Changing Families: A Preventive Intervention Perspective

• Date: 01 July 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12359
• Published date: 01 July 2019
• Author: Carolyn Pape Cowan,Philip A. Cowan

C P C  P A. C University of California Berkeley

Changing Families: A Preventive

Intervention Perspective

In this review of preventive interventions to pro-

mote healthy families, we begin with an account

of how sociology and psychology have helped

shape conicting interpretations of changes in

families over the past 70 years as evidence of

either family decline or positive diversity. We

argue that in either case, well-validated pro-

grams are needed to strengthen families across

the economic spectrum. Most parenting inter-

ventions have been designed for, and attended

by, mothers. We present an empirically based

family risk and protection model to provide a

rationale for interventions that also include

fathers and focus on the coparenting relation-

ship. Using an example of 7 clinical trials of

a couples group intervention for parents from

diverse economic and social backgrounds, we

show that including fathers and addressing the

coparental relationship as well as parenting

contributes to healthier outcomes for mothers,

fathers, and children. Finally, we discuss impli-

cations for the future of family research and

policy.

Numerous changes in family structures and

dynamics have occurred since the 1950s. In

the United States and most Western industrial-

ized nations, fewer people are getting married

and more are cohabiting. Fewer women are

Department of Psychology, Universityof California, Berke-

ley, 140 Highland Boulevard, Kensington, CA 94708.

E-mail: ccowan@berkeley.edu.

KeyWords: changing families, family policy,parenting inter-

ventions, strengthening couple relationships.

having babies, and increasing numbers of those

who do are single parents. Fathers are increas-

ingly absent (due to abandonment, separation,

divorce, or incarceration). Increasing propor-

tions of women who are mothers of young

children are working outside the home. Gender

stereotypic roles of men and women inside the

home are changing. The income gap between

families at the top and bottom is widening, and

the cultural meaning and legal denition of

marriage is changing (the legal enshrinement of

same-sex marriage being a prime example).

Although the fact that these changes have

occurred is not disputed, there have been remark-

ably polarized interpretations of them within

academic and policy circles. Just as these and

other instances of family change have been inter-

preted by some as alarming evidence that the

institutions of marriage and family life are in

a progressive decline, others have interpreted

the same trends positively as signs of the emer-

gence of “diverse forms and rich possibilities”

for family life (Parke, 2013). The positions of

researchers and policy makers on marriage and

family life developments are reected in their

proposals for what families need. Those who

posit that marriage and family are in decline

believe that the government ought to be involved

in interventions that reverse,or at least halt, these

changes by, for example, promoting traditional

marriage or making it less costly for mothers of

young children to stay at home. In contrast, pro-

ponents of diversity and inclusion oppose these

interventions, which they perceive as attempts

to maintain the status quo even as social cir-

cumstances and mores change, yet they advocate

298 Family Relations 68 (July 2019): 298–312

DOI:10.1111/fare.12359