Fatherhood
It’s important to focus specifically on fathers in research, practice, and policy making given the positive and unique role fathers can play in their children’s lives. At Child Trends, we recognize the value of supporting and enhancing fathers’ engagement with their children across diverse family types and living arrangements, and through all child developmental stages. Child Trends has conducted fatherhood-focused research and evaluation on men’s fertility and family formation behaviors, adolescent fatherhood, fathers’ parenting and coparenting relationships, engaging fathers in efforts to prevent intimate partner violence, and fathers’ involvement in the justice system. We also study fathers with diverse racial and ethnic identities. Through this work, we have increased the fatherhood research and practice fields’ understanding of effective and promising practices for programs that aim to improve fathers’ parenting skills, healthy romantic and coparenting relationships, and economic self-sufficiency.
Our work has made important contributions to the field, including:
- Providing fatherhood programs with a variety of research-informed principles, practices, and resources to prevent and address domestic violence and refer fathers to appropriate services as needed
- Identifying strategies that fatherhood programs can use to overcome commonly identified barriers to supporting fathers’ coparenting and romantic relationships
- Addressing methods to support romantic and coparenting relationships for a diverse range of fathers, such as American Indian and Alaska Native fathers; for fathers in unique circumstances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic; and for fathers who experience stigma and discrimination
