Low-income fathers’ barriers to participation in family and parenting programs

Abstract

There is considerable evidence that fathers and father surrogates are overrepresented as the perpetrators of child maltreatment. National child welfare data indicate that fathers were identified as a perpetrator in half of all child maltreatment fatalities in which a parent was responsible. Without comprehensive services that target the entire family, including fathers, efforts to prevent child abuse are likely to fall short of their intended goals. Despite the overrepresentation of fathers as perpetrators of child maltreatment, fathers have been largely absent in the child maltreatment services literature. This suggests that child welfare practitioners do not consider fathers as central to the work of protecting children. Child welfare caseworkers acknowledge that bias and lack of training on how to engage fathers may contribute to the exclusion of fathers from services. Yet little is known about the best practices for engaging fathers in parenting and prevention efforts, and there is a gap in our understanding of the barriers to father engagement from the perspective of fathers.