Age-Specific Mechanism of the Effects of Family Based Interventions with African American Nonresident Fathers and Sons
- PDF / 905,224 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 48 Downloads / 165 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Age-Specific Mechanism of the Effects of Family Based Interventions with African American Nonresident Fathers and Sons Alvin Thomas
1,2
●
Shervin Assari2,3 Maria Ines Susperreguy4 DeLoney E. Hill5 Cleopatra H. Caldwell2,6 ●
●
●
1234567890();,:
1234567890();,:
Accepted: 7 October 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Our objective was to determine age differences in the effects of a family-based intervention with 278 African American nonresident fathers and their 8 to 12-year-old sons. We assessed fathers’ parenting, sons’ perception of fathers’ parenting, and sons’ intentions to avoid violence (outcome) before and after the intervention. We first studied the mechanism of the effect with the complete sample of fathers and sons, and then on subsamples of fathers and younger (8–10 years) and older (11–12 years) children, using multi-group structural equation modeling (SEM). In the pooled sample, the intervention enhanced fathers’ parenting, which increased sons’ perception of the fathers’ parenting, resulting in sons’ intentions to avoid violence in the future. Two age group differences were found: for younger sons, the intervention was effective on improving father’s parenting, whereas for older sons, father’s parenting had an effect on their son’s perception of parenting. The findings of this study have practical implications for interventions with African American nonresident fathers, especially in terms of the timing and type of interventions offered. Keywords Intervention Nonresident Father African American Violence Parenting ●
●
●
●
●
Highlights The family-based intervention program works by enhancing fathers’ skills and satisfaction with those skills for younger and older sons respectively. ● African American boys benefit from engagement of nonresident fathers in programs which focus on improving youth outcomes. ● Engagement of African American nonresident fathers and sons in family-based culturally relevant interventions can build youth resilience. ●
* Alvin Thomas [email protected] 1
Human Development and Family Studies, School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA
2
Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
3
Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
4
Facultad de Educación, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
5
Flint Odyssey House, 1225Martin Luther King Drive, Flint, MI, USA
6
Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
African American youth who live in under-resourced neighborhoods are more frequently exposed to higher rates of violence (Sheats et al. 2018), are more likely to be victims of violence (Sickmund and Puzzanchera 2014), and engage in more violent behaviors than other groups of adolescents, which puts them at higher risk of poor health and developmental outcomes in the
Data Loading...
