Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers generally agree that low-income nonresidential fathers who are no longer in a romantic or marital relationship with their child’s mother must maintain at least an adequate coparenting relationship with the mother in order to stay involved with their children (Carlson, McLanahan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2008). Social service programs have also recognized the importance of addressing the coparenting relationships of low-income nonresidential parents as a means to assist mothers and fathers function as collaboratively as possible on behalf of children (Dion, Zaveri, & Holcomb, 2015). Fatherhood programs frequently try to include mothers in coparenting services. Yet, these workshops are often not well attended (Dion, Zaveri, & Holcomb). This paper presents the findings of a study to involve mothers in a coparenting intervention called Understanding Dads™, developed by the National Fatherhood Initiative, at 9 responsible fatherhood programs. Specifically, this paper documents the extent to which mothers are interested in this mother-only program. Based on ecological systems theory, the current study hypothesizes a number of microsystem variables are likely to relate to mothers’ interest in a coparenting program, including quality of the coparenting relationship; quality of the mother-father relationship; extent of fathers’ contact with children; fathers’ legal, financial, and interpersonal challenges, and fathers’ multi-partnered fertility.

Mothers were recruited in one of three ways at 9 responsible fatherhood programs: (1) the father was recruited through advertisements at the agency sites or information sessions conducted at other community-based parenting programs, (2) the mother was recruited through advertisements in local and online mothering groups, or (3) the mother reached out to the coordinator after hearing of the class from a previous participant. The fathers of the participating mother’s child completed a pre-test, post-test, and follow-up survey prior to, directly after, and 3 months after the mother completed the Understanding Dad™ class. All measures of predictors were obtained from fathers’ pretest surveys.

For mothers who were recruited by way of fathers providing the project coordinator with her contact information (N = 218), an average of 6 contact attempts were made to each mother, with a maximum of 20 attempts per mother. Contact attempts included phone calls and text messages and were made by the site project coordinator until (a) the coordinator could not get in contact with the mother after 20 attempts, (b) the mother expressed disinterest in the study as a whole, (c) the mother expressed that she would like to do the surveys but could not participate in the class, or (d) the mother expressed interest in the class.

Results of logistic regression analyses revealed that mothers’ interest in the program was significantly and positively related to fathers reporting more positive relationships with the mother, fathers having fewer legal challenges, fathers’ past coresidence with the mother, and fathers having children with multiple mothers. We also found an inverted “U-shaped” relationship between father reports of coparentng alliance and mothers’ interest. That is, mothers were more interested in the program when fathers reported moderate levels of alliance. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.