In today's Finland support for the growth to parenthood is more important for the parenthood has been challenged by the achievement pressure of the busy working life, family role changes, general increase of stress, individual way of thinking, the prevalence of mental disorders and alcohol use increase. Traditionally nurses at the antenatal health care have tried to respond to the challenges of the parenthood by individual counseling as well as by family coaching. Family coaching is designed to enable the growth in the parenting skills and coping with childbirth and infant care. Family coaching is a recent attempt to develop more to match the needs of parents, when the large lecture type of teaching has been a move towards small groups that utilize coaching. Family coaching implementations however are unevenly conducted across the country. Kuopio has developed a family coaching model of five meetings, but it has not managed to achieve the desired result because of the inadequate human resources.

The objective of the thesis was to design and implement a child expecting parent group that came together four times with the aim of parenting support. The goal was to develop a small group to support the parents expecting their first child in Pyörö´s clinic utilizing a family coaching model which supports growth to parenthood, gives the parents ability to cope with the crisis caused by the birth of the child and helps to prevent post-natal depression. The group was carried out in Kuopio Social and Health Centre Petonen district, Pyörö´s clinic during 19.8–30.9.2008. Members of the group (12) were between the ages of 24-30 years. The themes at the family meetings were pregnancy, relationship and sexuality, baby care, breast-feeding, childbirth, parenting and post-partum depression. The groups were designed according to the Engeström model of learning and the development followed the socio constructive learning framework.

According to the feedback the parents waiting for their first child felt that family coaching was important to them. Parents felt that they had benefitted of the small-group family coaching model and that they got support from the group leaders as well as from the other parents who were in the same situation. In conclusion, the antenatal family coaching needs to be organized to meet the needs of the group so that the participating parents became aware of the essential issues and concerns of pregnancy, childbirth and growth to parenthood.