It comes as no surprise to see that parenting programs attract mothers. Drop into a “toddler taming” discussion, a workshop on parents and literacy or a seminar about communicating with your teenager and you’ll see mums by the score.
What is surprising, given the demonstrated benefits to children of fathers’ involvement, is that no real effort is made to include fathers in parenting programs. It’s as if parenting programs belong in the 1950s where children are simply mums’ business.
When Kate Ellis announced a grant of $32.5 million to roll out a home visiting program to improve interaction between parents and their children, the fact that 98% of participants were mothers wasn’t mentioned. When NSW Health paid $5.2 million to have staff trained to deliver the Triple P Positive Parenting Program, no one asked if they’d be trained to include fathers.
As program managers rightly point out, dads aren’t banned from attending so there’s no outright discrimination. And many parenting programs do have some fathers enrol, although many drop out along the way.
So does the problem lie with the dads or the programs?
One way to answer this question is to see if existing programs improve fathers’ parenting. If the programs work for dads, then that’s a start and the problem may be in the marketing.
But here’s the rub – given only a handful of fathers attend, measuring any change in their parenting is impractical. And the wide variety of programs makes it hard to pin down exactly how many dads are attracted to which program.
The most likely place to find enough dads is in one of the mega-programs for parents that are repeated (franchised) across many locations. Queensland-based Triple P is a prime example. Its programs are offered in five levels of intensity and it operates in most Australian states and overseas.
Since dozens of studies on the effects of Triple P have now been completed, the results for mothers and fathers can be separated to measure the program’s effect.
Last week, the US-based Fathering journal published an analysis using all the English language randomised controlled studies of Triple P published before June 2011. The study examined the number of fathers compared with mothers, how many fathers stayed the distance and what effect the program had on fathers’ and mothers’ parenting.
Not unexpectedly, the number of fathers attending was low. Out of the 4959 parents recruited into these studies, 983 (20%) were fathers. In one of the largest Australian studies, only 16 fathers were recruited compared with 1,610 mothers. And no, this wasn’t because all the participants were single mothers.
Determining how many fathers stayed until the end was difficult because so few studies evaluating Triple P kept track of fathers. Some studies managed to keep dads until the final session while others lost every dad. So getting an overall figure is just about impossible.
The effect of the program on mothers’ and fathers’ parenting was judged by their answers to questions measuring how lax, verbose or overreactive they were. Overall, the parenting of fathers did improve, although it was significantly less than that for mothers.
If fathers are to be included alongside mothers, and taking this report-card for Triple P as a guide, parenting programs need to make changes.
Clearly, the way that parenting programs are now marketed isn’t working. The fathering paper authors point to successful examples from other areas that could be applied to programs like Triple P. Program content and delivery (male facilitators?) also needs to reviewed and changed to better apply to dads’ parenting.
Finally, researchers should be steered to include fathers’ data in their parenting studies as a matter of course. Including fathers in the support that we give to parents is an obvious way to balance up the gender ledger in the child care area.
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Comments (10)
Carolyn Hastie
(logged in via Twitter)
Thank you Richard for this important article highlighting the lack of engagement of fathers in these programs. This deficit is clearly very short sighted on the part of the organisers and reflects the wider social issues around parenting. Fathers have been constructed as more remote and hands off than mothers. An example of that kind of thinking is the way that people refer to fathering as 'baby sitting' when the mother is away. Another is the father 'helping' the mother with the baby/children. That kind of language around fathering is very disrespectful to the vital role that fathers have in the lives of their children. When both men and women realise how crucial the full engagement of both men and women in the lives of their children is, the social world will be a much better, kinder and healthier place. Thank you once again for all the work you have done and continue to do to support and promote fathering.
