TRUE Dads: The impact of a couples-based fatherhood intervention on family relationships, child outcomes, and economic self-sufficiency.

TRUE Dads, a federally funded Responsible Fatherhood intervention, aims to strengthen three of men's key roles in the family: (1) as fathers, building and maintaining positive engagement with their child; (2) as partners, maintaining a positive relationship with their co-parent; and (3) as providers, through fostering employment and economic self-sufficiency. A feature of the program is that low-income fathers and their co-parenting partners participate together in 6 3-hour group workshops, followed by optional participation in an additional 6 3-hour workshops. Fathers in the intervention condition were offered a chance to participate in a 2-week employment program. 1,042 co-parenting teams were recruited and randomly assigned to TRUE Dads' group intervention (60%) or a no-treatment control group (40%). In analyses of single measures, one year after study entry, compared with no-treatment controls, TRUE Dads program participants reported fewer depressive symptoms, less destructive couple communication and domestic violence, and increased employment for fathers. Using expanded latent variable measures of core constructs, Structural Equation Modeling revealed indirect effects of the intervention, in which reductions in both parents' negative symptoms and destructive couple communication were associated with (a) reductions in negative parenting qualities and children's behavior problems and (b) increases in fathers' economic self-sufficiency. Reducing parents' personal distress and improving relationship quality between co-parents appears to be important to enhancing fathers' positive family engagement. From a family policy perspective, the results suggest that integration rather than separation of healthy marriage, responsible fatherhood, and employment programs could provide synergistic power to programs designed to strengthen low-income families.