About UNICEF Parenting
Helping parents give their child the best start in life.
We launched UNICEF Parenting for one very simple reason: to help parents and caregivers give their children the best start in life.
The first 1,000 days are without question the most important in a child’s life.
That’s why we’re bringing together some of the world’s leading baby experts to help you with everything from practical parenting tips to debunking myths about baby care. Information you can trust to help make the most of these early moments with your baby. We're just starting out, but in time we hope this space will serve parents around the world.
Being a parent is the most important job in the world. But many parents don’t get the time and support they need to be with their children. Family-friendly policies, such as paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and childcare, are not a reality for most new parents around the world.
That is why we’re also calling on governments and companies to create more family-friendly policies, so parents and caregivers get the time and support they need to bring up happy and healthy children.
Find out more about UNICEF's vision to elevate parenting.
About UNICEF
We are the United Nations’ organization for children.
For more than 70 years we have worked to improve the lives of children and their families around the world.
Working with partners around the world we've helped bring about tremendous improvements in the lives of children, such as:
- Reducing the number of global polio cases by 99% since 1988.
- Reducing the number of deaths of children under 5 by more than 50% since 1990.
- 2.6 billion more people having access to cleaner drinking water today than in 1990.
But many children are still being left behind, which is why we’re working day-in and day-out, in some of the world’s toughest places – to reach the children who are most at risk and most in need. We’re working to save their lives. We’re working to keep them safe from harm. We’re working to give them a childhood in which they’re loved, protected, healthy, educated, and able to fulfill their potential. That’s what UNICEF does. And we never give up.
Find out more about UNICEF and how you can help save children's lives.
UNICEF defines parenting as the interactions, behaviours, emotions, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and practices associated with the provision of nurturing care. This refers to the process of promoting and supporting the development and socialization of the child. It is the entrusted and abiding task of parents to prepare children, as they develop, for the physical, psychosocial, and economic conditions in which they live, work, play, learn and thrive. Amidst the many influences on child development, parents are critical to children’s development, protection, empowerment, adjustment and lifelong success.
On this site we refer to parents with the understanding that a parent is not only an adolescent’s biological mother or father. The term refers to any caregiver or guardian who is responsible for the care of an adolescent child. This includes mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, grandparents, other relatives or non-related carers. In addition, parenting is often not performed by one individual only, but by a number of family members at once.