Brief
Healthy relationships, including coparenting and romantic relationships, are critical to the health and well-being of fathers and families. Supporting these relationships is therefore a key goal of many fatherhood programs. During COVID-19, fathers have faced a number of challenges that may affect their romantic and coparenting relationships. These include increased unemployment, issues around child access and visitation, and difficulties navigating work-from-home arrangements. At the same time, COVID-19 created unique hurdles for fatherhood programs in providing services to fathers. In…
Audio recording
Dr. Armon Perry is a Professor in the Kent School of Social Work at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, and also Project Director of the 4 Your Child fatherhood program. He began his career as a social worker helping children and families involved in the child welfare system.
In this DadTalk podcast, he talks about his decision to earn his doctorate in order to help prepare new social workers to better engage with fathers, and how he obtained funding for the 4 Your Child program and a supplemental co-parenting component.
The conversation focuses primarily on preliminary findings… Webinar
This Virtual Open House was held on June 29, 2020 from 2:30-3:30PM ET and invited website users to discover the new NRFC Virtual Collaborative Community (VCC) and refreshed fatherhood.gov site.
The NRFC Virtual Collaborative Community is a new online platform for fatherhood practitioners to engage in dialogue around program planning and implementation, running a program, working with special populations, and other relevant topics to fatherhood. National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse team members virtually walk the audience through the VCC…
Other
ZERO TO THREE has teamed up with YouTube star La Guardia Cross to create “Daddy Matters,” a 4-part web series that explores why dads matter and what matters to dads. These videos can also serve as powerful tools for those who work with dads to show them they are not alone, and to open up important discussions on a range of issues around fatherhood. That’s why we have created a discussion guide for each episode that provides questions to serve as conversation-starters and offers a range of resources related to the topics covered in each video.
Brief
Programs designed specifically to support fathers in their role as parents are relatively new to the policy landscape. Originally emerging as an outgrowth of welfare reform and stronger child support enforcement in the 1990s, fatherhood programs ahve since evolved from a narrow focus on financial stability and support to a more balanced agenda that emphasizes healthy relationships, parenting skills, and father involvement. Accompanying these changes has been a growing interest among researchers in studying the role that fathers play in the lives of their children. In this brief, we…
This report describes four Responsible Fatherhood programs that focus primarily on low-income Hispanic fathers:• Futuro Now from KidWorks, a partner of The East Los Angeles Community Union, in Santa Ana, California• Project Fatherhood at The Children’s Institute, Inc., in Los Angeles County, California• Project Padres at Imperial Valley Regional Occupational Program in Imperial County, California• Responsible Fatherhood Program at Southwest Key in San Antonio, TexasThis study provides information about how these federally funded programs are implemented in a culturally relevant way and…
The interest in fathers as active parents has increased dramatically over the past 30 years among researchers and the popular press with considerable attention given to direct child-rearing activities; however, mothers continue to be the most likely participants in early intervention (EI) services. Using thematic analysis, we explored providers’ perceptions (n = 511) of father involvement in EI regarding (a) the impact of increased father involvement, (b) how father involvement could be increased, and (c) the role of culture in father involvement. Providers believed more involvement was…
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Journal Article Research on the situated contexts of fathering has found that the social and symbolic dimensions of fathering spaces influence how men construct and enact fatherhood scripts. Qualitative studies of fatherhood programs have mostly investigated parenting education and job assistance programs, revealing how fathering interventions allow disadvantaged men to shape positive paternal identities. In‐depth interviews and focus groups were conducted with a nonrandom sample of 64 primarily Black and Latino low‐income fathers who participated in a federally funded responsible fatherhood program. An…
NRFC Quick Statistics and Research Reviews, Brief
This research brief covers the different stages of child development and highlights the impact resident fathers have on each stage of child development. This brief stresses the importance of positive father to child interactions. Resident fathers who demonstrate more sensitivity toward their children are shown to have a positive impact on the cognitive development of infants & toddlers (0-2) and early childhood (2-6) stages of development. This brief also discusses how resident fathers’ positive emotional involvement correlates to healthy socioemotional development in middle childhood…
NRFC Quick Statistics and Research Reviews, Brief
This research brief covers the different stages of child development and highlights the impact non-resident fathers have on each stage of child development. This brief shows the correlation between a father’s regular presence in a child’s life and healthy cognitive development in infants & toddlers (0-2) and early childhood (2-6). Social development and academic performance are shown to be negatively impacted by the lack of fatherhood involvement in the older childhood development stages of middle childhood (7-10), early adolescence (11-14), and late adolescence (15-18). Regular and…
