The purposes of this study were to analyze the current state of parent education at support
centers for childcare and to suggest the future directions of parent education programs operated
by support centers for childcare. Furthermore, this study aimed to examine the current state of
character education for parents and to propose key roles of parent character education. For these
purposes, this study collected data from business result reports of years 2013 and 2014 published
by central support center for childcare, internal data on parent character education, and a
questionnaire survey with the employees of the support centers. The results of this study were
as follows. First, with the renaming to ‘support center for childcare,’ the frequency of parent
education increased by five times and the number of participants increased by over twice in 2014
compared to those in 2013. Second, parent character education was conducted in various forms
and contents, focusing on rearing method and rearing attitude. Third, the employees of the
support centers emphasized the identity of the center as a parent education institution for
parents with infants and young children and, at the same time, were concerned about low
participation in parent education. Based on these findings, this study suggested: first, developing
demonstrative operation models for the institutionalization of parent education; second,
establishing systems for developing parent education programs and contents including character
themes and raising professional lecturers; third, ‘branding’ parent education programs and
designing the programs according to subject and theme; and fourth, aiming at constructive
parent education through diversifying the methods and contents of parent education.