Parental Empowerment and Child Behavioral Problems in Single and Two-Parent Families During Family Treatment
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Parental Empowerment and Child Behavioral Problems in Single and Two-Parent Families During Family Treatment Harm Damen
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Jan W. Veerman2 Ad A. Vermulst3 Ingrid Westerdijk1 Ron H. J. Scholte2,4 ●
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© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract We examined (1) the extent to which the family-centered program Intensive Family Treatment (IFT) succeeds in realizing beneficial parental psychological empowerment and child behavioral outcomes both in single-parent and two-parent families and (2) how these outcomes are influenced by the presence of a co-caregiver as a potential source of empowerment. A group of 140 single-mother and 156 mother–father families was compared. Information about empowerment of parents and children’s behavioral problems was collected at the start and end of IFT and analyzed with cross-lagged panel analyses. Although single mothers and mothers in two-parent families were comparable in the extent of improvements in psychological empowerment (effect sizes were respectively 0.52 and 0.57) and child behavioral problems (effect sizes were both 0.49), they differ in how these improvements were achieved. For single-parent families, more maternal empowerment at the start of IFT was directly related to positive changes in child behavioral problems (β = −0.246, p < 0.01). Among twoparent families, more paternal empowerment at the start was directly related to improved maternal empowerment (β = 0.249, p < 0.001) but maternal empowerment at the start was not directly related to changes in the father’s empowerment. This study stresses the importance of taking into account the presence or absence of a co-caregiver as a potential source of psychological empowerment during family-centered programs as IFT. Keywords Parental empowerment Child behavioral problems Family-structure Co-caregiver’s presence Familycentered programs ●
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Highlights Psychological empowerment of parents increases during Intensive Family Treatment (IFT). ● Child behavioral problems decreases during IFT. ● Single-mothers’ empowerment at the start effects children’s behavior at the end. ● Paternal empowerment at the start effects maternal empowerment at the end. ●
Family-centered programs such as Multi-Systemic Treatment, Functional Family Therapy, and Families First have
* Harm Damen [email protected] 1
Pactum/VIGO, PO Box 1, 6670 AA Zetten, The Netherlands
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Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, PO Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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GGZ (Mental Health Care) Oost Brabant, PO Box 3, 5427 ZG Boekel, The Netherlands
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TRANZO, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
become important in youth care (Lee et al. 2008; Nelson et al. 2009; Van Assen et al. 2020). Such programs are carried out in the context of families (Geurts et al. 2012; Law et al. 2003), which is considered the best environment for successful treatment (Sheridan et al. 2004). Familycentered programs aim to achieve positive
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