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Despite this evidence, the field of early childhood services has historically focused primarily on mothers and infants, and faces a paucity of evidence-based father-inclusion strategies to guide workers’ service delivery. This omission represents a critical gap in service design and delivery, as emerging evidence further suggests that fathers play a key role in shaping mothers’ own engagement in services and their own service outcomes. Given the rapid expansion of early childhood services, understanding and identifying effective strategies to engage fathers represents an important area for social work research and practice.
The four papers in this symposium address this gap by examining fathers’ roles as well as the testing, adaptation, and implementation of father-inclusive early childhood interventions. The first paper presents findings from a randomized controlled trial tracing the positive impact of Dads Matter, a father inclusion enhancement designed to strengthen evidence-informed early home visitation services and promote father involvement among a diverse sample of fathers with their infants. The second paper describes the adaptation of Dads Matter for integration into doula services, highlighting opportunities to engage fathers earlier in the birth process within community-based care models that center pregnancy, birth, and early parenting. The third paper presents a case study of the DAD Project, a unique home visiting program staffed entirely by fathers who provide home visiting services to fathers who are expecting a child or parenting a child under three years old. The perspective and approach of DAD Project home visitors offer insights for the broader field to more effectively engage and empower fathers to strengthen their connections with their children and co-parents. The fourth paper draws on qualitative interviews with young Black fathers in extended foster care to examine how corporate parenting shapes their involvement with infants and young children. Findings highlight strong father engagement alongside structural constraints, including placement rules and limited father-focused services, pointing to the need to expand corporate parenting to better support fathers’ involvement in early childhood and co-parenting relationships.
Collectively, these papers advance our understanding of fathers’ roles in parenting, ways to strengthen early childhood systems that promote more inclusive and equitable services, and contribute to the well-being of families and communities for the common good.