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Much of the early psychological research on Black fathers and families employed a deficit lens, pathologizing Black fathers as absent and uninvolved contributors to their children's development. As a response, several Black psychologists articulated the need to move away from deficit-based approaches and employ strengths-based and adaptive frameworks to examine the social experiences of Black fathers and their contributions to child development. This transformative work was not only central to advancing research on Black fathers but also a cornerstone in the broader fathering literature. Though the list of foundational architects of Black fatherhood scholarship spans disciplines, we center this article around the contributions of eight Black psychologists-Drs. Phillip Bowman, Cleopatra Howard Caldwell, Anderson J. Franklin, Nancy Boyd-Franklin, Vivian Gadsden, Harriette Pipes McAdoo, John L. McAdoo, and Melvin Wilson. Their collective works and scientific contributions provided a critical lens and articulated a vision for research on Black fathers. In highlighting their contributions, we focus on six thematic areas: (a) conceptual and theoretical advancements, (b) research methods and designs that centered Black fathers, (c) description and contextualization, (d) children's development and well-being, (e) theory to practice and intervention, and (f) scientific cross-pollination and collaborative ethos. Last, we review and highlight research branches and extensions of these foundational roots. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Engaging fathers early in child and family services has the potential to promote positive father contributions towards positive child development, improve family well-being, and enhance service outcomes over time. However, low father engagement in child and family services remains a persistent problem, and few interventions designed to improve father engagement in these services have been rigorously tested. The current study assesses the effect of a service enhancement intervention called Dads Matter-Home Visiting (Dads Matter-HV) on biological father engagement in home visiting services when compared to home visiting services delivered as usual. To assess the efficacy of the Dads Matter-HV intervention, the research team used a stratified cluster randomized clinical trial design with five agencies delivering early home visiting service programs. Seventeen teams across the five agencies were randomly assigned to either the control group condition (i.e., standard home visiting services as usual) or the intervention condition (i.e., Dads Matter-HV). Data were collected from a total of 204 families at baseline, 4 months postbaseline (92% retention rate), and 12 months postbaseline (84% retention rate). The results suggest that Dads Matter-HV increases biological father engagement for fathers who begin services in the postnatal period, but reduces engagement when services are initiated prenatally. Findings suggest some pathways through which the intervention effects engagement., (© 2022. Society for Prevention Research.)

Objective: Fathers contribute to child and family well-being across several domains, and home visiting (HV) programs are an important potential service platform from which to engage fathers and families. To develop insights for improving efforts to engage fathers and mothers in home visiting together, we describe and compare assessment and engagement strategies used by home visitors trained in Dads Matter-HV versus those who were not. Method: This study examines qualitative data collected from 26 home visitors (13 from the intervention group and 13 from the control group) from five agencies in Chicago, IL, who participated in a randomized controlled trial of Dads Matter-HV, an intervention designed to increase fathers' engagement in standard HV programs. Results: As expected, home visitors using Dads Matter-HV described using father-focused assessment and engagement strategies more often than home visitors who were not trained in the intervention. They were also more likely to identify mother-focused assessment and engagement strategies. Conclusions: Home visitors trained in Dads Matter-HV reported more specific assessment and engagement practices with both fathers and mothers. Possible improvements for father assessment and engagement practices in home visiting are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 30 years, there has been a surge of interest in understanding the experiences and outcomes of expectant and parenting foster youth. Despite the importance of understanding this unique population of foster youth, there remains a lack of research on fathers in foster care. Most studies of expectant and parenting foster youth focus on mothers in care, and studies that have examined fathers in care provide little insight compared to what we know about mothers. Furthermore, existing research on fathers in foster care is limited by underreporting, service engagement issues, lack of meaningful engagement data, and very little information on fathers' involvement with their children. There is very little published research on the experience of fatherhood in foster care or on related outcomes for fathers in care such as residency with children, father engagement with children, coparental relationship quality, or the health and well-being of their children. While there have been over 60 studies and three reviews on expectant and parenting foster youth spanning roughly 30 years, the articles have primarily focused on empirical findings relating to mothers in foster care. Information on fathers in foster care has received little attention and is restricted to empirical studies. This scoping review aims to fill this gap by examining the available information on fathers in foster care. To this end, our scoping review explores empirical findings and knowledge from practice-, legal-, and policy-related literature related to fathers in foster care from peer-reviewed journal articles, reports, dissertations, white papers, and grey literature published between 1989 and 2021. Findings from 94 sources of evidence on expectant and parenting foster youth suggest that mothers in foster care are consistently the focus of the literature. If fathers in foster care are included in the literature, findings or guidance are often provided in the aggregate (e.g., parents in care). However, when aggregated, literature still focuses on mothers in care, or female pronouns are used to describe the larger expectant or parenting foster youth population. Many of the studies excluded fathers, and the primary exclusion rationale includes a lack of identified fathers in care, unreliable child welfare data on fathers, or high attrition of fathers in parenting services. In terms of information on fathers in foster care by the source of evidence, research papers often provided quantitative descriptions of fathers, practice papers focused on rights of fathers, legal papers centered on paternity establishment or paternal rights, and policy papers largely discussed the need for improved data tracking and interventions for fathers. More research is needed to support fathers in foster care as they transition out of care into early adulthood and young fatherhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite home visiting's established legacy, the potential influence of intersecting parental characteristics on parent–worker relationships is less understood. This study examines the main and interaction effects of parents' demographic characteristics on positive relationships with workers in home visiting and compares whether and how these effects differ between fathers and mothers. This study analyzed 130 mothers and 180 fathers who participated in home visiting services. Immigrant status was a significant predictor of positive worker relationships for mothers and fathers, whereas ethnicity was only significant for fathers. Interaction analyses indicated that U.S.-born Hispanic/Latinx fathers faced greater challenges in building positive worker relationships than their foreign-born counterparts. These findings highlight the importance of developing gender-specific and culturally responsive strategies to enhance parent–worker relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing recognition of the importance of fathers in child abuse risk, the field of perinatal home visitation has only begun to consider fathers' roles in the implementation of such services. This study examines the effectiveness of Dads Matter-HV ("DM-HV"), a father-inclusion enhancement to home visitation, and hypothesized mediators of impact. A multisite cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted with 17 home visiting program teams serving 204 families across study conditions. Program supervisors and their teams were randomized to deliver home visiting services plus DM-HV enhanced services (intervention) or home visiting services alone (control). Data were collected at three time points: baseline, 4 months post-baseline immediately following the intervention, and 12 months post-baseline. We employed structural equation modeling to estimate the effect of the intervention on physical child abuse risk and to trace hypothesized mediators, including the quality of the father-worker relationship, parents' partner support and abuse, and the timing of service initiation. Results indicated that the DM-HV enhancement improved home visitor relationships with fathers, but only for families receiving services initiated postnatally. For these families, the improved quality of the father-worker relationship predicted improved parents' support of one another and reduced bidirectional mother-father partner abuse at 4-month follow-up, which in turn lowered maternal physical child abuse risk and paternal physical child abuse risk at 12-month follow-up. DM-HV can strengthen the impact of home visitation services on physical child abuse risk for families when services are initiated postnatally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]