Working with fathers to reduce parental conflict: join us for a free webinar
The quality of the relationship between parents – and specifically how they communicate and relate to each other – has a significant influence on effective parenting, and on children’s long-term mental health and future life chances.
Parents in hostile and distressed couple relationships are typically more hostile and aggressive towards their children, and less sensitive and emotionally responsive to their children’s needs.
Parental conflict may have more of a negative impact on the father–child relationship than the mother–child relationship. Research suggests that fathers are more likely to respond to parental conflict by withdrawing from their children or being hostile towards them, for example.
And yet fathers are MUCH less likely to receive targeted support, or to be actively recruited or addressed by family-focused support and interventions. Projects in the Department for Work and Pensions Reducing Parental Conflict Programme have so far reported particular challenges in engaging with, and providing support that resonates with, fathers.
It’s time for that to change, and here at the Fatherhood Institute we have a range of ways of supporting your service to do a better job with dads. Join us for our free webinar on 6 April to find out more.
Book a place on our free webinar
We offer learning packages to help you deliver our highly evaluated, father-inclusive couple intervention, Family Foundations – and more generally to build systematic engagement with fathers. Maximise the impact of your parental conflict by addressing all parents, not just half of them.
Families may be particularly vulnerable to stress and parental conflict at key transition points in family life, including:
- the birth of the first child and transition to parenthood (which evidence shows can put strain on relationships, cause a decrease in relationship satisfaction and increase parental conflict); and
- parental separation/ divorce (which represents a specific risk for children, as a context where ongoing conflict may be taking place – and provides an opportunity to help children adapt by supporting positive relationships between separated parents during and after separation).
Find out more about how our learning packages can help you reach BOTH parents during these transitions, in our new blog or download our Working Effectively with Fathers to Reduce Parental Conflict training brochure.
