others), where parents can participate and share their opinions with each other.

In addition, popular bloggers, YouTube channel hosts, clinical psychologists, psychotherapists, and other specialists reveal parenting secrets to parents.

However, there were several problems. There was no purposeful and effective government policy in this area, programs and effective methods were insufficiently developed, and work with the family was unsystematic. Educational programs implemented in government institutions were based primarily on the Soviet experience. Private sites, on the contrary, were more susceptible to Westernization. The main formats of the programs were lectures, interactive seminars, and training, which were complemented by individual consultations.

Conducted by the National Parent Association (NRA) (2017, directed by A.V. Gusev). An analysis of existing practices has shown that working with parents is characterized by a situation of "lopsided diversity", i.e., the subject matter is chaotic, formed spontaneously, primarily based on the momentary demand of society. The key feature is that "parental education develops thanks to the efforts of enthusiasts, the traditions of individual organizations" ^[21], and often these communities "become a source of obsessive prescriptions" ^[49].

K.N. Polivanova (2019) also points out that in school conditions, the parent is imposed the role of a passive recipient of information or an instrument of influence on the child. There is no dialogue with him, and he often remains indifferent ^[47].

At the same time, Western psychological motivating techniques (unconditional acceptance, active listening, Self-expression, and others) are not fully understood and accepted by the professional community. Thus, active listening and human acceptance are used primarily as tools of psychological counseling to "extract" information from a parent rather than as an element of teaching this skill.

Pedagogical education sometimes consisted of collecting information, psychodiagnosing the child, criticizing the "homegrown pedagogical concepts" ^[11] of the parent, and transmitting psychological and pedagogical recommendations to them as some objective facts (for example, the problems of a particular period of the child). These recommendations were usually too generalized so that parents could follow them in special circumstances, in extreme, neglected situations, or the presence of children with disabilities. A "normal" parent with "normal" children was wary of such recommendations from specialists, anticipating condemnation and censure, without expecting understanding and a full-fledged dialogue.

3. Education of parents in the modern period (late 2010s to the present)

While largely retaining the features of previous years, the modern period is nevertheless characterized by its own specifics. In recent years, the state's role has been strengthened, a unified approach to educating parents has been developed, and nationwide forms of broadcasting psychological and pedagogical knowledge to the parental environment have been created.

The All-Russian Congress on Family Education and Parental Education set a new development situation, which took place in 2018 with the participation of the Minister of Education of the Russian Federation. The NRA organized a congress that called for the unification of all existing parent organizations, building personal education based on moral, cultural, and historical traditions. The Forum pointed out that the generation of current parents is experiencing a significant lack of knowledge and competencies and recommended republishing books by Russian teachers ^[10] (V.A. Sukhomlinsky, S.A. Amonashvili, A.S. Makarenko, and many others).

After the congress, the All-Russian conferences on family education and parental education, called the "School of Gifted Parents," were held annually ^[27].

Every year, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, together with the NRA, organizes the All-Russian competition for the best practices of parental education, which presents the experiences of various regions of the country. For example, the programs "Parents with Many Children Are Responsible Parents and Happy Children" (Republic of Karelia), "Smart Weekends: Coworking for Effective Parents" (Yugorsk, Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug), the family club "Super Kids" (Uren, Nizhny Novgorod Region), "The Art of Being a Parent" (Volzhsk, Republic of Mari El), and many others.

Russian parents have access to a variety of sources of information about parenting.

Reference sites are being created. The most famous information and educational portal is "I Am a Parent." The portal contains tips on the most important issues: the "educational" skills of parents, rules for effective communication with a child, family values and traditions, the foundation of a strong family, quarrels of children in the family, methods of reconciliation, and how to approach a distant teenager, etc. In addition, parents share their experiences on the website ("Popular Opinion"), there are video tutorials and films for family viewing, and you can get online expert advice. Parents can also get useful recommendations on other sites, such as Parents.ru, Littleone.ru, educational portals such as "Big Dipper School of Informed Parenting," and Parenti Online Academy.

