TRUE Dads: The impact of a couples-based fatherhood intervention on family relationships, child outcomes, and economic self-sufficiency.

TRUE Dads, a federally funded Responsible Fatherhood intervention, aims to strengthen three of men's key roles in the family: (1) as fathers, building and maintaining positive engagement with their child; (2) as partners, maintaining a positive relationship with their co-parent; and (3) as providers, through fostering employment and economic self-sufficiency. A feature of the program is that low-income fathers and their co-parenting partners participate together in 6 3-hour group workshops, followed by optional participation in an additional 6 3-hour workshops. Fathers in the intervention condition were offered a chance to participate in a 2-week employment program. 1,042 co-parenting teams were recruited and randomly assigned to TRUE Dads' group intervention (60%) or a no-treatment control group (40%). In analyses of single measures, one year after study entry, compared with no-treatment controls, TRUE Dads program participants reported fewer depressive symptoms, less destructive couple communication and domestic violence, and increased employment for fathers. Using expanded latent variable measures of core constructs, Structural Equation Modeling revealed indirect effects of the intervention, in which reductions in both parents' negative symptoms and destructive couple communication were associated with (a) reductions in negative parenting qualities and children's behavior problems and (b) increases in fathers' economic self-sufficiency. Reducing parents' personal distress and improving relationship quality between co-parents appears to be important to enhancing fathers' positive family engagement. From a family policy perspective, the results suggest that integration rather than separation of healthy marriage, responsible fatherhood, and employment programs could provide synergistic power to programs designed to strengthen low-income families.

TRUE Dads, una intervención en la paternidad responsable financiada con fondos federales, tiene como finalidad fortalecer tres de los papeles fundamentales de los hombres en la familia: 1) como padres, construir y mantener un compromiso positivo con su hijo; 2) como compañeros de cocrianza, mantener una relación positiva con el otro padre; y 3) como proveedores, fomentar el empleo y la autonomía económica. Una característica del programa es que los padres de bajos recursos y sus compañeros de cocrianza participan juntos en 6 talleres grupales de 3 horas, y luego pueden participar de manera opcional en otros 6 talleres de 3 horas. A los padres del grupo de intervención se les ofreció una oportunidad de participar en un programa de empleo de dos semanas. Se convocó a 1042 equipos de cocrianza, los cuales fueron asignados aleatoriamente a una intervención grupal de TRUE Dads (60%) o a un grupo de referencia sin tratamiento (40%). En los análisis de medidas simples, un año después del ingreso en el estudio, en comparación con los integrantes del grupo de referencia sin tratamiento, los participantes del programa TRUE Dads informaron menos síntomas depresivos, menos comunicación destructiva de pareja y violencia doméstica, y un aumento del empleo para los padres. Usando medidas variables latentes ampliadas de constructos centrales, el modelo de ecuación estructural reveló efectos indirectos de la intervención, en los cuales las reducciones en los síntomas negativos y la comunicación destructiva de la pareja en ambos padres estuvieron asociadas con (a) disminuciones de las cualidades negativas de crianza y de los problemas de conducta de los niños, y (b) aumentos de la autonomía económica de los padres. La reducción del distrés personal de los padres y la mejora de la calidad de la relación entre los copadres parece ser importante para mejorar el compromiso familiar positivo de los padres. Desde una perspectiva de política familiar, los resultados indican que la integración, en lugar de la separación de un matrimonio saludable, la paternidad responsable y los programas de empleo podrían aportar poder sinérgico a los programas diseñados para fortalecer a las familias de bajos recursos.

Marriage and fatherhood programs.

To improve the quality and stability of couple and father-child relationships in fragile families, researchers are beginning to consider how to tailor existing couple-relationship and father-involvement interventions, which are now targeted on married couples, to the specific needs of unwed couples in fragile families. The goal, explain Philip Cowan, Carolyn Pape Cowan, and Virginia Knox, is to provide a more supportive developmental context for mothers, fathers, and, especially, the children in fragile families. The authors present a conceptual model to explain why couple-relationship and father-involvement interventions developed for middle- and low-income married couples might be expected to provide benefits for children of unmarried parents. Then they summarize the extensive research on existing couple-relationship and father-involvement interventions, noting that only a few of the programs for couples and a handful of fatherhood programs have been systematically evaluated. Of those that have been evaluated, few have included unmarried couples as participants, and none has investigated whether interventions may have different effects when unmarried fathers live with or apart from the child. Furthermore, although the funders and creators of most programs for couples or for fathers justify their offerings in terms of potential benefits for children, the authors note that the programs rarely assess child outcomes systematically. Next, the authors consider whether interventions for working-class or middle-class fathers or couples that have shown benefits for family members and their relationships might be helpful to fragile families, in which the parents are not married at the time of their child's birth. Because evidence suggests that couple-oriented programs also have a positive effect on father involvement, the authors recommend integrating couple and fatherhood interventions to increase their power to reduce the risks and enhance the protective factors for children's development and well-being. The authors emphasize the need for more research on program development to understand the most effective ways to strengthen co-parenting by couples who are the biological parents of a child but who have relatively tenuous, or already dissolved, relationships with one another. In closing, the authors summarize how far the family-strengthening field has come and offer suggestions for where it might go from here to be helpful to fragile families.

An approach to preventing coparenting conflict and divorce in low-income families: strengthening couple relationships and fostering fathers' involvement.

In the context of current concern about levels of marital distress, family violence, and divorce, the SFI study is evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention to facilitate the positive involvement of low-income Mexican American and European American fathers with their children, in part by strengthening the men's relationships with their children's mothers. The study design involves a randomized clinical trial that includes assignment to a 16-week couples group, a 16-week fathers group, or a single-session control group. Couples in both group interventions and the control condition include partners who are married, cohabiting, and living separately but raising a young child together. This article presents the rationale, design, and intervention approach to father involvement for families whose relationships are at risk because of the hardships of their lives, many of whom are manifesting some degree of individual or relationship distress. We present preliminary impressions and qualitative findings based on our experience with 257 families who completed the pretest, and the first 160 who completed one postintervention assessment 9 months after entering the study. Discussion centers on what we have learned and questions that remain to be answered in mounting a multisite preventive intervention to strengthen relationships in low-income families.