Participation in the Fathering through Change intervention reduces substance use among divorced and separated fathers

A randomized controlled trial to improve fathering among fathers with substance use disorders: Fathering in recovery intervention

In early recovery for substance use disorders (SUDs), fathers may experience a desire to become more active in their role as a parent but may need support in using effective parenting strategies. Parent management training programs may be effective for fathers in recovery from SUD as they have been shown to improve parenting knowledge, self-efficacy, parenting practices, and child behavior, as well as decrease parent substance use. Using the Parent Management Training-Oregon model, we adapted a video-based program for text delivery to fathers in their first year of recovery from SUD, the fathering in recovery (FIR) intervention. In this pilot study, we randomized 41 fathers to control or 6 weeks of video content and three brief coaching calls and assessed outcomes in the parenting, child, and substance domains at baseline, 6-week, and 4-month follow-ups. We found FIR was effective for improving parenting knowledge, fathering efficacy, and in reducing fathers' ineffective parenting. The intervention showed promise for reducing child behavior problems. While larger studies are needed to replicate and build on these FIR findings, our data suggest that FIR holds promise for improving the lives of fathers and their families affected by SUD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The ADAPT Parenting Intervention Benefits Combat Exposed Fathers Genetically Susceptible to Problem Drinking

Testing a vantage sensitivity model from differential susceptibility theory (DST), we examined a G × E × I hypothesis; that is, whether a military parenting intervention program (I) might buffer a G × E susceptibility for military deployed fathers exposed to deployment combat stress and trauma. We hypothesized that combat stress (E, referring to the natural environmental factor) would lead to increases in problem drinking, and that the effect of problem drinking would be amplified by genetic predisposition (G) for drinking reward systems, substance use, and addictive behaviors (i.e., differential vulnerability). Providing a preventive intervention designed to improve post-deployment family environments (I, vantage sensitivity) is hypothesized to buffer the negative impacts of combat exposure and genetic susceptibility. The sample included 185 post-deployed military fathers who consented to genotyping, from a larger sample of 294 fathers enrolled in a randomized effectiveness trial of the After Deployment Adaptive Parenting Tools (ADAPT) intervention. Trauma-exposed military fathers at genetic susceptibility for problem drinking assigned to the ADAPT intervention reported significantly more reductions in risky drinking compared with fathers at genetic susceptibility assigned to the control group, with a small effect size for the G × E × I interaction (d = .2). Trial Registration. The ADAPT trial is registered at the US National Institutes of Health ( ClinicalTrials.gov ) # NCT03522610.

Effectiveness of GenerationPMTO to Promote Parenting and Child Adjustment: A Meta-Analytic Review

GenerationPMTO is a theory- and evidence-based behavioral parenting program widely implemented in the past three decades. This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the effectiveness of twenty GenerationPMTO studies on parenting and child adjustment among 3893 families in six countries. Hedges' g from studies with pretest-posttest-controlled designs were computed and robust variance estimation (RVE) was used to deal with the effect size dependency. Results showed that GenerationPMTO significantly promoted parenting and child adjustment with moderate to high levels of heterogeneity. Specifically, GenerationPMTO improved parental discipline, parenting monitoring, skill encouragement, child externalizing problems, and child internalizing problems. Subgroup analyses revealed several important moderators, including type of comparison group, measurement, informant, risk of bias, etc. Intervention effects were quite robust across countries and multiple demographic characteristics. No publication bias across studies for parenting and child adjustment was detected. The revised Cochrane risk of bias for randomized trials (RoB 2) procedure was used to assess risk of bias within the included studies. Some studies showed a higher level of risk due to problems with the randomization process, missing data, low measurement quality, and reporting bias. Due to lack of data, we did not examine intervention effects on parental mental health or couple relationship quality. Future studies should test mediation models to understand the mechanisms of change and to identify moderators in order to understand the high levels of heterogeneity in GenerationPMTO studies.