Anna Elizabeth Beniuk
Counsellor (logged in via email @gmail.com)
Carolyn I concur. I have attempted to run some parent groups for young parents and some for the parents of adolescents. I had one father turn up to each. It was hard work keeping theose men engaged. I lost the young father quite quickly, but the father in the other group stayed the distance. The difference I think for him was that he did not adhere to the "macho model" of parenting and was extremely engaged in his children's lives. The poor young chap was fighting an uphil battle, just acknowledging he was a parent at 17 was hard work never mind sitting with a bunch of 15-25 year old girls/women for a couple of hours while they shared their feelings about being parents. My plaan for the new year is to look into what type of groups work for men and and use that as a platform for a new bunch of dads.
Bruce Moon
Bystander! (logged in via email @imap.cc)
As a male (both a father and foster dad as well as now, a multiple grandfather), I am dubious about the Triple P program.
Way back then, someone put together the 'children's play group'. And, that idea took off. While the said focus was toddlers interacting, it was actually designed as a means to get young mums out of the house and to interact with others with similar interests.
An important side benefit of the 'children's play group' other than adult socialising has been that as they interact…
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Dale Bloom
Laboratory analyst (logged in via email @mail.com)
It would be interesting to know “Why did the fathers leave the programs”, or “Why did they not attend the programs in the first place”
Some possible answers:
They do not believe the programs necessary.
They do not want to be in a group of so many women (hen picked remorselessly).
They are suspicious of such programs, as some type of social engineering.
Added to this would be the constant propaganda of “women and their children”, which is propaganda purposely carried out to exclude fathers from the lives of their children. Perhaps that propaganda does work.
mark dastoli
strategic planner (logged in via email @hotmail.com)
Bruce Moon, when was the last time you attended a Triple P course? Do you really think they spend 16 hours of parenting education just talking about 'time out'?!
The empirical evidence on the effectiveness of the program with a range of populations speaks for itself; it's worth reading what has been evaluated over the last few years.
I'm more impressed by the advocates - men and women, practitioners and parents, Aboriginal and culturally diverse - that I hear praising the range of strategies offered…
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Andrew Yule
Communications Manager (logged in via email @gmail.com)
It is certainly a very important issue and one that needs to be addressed. Anglicare Victoria have started running a course specifically for fathers called 'Dads matter' and we have found we get a pretty good attendance. Part of the strategy is to make it specifically about mens issue and their role in parenting.
Jonathon Field
PHD candidate (logged in via email @utas.edu.au)
Parenting Programs including PPP are run in Correctional settings throughout Australia. While this is a skewed sample, evaluation of the effectiveness of these programs may provide some insight into programs run in the general community. In addition, it may help Corrections nationaly decide on the cost effectiveness of parenting programs.
Margo Saunders
(logged in via email @aapt.net.au)
More attention to 'what works', and why/why not, is definitely the way to go, so it's reassuring to see that some attention is being given to this. And good to see some recognition that a 'macho model' of parenting does exist. My recollection of Australian research conducted some years ago into parents who smoke at home with young children around was that the parents whose smoking behaviour was most resistant to change, even when given information about the health impact on their children, were fathers in their 20s and 30s whose attitude was, 'No one's going to tell me what to do in my own home!' The real question, however (and I think Richard would agree), is that we have a National Male Health Policy and a National Women's Health Policy that should be driving health & gender research and producing greater gender sensitivity in policies and programs, but the impact (and resourcing) has been disappointing.
Dale Bloom
Laboratory analyst (logged in via email @mail.com)
The government website “Introduction to working with men and family relationships guide” does define some ways of approaching men.
http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/families/pubs/documents/working_men/sec2.htm
Overall the quide stipulates that men do not react well to being lectured.
Most men like solving problems, and they react better if a problem is defined, and they are left to develop a solution. They will then become more likely to carry out the solution.
So if there is a health problem, best not to lecture men about it (particularly if the lecturer is female, as they get enough of that at home), but to define the problem and then ask the men to develop solutions.
Sabian Mison-Popow
nuclear medicine (logged in via email @yahoo.com.au)
one of the biggest hurdles I had was that most of the parenting groups are during school hours so mostly only accessable to non working parents. from my experience this meant mostly mums.
Eventually I found one held on a weekend and this group had a near 50:50 ratio of fathers to mother, for the entire 3 yrs I attended.