Father’s Involvement When Bringing Baby Home: Efficacy Testing of a Couple-Focused Transition to Parenthood Intervention for Promoting Father Involvement
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online June, 2020
Father’s Involvement When Bringing Baby Home: Efficacy Testing of a Couple-Focused Transition to Parenthood Intervention for Promoting Father Involvement
The goal of the present research was to test the efficacy of the Bringing Baby Home couple-focused psychoeducational program for promoting father involvement and related satisfaction. A randomized clinical trial design was used to randomly assign 136 pregnant couples to either an intervention or control group. Father involvement post-intervention was assessed through self-report of engagement in parenting tasks. Intent-to-treat analysis of covariance analyses indicated that fathers who participated in the Bringing Baby Home program reported significantly more involvement in parenting tasks, satisfaction with the division of parenting labor, and feeling appreciated by their wives. Both husbands and wives were also more satisfied with the division of labor when fathers were more involved in parenting. Results suggest that couple-focused psychoeducational programs can be successful for promoting father involvement.
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