Since 2020, the Prosveshchenie Group of companies has implemented a new online resource, Parent University ^[55]. This project is intended for parents, teenagers, and educators. The site contains articles, conversations with parents, teachers, psychologists, and career guidance specialists.

Since 2021, on the instructions of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, a project has been implemented in all regions of Russia to provide psychological, pedagogical, methodological and counseling services to parents in addition to university psychological services are being created to provide psychological education to parents as a special type of pedagogical work.

After a five-year break (2021), the publication of the magazine Family and School for parents is resumed. The journal claims to fill the educational system with "new meanings" ^{[30, p.3]} involving the joint participation of parents and teachers. Education is considered "love for the mother tongue, for the Motherland... respect for the ancestral heritage, customs, and universal values" ^{[31, p.3]}, as well as maintaining family traditions, "attentive attitude to loved ones, and the desire to please them" ^{[40, p.10]}. The heroes of the publication talk about family values and memories, share family "rules," and secrets to harmonious relationships with children ^{[24, p.8]}. The publication popularizes the "phenomena of Soviet pedagogy" ^{[22, p.33]}: school uniforms, TRP standards, children's movements, labor education, the legacy of Soviet and pre-revolutionary classics, and archival articles of the Soviet period.

The collective monograph Family Education in a New Social Reality: Domestic and Foreign Experience (2022) sets out modern conceptual foundations for using traditional Russian spiritual and moral values. The paper describes the characteristics of the traditions of family education based on the value foundations of national culture and a particular family. The essence of these traditions "is to introduce a growing person to the basic values of family, clan, ethnicity, nation, Fatherland" ^{[57, p.141]}. Researchers have identified the most commonly practiced traditions of family education: "walking in nature, cleaning and home improvement, watching cartoons and movies together, cooking together, involving children in what their parents do themselves, developing games, learning work skills, playing sports together, reading together, and listening to music" ^{[57, p.45]}. According to the authors, all parents need formal and informal support from time to time. It is necessary to invite parents to interact "gently", i.e., to show interest in their beliefs, values, and family traditions. The priority and socially significant activity of modern parents "is the proper upbringing of a child, responsible building of a strategy for their development in an unpredictable, rapidly changing world" ^{[57, p.126]}.

A professional community of people working with parents is developing. Comprehensive parent education programs for specialists are being released.

Thus, a program has been published to educate parents (legal representatives) of preschool-age children attending preschool educational institutions in the context of introducing children to family values and traditions ^[53]. The program provides an engaging, accessible, step-by-step overview of the main problems a parent faces, along with tips and advice. At the same time, a detailed classification of effective and ineffective punishments is provided, and the issue of parental authority is discussed, which is an obvious reference to the Soviet past. In addition, there are chapters about incomplete families (inferiority, lack of communication), illnesses, and the death of loved ones (for example, the death of parents, synchronization of grief, etc.), which are more suitable for psychotherapy rather than education.

Traditional educational programs are being replaced by parents' self-education. In this context, non-fiction books for parents continue to be an important source of information.

The specialists of the book service MyBook ^[23] and Megafon Books ^[43] have identified the books most read by our parents.

These include: Secret Support: Attachment in a Child's Life by Lyudmila Petranovskaya, Communicating with a Child. How? by Julia Gippenreiter, How to Talk So That Children Listen, and How to Listen So That Children Talk, Free Children, Free Parents by Adel Faber and Elaine Mazlish, Child's Health and the Common-Sense of Their Relatives by Evgeny Komarovsky, You Can't Bring up Love by Dima Zitser, Happy Child. Universal Rules by Andrey Kurpatov, A book for Imperfect Parents or a Life on a Free Topic by Irina Mlodik. It should be noted that the authors of Russian books mainly rely on a psychotherapeutic attitude and individual experience.

