Abstract: Promoting Fathers' Communication with Their Infants through Enhanced Early Home Visitation Services: Findings from a Randomized Controlled Trial of Dads Matter-HV (Society for Social Work and Research 30th Annual Conference Anniversary)

Schedule:

Sunday, January 18, 2026

Liberty BR I, ML 4 (Marriott Marquis Washington DC)

* noted as presenting author

Neil Guterman, PhD, Paulette Goddard Professor and Dean Emeritus, New York University, New York, NY

In Young Park, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar, Boston College, Brighton, MA

Jin Yao Kwan, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Delaware, DE

Jennifer Bellamy, PhD, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, Professor, University of Denver, Denver, CO

Zezhen Wu, PhD Candidate, New York University, NY

Justin Harty, PhD, Assistant Professor, Arizona State University, AZ

Aaron Banman, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Nebraska, Omaha

Sandra morales Mirque, Senior Research Specialist, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL

Background and Purpose: Parents’ early communication with their infants predicts children’s attachment security, executive functioning, later socio-emotional and cognitive development, and school readiness. Early home visiting services have have been promoted and recently expanded in the U. S. given outcome studies reporting their potential to significantly promote early learning, child development and reduce childhood risks for abuse and neglect. Despite these advances, such services to date have focused on the mother-baby dyad, and largely overlook fathers’ roles. In this context, we designed, developed and tested in a randomized controlled trial a “father inclusion” enhancement to early home visitation services, examining its impact in promoting healthful parenting and children’s early socio-emotional and cognitive development. In this presentation, we overview the “Dads Matter-HV” add-on which trains workers on engaging fathers, supporting the mother-father co-parenting dyad, and supporting fathers in their own parenting all in the context of early home-based services, and we then examine the positive impact of this intervention on fathers’ communications, as well as mothers’ communications with their infants.

Methods: This study utilized a multi-site randomized controlled trial design, examining the effects of Dads Matter-HV on both fathers’ and mothers’ verbal language use and their interactive communications with infants. We examine audio recordings and both fathers’ and mothers’ word counts using the LENA (“Language ENvironment Analysis”) algorithmic technology, from 93 low-income urban families (71% Latinx, 25% African American, 4% Other) who were randomly assigned to either receive traditional home visiting services or home visiting plus Dads Matter enhanced services. Data were collected at service initiation, four months later (after Dads Matter-HV services were delivered), and again at one-year follow-up.

Results: At four-month follow-up, Dads Matter-HV fathers’ verbalizations toward their child increased 73% over the control group, translating to an effect size of d = 0.60 (p < .05), with those same gains sustained at 1-year. We further found that Dads Matter-HV mothers’ verbalizations’ comparatively increased 26.4% (d = 0.40, p < .05) at four months and sustained at 1-year. Both parents’ conversational turns with their infants comparatively increased 51% through 1-year follow up (d = 0.40, p < .05).

Conclusions and Implications: Such findings point to a potential to magnify the early childhood benefits of home based services on parent-infant communication with a light touch “father inclusion” training program, thereby promoting children’s socio-emotional and cognitive developmental trajectories.