Becoming Fathers: Initial Exploration of a Support Program for New Fathers

Abstract

Emerging fathers experience a variety of stressors, including identity and role transitions, changes in their relationships, and challenges in developing caregiving skills. Increasing expectations for father involvement in childcare are emphasizing the importance of the father role, but social supports for new fathers remain scarce. Nineteen expectant and new fathers participated in a pilot 5-week group intervention aimed at improving stress coping and involvement attitudes using a combination of mindfulness practices and skill-building for parenting and partner communication. We administered surveys pre- and postintervention to assess efficacy in the areas of stress, depressive symptoms, father involvement attitudes, and mindfulness. Within-participant differences were compared across participants as well as examining individual reliable change. Results indicated initial reductions in stress and depressive symptoms and increases in the mindfulness constructs of nonjudgment and nonreactivity. No significant changes were found in father involvement attitudes. Perinatal intervention specific to fathers holds promise as an underexplored avenue for supporting families across the transition to parenthood.

Effective interventions to increase father inclusive practice

“…Fletcher's 'SMS4dads' reported no significant pre-post intervention change in fathers' psychological distress 39 and a group program with a very small number of fathers (n=19) also found no change in mental health. 38 The two evaluations of the 'Working Out Dads' six-week group program found consistent significant pre-post reductions in fathers' depressive and stress symptoms and increases in parenting self-efficacy. 36,37 These changes were maintained at a three-month follow-up.…”

“…The interventions delivered as face-to-face groups also provided opportunity for facilitated discussion, peer support and active skills building in coping strategies or other skills such as massage. [36][37][38] The two interventions delivered via a mobile app or text messaging only provided psychoeducation. 39,40…”

An Overview of Pregnancy Education: A Bibliometric Analysis Based on Web of Science Core Collection

“…When the literature on the subject is examined, it is seen that the studies are generally related to pregnancy (Bostan & Kabukcuoglu, 2022;Castillo et al, 2022;Shimpuku et al, 2022), prenatal care (Das et al, 2022;Iwanowicz-Palus et al, 2022;Zbiri et al, 2021), depression (Shimpuku et al, 2022;Wu & Wang, 2022;Zhang et al, 2021), social support (McCormack et al, 2021Rayburn & Coatsworth, 2021), self-sufficiency (Bostan & Kabukcuoglu, 2022;Diotaiuti et al, 2022;Eidouzaei et al, 2022), fear of childbirth (Buran & Aksu, 2022;Eidouzaei et al, 2022;Gökçe İşbir et al, 2022), anxiety (Diotaiuti et al, 2022;Gargari et al, 2021;Iwanowicz-Palus et al, 2022), obesity (Hurst et al, 2021;Ortiz-Felix et al, 2021), breastfeeding (Bookhart et al, 2021;Oggero & Wardell, 2022;Taha et al, 2022), parenting (Abbass-Dick et al, 2017, postpartum care (Gagnon & Sandall, 2007;Hunter et al, 2009), quality improvement (Hurst et al, 2021;Louis-Jacques et al, 2020;Takako, 2020).…”