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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report draws on data from the first sweep of the Growing Up in Scotland study to examine the extent to which parents with young children have access to, and draw upon, informal sources of support with parenting. That is, support, information and advice which is sought from and provided by family members - including spouses, partners, parents' siblings and the child's grandparents - friends, and other parents. Findings are based on the first sweep of GUS, which involved interviews with the main carers of 5,217 children aged 0-1 years old and 2,859 children aged 2-3 years old, carried out between April 2005 and March 2006.
Attitudes towards seeking help or advice
The vast majority of parents in both cohorts did not find it difficult to ask for help, did not have much trouble establishing who they should ask, and were not particularly concerned about the possibility of 'interference' from formal services which provide support and advice following a request to them for advice.
However, there were some small notable differences in the attitudinal data. Mothers with no qualifications and those from low-income households were more likely to agree that seeking help from professionals would result in interference, and to express difficulty with seeking help or advice than mothers with qualifications and those from higher income households. This lack of confidence in seeking help and wariness of formal intervention appeared to impact on network structure and use of informal support.
Availability of sources of informal support
Virtually all parents (99%) had access to some sources of informal support and many had access to a wide range of such sources.
The size and complexity of informal networks, that is the number and types of sources of informal support available to parents, varied across the sample. Generally speaking, parents in more socially disadvantaged circumstances reported more limited informal networks than their more socially advantaged peers. For example, parents in the lowest income group were over three times more likely to report low access to sources of informal support than were parents in the highest income group (36% in the lowest income group reported low access compared with 10% in the highest income group) and mothers with no educational qualifications also reported more limited networks than did those with any qualifications.
Using sources of informal support
Around nine out of ten parents in both samples had used an informal source for some kind of support. This ranged from providing regular childcare to information on child health or behaviour. Many parents had used several different informal sources for different purposes. For the most part, different parents - those of varying age or socio-economic circumstances for example - accessed and used informal support in very similar ways and only small differences in the extent to which informal support was used were evident in the data.
Those parents who reported most difficulty asking for help, and who had more limited access to informal support tended to report lower use of informal sources. However, low access did not always imply low use - a little over one-fifth of parents who had limited informal sources available were classed as high users of informal support suggesting that they received a high level of support from a more limited network.
Although having a more limited network structure, younger mothers and those on low incomes relied on and used informal support just as much as other mothers did. However, the particular composition of their networks suggests that almost all of this support was provided by a smaller number of people than in other cases, and possibly just one person in some circumstances.
Support from the child's grandparents
The child's grandparents were a key source of informal support. Almost all families (around 95%) in both cohorts were receiving some type of help or support from the child's grandparents and many were receiving a full range of support including regular childcare, taking the child on outings and providing financial or material support. Around one-third of families in each cohort indicated that the child's grandparents provided all, or almost all, the types of help and support considered (30% in birth cohort, 37% in child cohort).
Having a greater number of grandparents alive and having some or all of those grandparents living relatively close by, or indeed in the household, both increased the likelihood of receiving higher grandparental support. Higher use of grandparents was also evident amongst younger mothers and those on low incomes
Conclusion
Data from the first sweep of Growing Up in Scotland demonstrates that most families with young children are involved in often complex informal support networks. Almost all parents have access to, and make considerable use of, an informal network variously composed of friends, family and other parents for support, information and advice on a range of parenting concerns. However, there exists a small group of parents who are unsure of asking for help or advice both formally and informally, many of whom either draw heavily on a limited informal network or receive little or no informal support at all.
Future analysis of data collected at subsequent sweeps of Growing Up in Scotland will allow a more thorough examination of informal support and, through longitudinal analysis, permit exploration of how differences in the structure of informal support networks and levels of use of informal support impact on both child and parental well-being.
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