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All states have programs that give unmarried parents the opportunity to acknowledge the father’s paternity of the newborn at the hospital. States must also help parents acknowledge paternity up until the child’s eighteenth birthday through vital records offices or other offices designated by the state. Even if the parents plan to marry after their baby is born, establishing paternity helps to protect the relationship between the child and the father.
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This fact sheet gives information on the cause of food-related disagreements in families and provides strategies for effective communication to overcome these disagreements in a healthy way.
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Journal Article This paper reviews the research of the past two decades that addresses the relationship between family structure and early child health outcomes. Specifically, we focus on family structure's influence on child health during pregnancy, birth, and infancy. We briefly summarize the most pervasive changes to family structure in the US during recent decades and discuss how early child health is linked to future outcomes for children and adults. We review research that highlights the mechanisms linking family structure to early child health and identify key risk and protective factors for children…
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This research brief shares findings from an evaluation of the Responsible Fatherhood, Marriage and Family Strengthening Grants for Incarcerated and Reentering Fathers and Their Partners (MFS-IP), a program that funded services to support families in which one parent was incarcerated or recently released. The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) within the Administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provided up to $500,000 per year for five years to twelve grantees. OFA's family strengthening initiative required grantees to work with both…
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Little Children, Big Challenges provides resources for families with young children (ages 3-8) as they encounter the difficult changes and transitions that come with a parent's incarceration.
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Journal Article This study examined factors that contributed to fathers being perceived as good or poor sexuality educators by their daughters. The data from 10 female participant interviews were analyzed (five fathers were rated as quality educators and five as poor educators). Good Paternal Educators were perceived as being emotionally close to their daughter, displayed attentiveness to her comfort level during sexual conversations, were open and honest when discussing sexual topics, monitored her behaviors with a level of trust, and were direct communicators. Conversely, Poor Paternal Educators were…
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In 2007, 1.7 million children had a parent in prison on any given day, and even more have experienced parentalincarceration at some point during their childhood. Parental incarceration can be associated with financial instability,unstable housing situations, school behavior and performance problems, and social stigma. Roughly 10% of incarcerated mothers in state prison have a child in a foster home or other state care. Some estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 8 children who are subjects of reports of maltreatment and investigated by child welfare agencies have parents who were recently…
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Journal Article Adult men often report a sense of feeling a father wound when reflecting on their own father-son relationship. Perhaps in part due to a rejection of traditional fathering practices that may have contributed to such wounds, fathers today are increasingly adopting a 'new involved father' role that is more welcoming of emotional expression and involvement in a child's life. This paper argues that adopting this new role may allow men to not only connect with their sons, but also to come to terms with problematic aspects of their own father-son relationship. In this way, fathering a son may allow…
Spending positive time with both parents promotes child well-being and is associated with better child support outcomes. Unmarried parents do not have systematic access to assistance in establishing parenting time orders, so stateand local child support programs have sought to address this service gap. This fact sheet highlights states and countiesthat coordinate the establishment of child support orders and parenting time agreements. Family violence safeguardsare always a critical component when addressing parenting time. (Author abstract)
OCSE recently launched Parenting Time Opportunities for Children, a pilot program to give child support agencies grants to develop, implement, and evaluate procedures to establish parenting time orders along with new child support orders. The goal is to learn more about how the child support program can safely and effectively give families opportunities to establish parenting time orders, thereby improving child well-being overall and related child support outcomes. This fact sheet introduces OCSE's Parenting Time Opportunities for Children grantees. (Author abstract)
