PREVENTION PROGRAMS FOR DIVORCED NONRESIDENT FATHERS

• Published date: 01 January 2005
• Author: William A. Griffin,Sanford L. Braver,Jeffrey T. Cookston
• Date: 01 January 2005
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-1617.2005.00009.x

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 43 No. 1, January 2005 81–96

© 2005 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts

Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.Oxford, UKFCREFamily Court Review1531-2445© Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, 2004431Original Article

Braver et al. / PREVENTION WITH DIVORCED NONRESIDENT FATHERSFAMILY COURT REVIEW

PREVENTION PROGRAMS FOR DIVORCED

NONRESIDENT FATHERS

Sanford L. Braver

William A. Griffin

Arizona State University

Jeffrey T. Cookston

San Francisco State University Abstract

Divorced nonresident fathers are a promising target for preventive efforts to assist families after divorce. The

research literature suggests that such programs should focus both on the frequency and the quality of the child’s

contact with the father, as well as the quality of postdivorce mother–father relations. Dads For Life (DFL) is the

program for this target group with the most convincing evidence of preventive effects. This eight-week program

centers on professionally made videos. It was tested in a randomized trial with 214 families. In comparison to

control families, children in families in which the father participated in DFL had significantly lower internalizing

problems. The preventive impact of DFL was strongest for the most troubled youngsters.

Keywords:

prevention programs

;

nonresident fathers

;

child well-being

;

randomized trial

;

children of divorce

Children from a home where divorce occurs are at risk for a variety of later problems.

They are two to three times more likely than intact families to experience clinically

significant levels of mental health problems or to receive mental health services (e.g.,

Amato & Keith, 1991; Zill, Morrison, & Coiro, 1993), engage in elevated levels of drug

and alcohol use (e.g., Furstenberg & Teitler, 1994), engage in sex before age seventeen

(Furstenberg & Teitler, 1994), and drop out of school or encounter academic problems

(e.g., Astone & McLanahan, 1991). Thus, providing preventive services to these high-risk

families to help ameliorate the problems seems an obvious priority.

PREVENTION WITH NONRESIDENT FATHERS: CONSIDERATIONS

FROM THE RESEARCH LITERATURE

To guide these preventive efforts, a large empirical literature has accumulated illuminat-

ing the factors that contribute to a child’s problems or help the child to avoid these problems

(e.g., Amato & Keith, 1991; Amato, 2000). It is clear from a review of this literature that

divorced fathers typically have a substantial impact on their children’s adjustment after

divorce. For example, an emotionally close relationship with a supportive and authoritative

father has been shown to relate to child well-being (Amato & Gilbreth, 1999). Moreover,

the factor with the greatest importance for the child’s adaptation is the degree of conflict

between the parents postdivorce (Amato & Keith, 1991; Braver, Hipke, Ellman, & Sandler,

2004); fathers are one of the two parents who conjointly create this conflict. Thus, there is

a plausibly considerable benefit to children that will accrue by a preventive program

designed to work with fathers.

Preventive efforts with fathers are likely to be most effective if they take into account

the reality that the vast majority of fathers become nonresidential parents after divorce,

82 FAMILY COURT REVIEW

although, according to Meyer and Garasky (1993) this percentage appears to be slowly

decreasing to its current value of about 90% (Nord & Zill, 1997). Parenting within the

nonresidential context is difficult, with few role prescriptions or guideposts (Wallerstein

& Corbin, 1986). For example, the time with the child is substantially restricted by the

visitation arrangement, which interferes with continuity and thus, restricts discipline, limit

setting, and regulation. Additional difficulties are posed because the relationship between

the parents may be strained or hostile, especially around the issues of visitation (Kruk,

1993) and child rearing (Braver & O’Connell, 1998). Finally, unique to the postdivorce

period, the nonresident father’s relationship to his children, especially his financial support,

is a matter for governmental and legal scrutiny and control.

Another important reality for preventive efforts with divorced fathers is the heavy

emotional toll these constraints pose on fathers (Albrecht, 1980; Bloom, Asher, & White,

1978). For example, the suicide risk for recently divorced fathers is greatly elevated,

compared to married fathers or divorced mothers (Bloom, 1978; Kposowa, Breault, &

Singh, 1995). Umberson and Williams (1993) found that nonresident fathers’ psychological

distress can be explained in large degree by the conflicts and role strains engendered by

the confusion of the divorced-fathering role. Moreover, only a minority of fathers sought

the divorce; the substantial majority opposed the marital termination (Braver, Whitley, &

Ng, 1993; Ahrons, 1994). “Dumpees” are typically more emotionally distraught than the

partner that initiated the termination (Pettit & Bloom, 1984). This further impairs their

parenting and is an important consideration for programs working with nonresident

fathers.

TARGETS FOR PREVENTIVE EFFORTS WITH FATHERS

Preventive programs for divorced fathers that focus on modifying the children’s adjust-

ment have to limit their change efforts to the most critical areas. Should we attempt to help

them adjust better and cope with their own problems in the hopes that this will trickle down

to the children? Should we exhort them to “be more responsible,” as undertaken by several

policy groups and supported by federal initiatives (U.S. Department of Health and Human

Services, 2002)? How do we deal with their anger and frustration, which, judged by fathers’

political activism, both here and abroad, is rampant and critical among this population

(McElroy, 2003). We argue here that it is crucial to base program design on features of

nonresident fathers’ experience that the research literature has established are strongly

implicated in children’s well-being and adjustment to divorce. By this criterion, interven-

tions should focus on four dimensions of father parenting that impact the long-term well-

being of their children: (1) frequency of father–child contact, (2) father–child relationship

quality, (3) father’s financial support, and (4) quality of postdivorce mother–father relations.

FREQUENCY

Older research (e.g., Furstenburg & Nord, 1985; Fulton, 1979) showed that most fathers

spent relatively little time with their children and a good many fathers entirely discontinued

the father–child relationship. However, substantially higher levels of contact have been

observed in more current research (Braver et al., 1993; Maccoby, Depner, & Mnookin,

1988; Seltzer, 1992). It appears some of the difference is due to better methods of measur-

ing contact, and that there is also a cohort difference, with current generations of divorced