Parenting Programs Are Failing Without Fathers—Here’s How to Change That

They say women are more likely to ask for help and men are less likely to do so, and it’s potentially for that reason that many human service organizations (HSOs) reflect that in their offerings for parents. HSOs often cater to moms because they are the ones coming through their doors… well, at first, that is.

Sometimes, only moms come in until dads are asked about, invited in, and otherwise welcomed through an environment, programs, and intake forms that ask about dads and intentionally involve them. Because fathers are so important to child well-being, we maintain that HSOs must engage fathers in parenting interventions separately from mothers, with interventions focused specifically on their unique role through fatherhood programs.

A global review* published by the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry concluded that parenting interventions must do a better job of including and engaging fathers. It also concluded that evaluations of interventions should include separate analyses of the impact on fathers and mothers rather than parents in general. The team of United Kingdom and US researchers examined 199 published articles on parenting interventions that included at least some discussion of father engagement and impact. The researchers uncovered three specific problems when it comes to interventions' inclusion of fathers:

• Despite the evidence of fathers’ substantial impact on child development, well-being, and family functioning, parenting interventions rarely target men or make a dedicated effort to include them
• Parenting interventions that have included men as parents or co-parents give insufficient attention to reporting on father participation and impact
• A fundamental change in the design and delivery of parenting interventions is required to overcome pervasive gender biases and to generate robust evidence on outcomes, differentiated by gender and by couple effects in evaluation

It is the final problem that is most critical. It has led to parenting interventions, focused on mothers, that will never reach their full potential to improve child well-being. There is a gender bias in parenting interventions that reflects a broader, global, damaging bias that says fathers aren't as important as mothers when it comes to child well-being. Or, that they just aren't interested in participating. It is the most pervasive barrier to father-inclusiveness National Fatherhood Initiative® (NFI) encounters.

So how does NFI address this barrier? We've created evidence-based and evidence-informed programs, workshops, and other resources designed specifically for and that engage fathers.

We've also created other resources that build the capacity of HSOs to engage fathers, such as our free Father Friendly Check-Up™ and The Stages of Father Inclusion™, which help transform the culture of those organizations to value fathers as much as mothers in improving parenting behavior and, consequently, child well-being.

Often, the culture, infrastructure, and staff training of most HSOs are designed to serve the needs of women and mothers and are ill-suited to effectively engage fathers. This creates a mindset that focuses programs, services, and staff on mothers. (See the infographic below that illustrates the challenge with this infrastructure.) As a result, organizations must examine and, as is the case in almost every instance, change their norms, the attitudes and beliefs of staff, and improve infrastructure to serve all parents effectively.

Parenting interventions will never truly be parenting interventions until they are implemented within organizational cultures that value fathers as partners in parenting, who are critical to child well-being. That’s not difficult to do. It simply takes "gumption." Gumption involves courage, initiative, aggressiveness, and good old common sense.

The good news is that more HSOs than ever are rolling up their sleeves to take a hard, long look at their efforts to improve parenting and child well-being. Several examples include state and local government agencies that have worked with NFI to integrate fatherhood programming among the HSOs they fund.
In Texas, for example, NFI led a project integrating father engagement in home visiting
programs. We helped the state design an
approach that, in turn, helped the HSOs it funds design customized approaches to engaging fathers. These approaches improved the organizations' use of evidence-based programs, such as Nurse-Family Partnership, Parents as Teachers, and Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters, while maintaining fidelity to the programs' models focused on mothers.

 Stay tuned for our next blog: Eight Issues Fatherhood Programs Help You Address.

*https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jcpp.12280