Ninoslava Pecnik
University of Zagreb
Head of Chair for Psychology at the Study Centre of Social Work, Faculty of Law, teaching undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate courses on parenting, child abuse and neglect and research of parenting and parenting support interventions. Consultant for the Council of Europe Recommendation (2006) 19 on policy to support positive parenting. President of the Centre for Parenting Support "Growing up Together" in Zagreb www.rastimozajedno.hr. Co-author and supervisor of the universal and targeted parenting support programmes for parents of young children.
The “Growing up Together” Clubs with Fathers is a parenting support programme soley for fathers of children 1-4 years old. It was developed in response to a relatively low participation of fathers (in comparison to mothers) in the universal positive parenting programme for parents of young children “Growing up Together” (Pecnik & Starc, 2010) that has been delivered to over 3000 parents in Croatia. The programme aims to support fathers in their parental role and consists of 4 weekly, structured, 120-minutes-long workshops for groups of 8 - 12 participants. The objective of the paper is to present the programme and results of the evaluation of it’s effectiveness in promoting positive father involvement and preventing violence to young children.
Method: Pre- and post-intervention self-report data have been collected from fathers who had completed the programme in 2016 in 19 kindergartens throughout Croatia (N=147). Participants were predominately married (97%), had university degree (45%), high (21%) or secondary (32%) schooling. Outcome measures included parental self-efficacy (Kerestes et al., 2009), parental reactions to child’s misbehaviour (attempted understanding, angry outbursts; Stattin et al.,2011), developmentaly positive and negative interaction (Pecnik, 2014), as well as the beliefs about fathers’ and mothers’ roles in parenting a young child and attitudes to corporal punishment (Pecnik, 2016).
Results: After the programme fathers reported higher self-efficacy, more frequent positive involvement with the child, less frequent shouting and hitting of a child, more attempted understanding of a child’s perspective and less angry outbursts than on the programme entry. Their beliefs were less tolerant towards violence to children and more supportive of father’s involvement in caring for the child’s physical and emotional needs. Fathers also provided qualitative data about programme benefits for themselves and their children and suggestions for improvement. Clubs with Fathers encouraged some participants to engage in further parenting support activities.
