This infographic highlights what components of fatherhood programs are most likely to influence the lives of those they touch. The findings are based on a meta-analysis conducted as part of a large-scale federal evaluation called Testing Identified Elements for Success in Fatherhood Programs, or Fatherhood TIES. The findings offer new information about what components of a fatherhood program most affect fathers’ parenting knowledge and skills, well-being, and healthy relationships with coparents, as well as their economic stability.

The meta-analysis aimed to answer two research questions:

1. What are the overall impacts of fatherhood programs on parenting, healthy relationships with coparents, economic stability, and fathers’ well-being?
    
2. What are the core components of fatherhood programs that are associated with larger impacts on parenting, healthy relationships with coparents, economic stability, and fathers’ well-being?

Findings and Highlights

• Programs delivered in individual formats had larger impacts on outcomes related to parenting, father well-being, healthy relationships with coparents, and economic stability than programs offering only group-based services.
   
• Programs that focused on parenting knowledge and skills or fathers’ roles in the family had larger impacts on outcomes related to parenting, father well-being, and healthy relationships with coparents than programs than did not include those content areas.
   
• Programs that involved on-the-job training or job-related education and career guidance had larger impacts on economic stability outcomes than programs that did not include that content.
   
• Studies with more racially/ethnically homogenous samples of participants had larger impacts on outcomes related to parenting, father well-being, and healthy relationships with coparents than studies with more heterogenous groups.
   
• Studies that reported implementation problems tended to have smaller impacts on economic stability outcomes than studies that did not report implementation problems.