Brief
Research shows that children with engaged fathers are more likely to be emotionally secure, confident, and have better social connections as they grow. And today’s dads are eager and committed to being very present and highly involved with their children, and to do the best job possible supporting their development. How can policymakers ensure that children are able to reap the immense benefits of having an engaged father in their lives?
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Training Materials 100 Conversations is a website that was created to help parents and responsible adults have sensitive conversations about relationships and sex with young people ages 13-24. It is based on feedback from young people, including those who have been estranged from their families, that learning about sex and safety from family is the best way to get important information. The website offers guides for 100 conversations on: boundaries and values, friends and family, relationships, sex, consent and laws, LGBTQ, bullying and violence, bystanders and resources, media, and technology, and provides…
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Training Materials This compilation includes materials for professionals providing services to young fathers. The first section includes a factsheet that describes the benefits of young fathers’ positive involvement with their child and child’s mother. The second section includes an assessment and checklist to help organizations identify their strengths and areas for growth in working with young fathers and provides steps to make all aspects of programs more young-father-friendly. A workbook is then provided that includes interactive activities that will help fathers, mothers, and program staff learn more about…
Brief
This brief uses a sample of over 1,000 reentering men in five states to examine reentry success. The analysis uses a common measure of recidivism as well as measures of success in other areas, including employment, drug use, and two dimensions of family relationship quality that are very rarely examined in reentry studies: financial support for children and intimate/coparenting relationship quality. The results suggest that most men were successful in at least four of the measured areas and that family contact during incarceration was positively associated with reentry success. Further,…
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Training Materials Real Life Heroes® (RLH) is a treatment program that supports the development of safety and attachment needed for reintegration of traumatic memories experienced by children and their caregivers. RLH has been successfully implemented in a wide range of child and family service, educational, and mental health treatment programs for 15 years and was specifically designed for treatment of children and families with Complex Trauma. RLH provides practitioners with easy-to-use tools, including a life storybook and practitioner’s manual (RLH Toolkit) with multi-sensory creative arts activities and…
Brief
Reading is an essential activity that is linked to children’s cognitive development, academic skills, and future employment opportunities. Children often become interested in reading by watching and mimicking their parents or participating in child-parent reading routines. Although mothers have a big role to play, research shows that fathers are particularly influential for children’s language and literacy development, which means they are a promising point of intervention for efforts to improve children’s language and literacy. Reading together and engaging in other literacy activities,…
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This brief discusses the relationship between family-of-origin factors and future perpetration of sexual coercion. Research shows that children's experiences growing up, such as a negative interparental relationship quality and harsh or inconsistent parenting, can lead to feelings of entitlement, which means children believe they deserve special treatment. Feelings of entitlement were associated with a higher likelihood of perpetrating sexual coercion in a study of male college students. This brief discusses these findings and how practitioners can help parents create a positive foundation…
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This brief explains the Two-Generation (Two-Gen) approach for working with families builds well-being by creating a solid and stable foundation through integrated, intensive, and high-quality services in four areas of focus: early childhood education, elementary education, economic stability, and family engagement. It discusses findings from a research study that explored how three States (Connecticut, Colorado, and Utah) are development and implementing a Two-Gen framework in practice and how support for an intentional Two-Gen approach can be translated into a coordinated implementation…
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Research with fathers enrolled in fatherhood programs is often limited to measuring the amount of child involvement, since there are few existing quality measures that have been rigorously tested for use with low-income, nonresident fathers who are primarily unmarried. In this FRPN research brief we examined two short measures assessing the quality of father-child relationships to determine what measures are most appropriate for use in fatherhood programs. The measures are available for download here. (Author…
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Based on qualitative interviews with a group of responsible fatherhood program participants, this brief focuses on fathers’ perspectives on co-parenting, specifically: the nature of their co-parenting relationship; changes in their co-parenting relationships; and efforts they made to obtain formal agreements for visitation, custody, or parenting time. Each interviewee participated in one of these four responsible fatherhood programs: The Center for Fathering at Urban Ventures (Minneapolis, Minnesota); The Family Formation Program at Fathers’ Support Center (St. Louis, Missouri); Successful…
