Parent-Child Relations
Conditions
Keywords
First time parents, Coparenting, Family Foundations
Brief summary
This is a research study to evaluate the effectiveness of the Family Foundations program and to better understand how families cope with having a new baby. The research questions include: What is the effectiveness of the Family Foundations program? How do families cope with having a new baby?
Interventions
BEHAVIORALFamily Foundations Coparenting Program
Family Foundations, a program for adult couples expecting their first child, is designed to help them establish positive parenting skills and adjust to the physical, social, and emotional challenges of parenthood. Program topics include coping with postpartum depression and stress, creating a caring environment, and developing the child's social and emotional competence. Family Foundations is delivered to groups of couples through four prenatal and four postnatal classes of 2 hours each. Prenatal classes are started during the fifth or sixth month of pregnancy, and the postnatal classes end when the children are 6 months old. Family Foundations is delivered in a community setting by childbirth educators who have received 3 days of training from Family Foundations staff.
Sponsors
Penn State University
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
PREVENTION
Masking
SINGLE (Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Expecting first child * Couple living together and planning to raise child together * 18 years or older
Exclusion criteria
* Not first child
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Coparenting Quality | up to 3.5 years after baseline | We assessed coparenting relationship quality with the 31-item Coparenting Scale, which was created based on prior work (e.g., Abidin & Brunner, 1995; Cordova, 2001; Frank, Olmstead, Wagner,& Laub, 1991; Margolin et al., 2001; McHale, 1997). The overall score represents an average of items covering theoretically important domains: coparental agreement, support,undermining, and exposure of the child to conflict. |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Parenting Discipline Practices | 3.5 years after baseline | The Parenting Scale assesses discipline practices in parents of children from 18-48 months (Arnold,O'Leary, Wolff, & Acker, 1993). |
| Child Behavior Problems | 3.5 years after baseline | Child behavior problems were measured using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000), reported by mothers only. From this 100-item questionnaire, separate sub-scales were calculated using scoring conventions. From these, we examined three overall scores which were normed for child age: Total problems, Externalizing problems, and Internalizing problems. In addition, we examined two specific sub-scales given their relevance to this study: Aggression and Attention/Hyperactivity. |
Countries
United States
Outcome results
None listed