Of particular note is the handbook by D. Mashkova and co-authors, The ABC of a Happy Family (2023), which aims to strengthen traditional family values and prevent family problems, and includes 30 lessons in mindful parenting. The authors present pedagogical education as family psychotherapy. The mass of life stories given in the book with unsuccessful parenting, as well as many time-consuming tasks, are aimed not so much at studying family traditions as at working out psychological "big" and "small" traumas, traumas of "development", dangerous parental directives "hammered into the brain," "digging" in the past ^[37]. Such exercises can cause rejection in people who do not have a similar experience. In general, the book lacks ease of presentation and a positive view of parents.

Thus, today, parents are searching for their own way of education. Serious work is underway, domestic experience is being accumulated, and many projects and programs for educating parents are being developed. There is an appeal to the Soviet past. When working with parents, special attention is paid to family psychotherapy.

Conclusion

Historical and pedagogical analysis of the strategic foundations of pedagogical education of parents (1980s to the present) allowed us to identify the following features:

1. During the Soviet period (1980s–1991), parents' official education had characteristic ideological features: the study of party and government documents, communist education, Marxist-Leninist pedagogy, and party influence on a troubled family. The education was formal, with a presentation of banal information, and did not arouse parents' interest. The easing of the information isolation policy in the 1980s opened the opportunity to get acquainted with the Western experience of educating parents. Rogers, R. Dreikurs, T. Gordon, E. Bern, and others were based on attention to the feelings of a parent, democratic family relations, and building positive child-parent communication. Separate practices based on these ideas began to appear. In particular, courses for parents were conducted under the guidance of Y.B. Gippenreiter.

However, since the official ideology rejected the Western (bourgeois) experience, the bureaucratic and unwieldy Soviet pedagogical system hampered the mass introduction of foreign innovations.

2. In the post-Soviet period (1992 to the end of the 2010s), the role of the media increased (television, magazines, and since the 2000s, the Internet, social networks, chat rooms, YouTube channels). A confrontation between supporters of Westernization characterizes this period: overcoming the "homo sovieticus" and introducing democratic principles into pedagogy (Y.P. Azarov, K.N. Polivanova and others), and supporters of traditional approaches based on the Soviet experience (I.Ya. Medvedeva, T.L. Shishova, V.G. Ryndak, P.A. Gritsai and others). Unresolved contradictions hindered the development of enlightenment. It turned out to be decentralized, fragmented, and with a chaotic and spontaneous theme.

Educational programs implemented in schools and social protection institutions relied mainly on a traditional approach, with a passive and often indifferent parent influencing the child. Parent programs on private sites were more susceptible to Westernization. However, educators and psychologists have not fully understood and accepted Western practices.

Pedagogical education sometimes consisted of collecting formal information from the parent, psychodiagnosing a child, criticizing the parent, and giving them edifying recommendations.

3. The modern period (late 2010 to the present) is characterized by strengthening the state's role and developing unified methodological and meaningful approaches to educating parents based on traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.

The essence of traditions is introducing a growing person to the fundamental values of the family, clan, ethnicity, nation, and Fatherland. Responsible and positive parenting is a priority activity of the modern family in a changing world.

The most important areas of work are the All-Russian conferences on family education and parental education "School of Gifted Parents," the All-Russian competition of best practices in parental education, a project to provide psychological, pedagogical, methodological, and counseling services to parents, and university psychological services that provide psychological education to parents.

Information and methodological support is being created: reference sites, the Internet resource "Parent University," and the magazine Family and School have been resumed. Unified education programs for parents and professionals are being developed. Soviet practices are becoming in demand. The emphasis remains on the child's needs, rather than the parent's, on family psychotherapy.

Thus, the education of parents in our country is under renovation. The experience of working with the family is accumulated and systematized. Large-scale work will be enriched by dialogue with parents, respect for their knowledge and position, and will be complemented by interest and attention to parental activity.