Improving Father-Child and Father-Partner Relationships Through the Evaluation of the 24/7 Dads Intervention With Black and Hispanic Fathers

Fathers play a unique role in the lives of children, with high quality interactions found to improve a child's executive functioning and general school achievement. Father involvement also has positive impacts on fathers themselves, with more involved fathers reporting more self-confidence in their parenting, more satisfaction with parenting, demonstration of more maturity, and reports of less psychosocial distress. However, poverty can have a negative association with fathers parenting and child outcomes, though paternal warmth can mediate this relationship. Children's Institute Inc will recruit and implement the 24/7 Dad program which is designed to provide a comprehensive evidenced-based fatherhood program that builds and strengthens father-child relationships. The curriculum for the primary workshops will be the 24/7 Dad curriculum, which addresses both the responsible parenting and healthy relationship areas in this project. The study will use a quasi-experimental interrupted time series (ITS) design that allows for a continuous sequence of observations on a population, taken repeatedly over time. Study aims include: (1) Does the 24/7 Dad intervention influence the behaviors of fathers of young children?; (2) Do fathers who participated in the 24/7 Dad intervention and additional post-intervention support (MIRG and/or financial literacy and job support activities) have better outcomes than those who complete 24/7 Dad only?; (3) Does trauma history and/or current mental wellbeing mediate the relationship between the 24/7 Dad intervention and father engagement, father-child relationships, and co-parenting relationships?; and (4) Does perceived discrimination influence successful outcomes of 24/7 Dad intervention participants? To test the hypotheses of Aim 1 and Aim 2, a generalized linear mixed model will be fitted to the outcome variable individually, specified for corresponding distribution. For Aim 3, investigators will use path models, special cases of structural equation modeling (SEM) with observable variables only, to test the multiple hypothesized mediating pathway.