Exploring Fathers’ Engagement With Home Visiting: The Tennessee Dad Project

Abstract

This study explores fathers’ engagement with home visiting in the “Tennessee Dad” project, a cluster randomized-controlled trial of an in-home parenting education program for fathers delivered alongside a primary home visiting curriculum. Results from three mixed models using data from 2,916 visits with treatment ( n = 113) and control ( n = 117) condition families indicated that visits to treatment condition families were more likely to have a father present than visits to control condition families, but there were no differences between conditions on participation minutes or level of interest. Nonresidential fathers did not differ from married and cohabiting fathers on presence at home visit, controlling for covariates. Implications are discussed, including the need for father-specific materials and father-inclusive funding.

Norwegian fathers’ experiences with a home visiting program

“…As fathers are more often present at the home visit, this may be a more suitable arena in which to involve fathers and include their perspective (Massoudi et al., 2010). Home visits focusing on building a one‐on‐one relationship between the PHN and the father—focusing on their personal needs, giving them attention—may increase fathers’ engagement in the service (Stolz et al., 2020; Sandstrom et al., 2015). Some studies also indicate that fathers may require even more support from PHNs than mothers, because they often lack the mothers’ supportive network (Jungmarker et al., 2010).…”

Trajectories of relationship quality and conflict in low‐income parents receiving home visitation services

“…An additional limitation is that not all participants had the opportunity to provide data for Time 2 and Time 3, despite a low attrition rate for the overall study. In an effort to provide intervention programming to as many clients as possible, the TD program continued enrollment through the end of data collection (Stolz, 2017). However, one strength of latent growth modeling is the ability to have robust estimation even with missing data (Kline, 2016).…”

“…Relationship length was assessed by using fathers' responses to the question, “How long did you know (child's mother) before this pregnancy?” If answering in weeks or months, fathers' answers were divided by 52 or 12, respectively, to create a measure in years. Although the evaluation report to sponsors (Stolz, 2017) showed no differences in these variables between treatment and control conditions, the analysis controlled for study condition (0 = control group , 1 = treatment group ).…”

“…Within the 11 participating agencies across the state, supervisors and their team were randomly assigned to treatment or control conditions. Clients were then enrolled in treatment or control conditions based on the supervisor's status (for more information see Stolz et al, 2020, and Stolz, 2017). All participants received standard home visitation services, which consisted of weekly visitation and provision of education and resources to mothers.…”

“…This study employed dyadic latent growth curve modeling (LGM) to examine the trajectories of relationship quality and couple conflict for mothers and fathers across three time points using Mplus (Version 8.1; Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2017. All models were estimated using Bayesian estimation.…”