The Effectiveness of a Divorce Education Program on Father Involvement

Since the beginning of the 1990s, there has been a dramatic increase in, and use of, divorce education programs for parents who are divorcing. While many studies have examined the long-term effectiveness of such programs, virtually no studies have exclusively focused on outcomes for divorced fathers. In this study, I compared fathers who had attended a divorce education program (because of a county mandate) with fathers who did not participate in such an intervention. All fathers had been divorced for two to four years. I assessed several different kinds of father-outcomes including contact with children, attendance at school or extracurricular activities, participation in decision-making about children's lives, post-divorce relations (with the child and mother), and adjustment to life as a divorced father. The results indicate that this particular divorce education program did not bring lasting effects for divorced fathers.