This Spotlight is from the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse, and provides valuable information on the importance of men's activities and behaviors prior to and around the time of a child’s birth (i.e., prenatal involvement). Prenatal involvement has been found to have important implications for the quantity and quality of fathers’ involvement with their children and partners following the birth.

The National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse authored this Spotlight on fathering children with disabilities. Few studies have been conducted on fathers of children with disabilities; however, existing literature suggests that having a special needs child may have important implications for fathers’ well-being and involvement with their children. Specifically, fathers of children with disabilities have lower self-esteem and higher rates of depression than fathers of children without disabilities.

This Spotlight is from the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse, which is sponsored through the Office of Family Assistance, Administration for Children and Families. Authors report on the latest data that finds fathers who report having high levels of social support experience better psychological well-being and demonstrate more positive patterns of father involvement and co-parenting. The benefits of fathers’ social support may also have important implications for child and family well-being.

This study, which was done through the National Fatherhood Initiative, provides an estimate of the taxpayer costs of father absence. Fatherhood absence has increased from 8 percent of children in single-mother households in 1960 to 34 percent in 2008. Researchers estimate the cost of father absence to the federal government to support father-absent homes equated to around $99.8 billion dollars in Fiscal Year 2006. One of the largest fatherhood absence expenses is TANF at around $15 billion.

From the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, this report provides data on the importance of father involvement within the lives of children. Researchers analyze case outcomes for children within the child welfare system in relation to nonresident fatherhood involvement.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation commissioned this brief, which describes the Responsible Fatherhood, Marriage and Family Strengthening Grants for Incarcerated and Re-entering Fathers and their Partners (MFS-IP). Authors provide an overview of the implementation and impact evaluation of this initiative on families around the country.

This issue brief is from the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse and provides an overview of “what works” in fatherhood programs. Researchers outline evaluation procedures for such programs, as only rigorous evaluations of programs can provide evidence of whether programs have the positive outcomes for families. This issue brief outlines ten lessons learned from evaluated fatherhood programs.

This paper was published through the California Center for Population Research, and researchers conducted qualitative analysis to compare non-married and married fathers’ expectations of their child care responsibilities soon after their child’s birth. As a subset of the national Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, 75 men were interviewed at the hospital following the birth of their child. Results showed differences between non-married and married fathers regarding father involvement, child care activities, and barriers to child care.

The number of children born to unmarried parents has been steadily increasing. In 2005, 37 percent of children were born to unmarried parents. Responding to these trends, the Federal government implemented the Healthy Marriage Initiative. This brief, from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, provides information on the relationship dynamics of unmarried couples who recently had a child, which is the target population form many healthy marriage programs.

From the Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, Princeton University, this Fragile Families Research Brief summarizes the results of papers that use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to estimate the effect of incarceration on the wages and employment for poor young fathers. Employment and stable wages can play an important role in helping ex-prisoners reenter into their communities and reduce recidivism into criminal behavior.