Strengthening Relationships/Strengthening Families (SR/SF)

Background The development of healthy romantic relationship skills and supportive co-parenting skills are important to family functioning and parental well-being. Family systems perspective and co-parental frameworks suggest these two relationships are related but distinct; however, curricula targeting family functioning do not target both relationship dynamics. A possible reason for this oversight may be that co-parenting curricula have been created for adult couples (e.g., Bringing Baby Home, Family Expectations, Family Foundations, Two Families Now; National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices [NREPP]). Similarly, healthy relationship programs have been targeted towards adolescents and emerging adults, or premarital couple where co-parenting was not given substantial attention.

Only two co-parenting curricula exist that target adolescent parents, the Young Parenthood Program (YPP) and the Family Foundations program (FFP). YPP states that it targets co-parenting skills, but the material actually targets healthy romantic relationship skills and the prevention of intimate partner violence (IPV), acknowledging youth developmental need to learn healthy relationship skills, but ignoring the saliency of co-parenting in this unique context. FFP does target the co-parenting relationship by focusing on identifying childrearing goals and duties and supporting the co-parental relationship; however, this program does not target healthy relationship dynamics or the prevention of IPV.

Unfortunately, adolescent parents, who are experiencing an off-time transition into early parenthood, face the challenge of learning to positively engage in romantic and co-parental relationships at the same time. To better serve this population, the Strengthening Relationships/ Strengthening Families (SR/SF) program is targeting healthy relationship and supportive co-parenting skills. Because a program targeting both skills has not been implemented in any population, our evaluation will move the field forward by showcasing the efficacy of targeting two family relationship dynamics concurrently. Further, by comparing a full-treatment (co-parenting and healthy relationships) to partial-treatment groups (co-parenting only or healthy relationship only), the investigators will be able to identify which relationship is more salient and impactful in increasing adolescent (e.g., depression, self-esteem, role overload) and parental (e.g., parental stress, parental self-efficacy) adjustment during this off-time transition into parenthood. Finally, cost-effectiveness analysis will also provide information of the program impacts if services are provided to one or both members of the co-parental system. Taken together, the program model and supporting evaluation will help build our knowledge of the most salient needs of adolescent parents, and program service delivery best practices.

Evaluation Questions and Hypotheses

Due to the lacuna in the literature focused on adolescent parents and their coparenting adjustment, the following research questions have been formulated: