That was what Yale researcher Dr. Kyle Pruett and his colleagues concluded in advance of conducting an important study of how best to involve poorer and more marginal fathers in their children's lives.

According to the press release for their study,

The vast majority of family services — from parenting classes to home visits — are really aimed at mothers, while fathers are almost completely overlooked.

So Pruett and his team decided to see what would happen if dads got some attention.  Moreover, they figured out that, even when existing programs did involve fathers, the results were never evaluated.  So no one knew what worked and what didn't.

Their study involved 289 lower income families, mostly hispanic and European American in California.  The study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of a 16-week parenting intervention program whose most effective part involved both fathers and mothers.  According to this article, the study's findings included (Psychology Today, 8/17/09):

--Parenting stress eased when fathers and mothers participated in groups together.

--The quality of the parents' relationships remained stable for more than a year after the programs ended.

--And children of fathers who went through the programs, with or without mothers, were "much less aggressive, hyperactive, depressed or socially withdrawn" than the children of fathers who were not in the programs.

Now, the limitations of this program make it impossible to extrapolate results to populations generally.  The selection process alone excluded many types of people who need help with parenting and interpersonal skills.  But what the results clearly show is that involving fathers, particularly in programs with mothers, can dramatically improve family relationships and children's outcomes.

Interestingly, the researchers findings tend to corroborate those of other studies that suggest that programs of this sort need to involve both parents.  Therefore, father-only programs tend to not be effective.  As the authors of the study say,

The paradox (of father-only programs) here is that the single most powerful predictor of fathers’ engagement with their children is the quality of the men’s relationship with the child’s mother, regardless of whether the couple is married, divorced, separated, or never married (P. A. Cowan et al., 2008, p. 54).

Here's a link to the study itself.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 5th, 2009 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Parenting. You can trackback from your own site.