Strengthening Families, Fatherhood, Healthy Relationships & Marriages
Explore research and evaluation projects on topics such as family formation and stability, co-parenting, marriage, fatherhood, and violence in relationships. Studies include a focus on the implications of programs and policies for child, adult, and family well-being.
The Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) program is part of ACF’s strategy to improve the long-term well-being of children and families. HMRF is a $150 million discretionary grant program originally authorized under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and reauthorized under the Claims Resolution Act of 2010. ACF supports several research and evaluation activities as well as learning from a broad array of other activities such as performance management, technical assistance, active engagement of groups and individuals, site monitoring, and continuous quality improvement.
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A large body of research has shown that, on average, children raised in stable families with involved parents and caregivers have better outcomes on a range of measures, even into adulthood. Research has also identified dimensions of couples’ relationship functioning (e.g., positive communication, effective conflict management, problem solving, etc.) that could be modified or enhanced through relationship- focused educational programming. Some evaluations have found that such programming can produce improvement in multiple dimensions of relationship quality and stability.
In recent decades, efforts to support and promote supportive fathering have been spurred by research that shows a link between supportive fathering and positive child outcomes. Responsible fatherhood programs aim to provide resources and supports to fathers around healthy marriage and relationships, parenting, and economic stability. OPRE’s strengthening families, healthy relationships and marriages, and fatherhood portfolio includes research and evaluation on topics such as family formation and stability, co-parenting, marriage, fatherhood, and violence in relationships. Studies include a focus on the implications of programs and policies (including welfare policies) for child, adult, and family well-being.
Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Research and Evaluation Agenda
OPRE’s work in the area of strengthening families, healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood is guided by the ACF Research and Evaluation Agenda for healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood. In setting the research and evaluation priorities for this agenda, ACF takes into account legislative requirements and Congressional interests; the interest and needs of ACF, HHS, and administration leadership; program office staff and leadership; ACF partners; the populations served; researchers; and others. ACF routinely interacts with these groups through a variety of engagement activities that inform our ongoing research and evaluation planning processes. Learn more by exploring this snapshot of Agenda guidance directing OPRE’s strengthening families, healthy marriage, and fatherhood research and evaluation.
Featured Resources
Projects on this Topic
The goal of the I-HMRF project is to enhance the cultural relevance and responsiveness of HMRF grant programs for Indigenous communities and to develop resources for federal staff and technical assistance providers to promote equitable engagement and service delivery for Indigenous participants,
Behavioral Interventions Scholars
Learn more about the Behavioral Interventions Scholars (BIS) grant program, which supports dissertation research by advanced graduate students who are applying a behavioral science lens to specific research questions relevant to social services programs and policies and other issues facing low-income and vulnerable families in the United States.
OPRE's Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency-Next Generation (BIAS-NG) project continues ACF’s exploration of the application of behavioral science to the programs and target populations of ACF.
Explore OPRE's portfolio of work on the application of behavioral science to challenges faced by programs that provide social services to individuals and families with low incomes by reviewing relevant reports, infographics, newsletters, and more.
The purpose of the Building Usage, Improvement, and Learning with Data in Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood programs (BUILD HMRF) project is to foster high quality data collection, support continuous quality improvement efforts, and develop the capacity for performance monitoring and reporting.
The National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families leads and supports investigation of the needs of Hispanic populations served by ACF and of promising approaches to promote social and economic well-being among low-income Hispanic families. The Center’s research focuses on early care and education; poverty reduction and economic self-sufficiency; and fatherhood, family structure, and family dynamics. In addition to generating new research to inform ACF programs and policies to better serve Hispanic children and families, the Center aims to build research capacity by providing tools, resources, and support for the research community and emerging scholars.
The purpose of the Child Care and Early Education Policy and Research Analysis (CCEEPRA) project is to support policy and program planning and decision-making with rigorous, research-based information. Through CCEEPRA, Child Trends identifies high-priority issues in child care and early education (CCEE), develops research activities to address the issues, and shares results and implications with state, federal, and regional leaders.
Child and Family Data Archive
The Child and Family Data Archive (CFData) is the place to discover, access, and analyze data on young children, their families and communities, and the programs that serve them. OPRE funds numerous data collection efforts through research studies on a wide range of early care and education (ECE) topics within and across child care, Head Start, and home visiting.
OPRE's Coparenting and Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education for Dads (CHaRMED) Study is studying how fatherhood programs can better support coparenting and healthy marriage and relationship education for fathers.
Read about how the Expanding Evidence on Replicable Recovery and Reunification Interventions for Families project is evaluating family recovery and reunification interventions and exploring the possibility of replicating these interventions.
In this annual report, learn about OPRE's family strengthening research portfolio. Explore current research and evaluation projects related to strengthening relationships within families, supporting fatherhood, nurturing children through their families, reducing teen pregnancy, supporting youth in their transition to adulthood, and preventing family violence.
Discover “what works” in the field of healthy marriage relationship education and responsible fatherhood programming and what gaps there are in the knowledge base that necessitate further research.
Learn about OPRE's research and evaluation efforts related to fathers and fatherhood.
The Marriage Strengthening Research and Dissemination Center (MAST Center) aims to support research and evaluation to help inform marriage and relationship education programming by:
- Conducting research on marriage and romantic relationships in the U.S. and on the programs designed to strengthen these relationships to help identify critical research gaps and generate new knowledge to help programs more effectively serve individuals and families; and
- Mentoring and supporting emerging scholars—students and early career professionals—to expand and strengthen the field of researchers studying relationships and families.
The Network of infant/toddler Researchers (NitR) consortium brings together leading applied researchers with policymakers and technical assistance providers responsible for overseeing and supporting early childhood programs serving families during pregnancy and the first three years of life.
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) promotes the economic and social well-being of families, children, individuals, and communities. Several ACF programs interact with justice-involved and incarcerated parents and youth in an effort to promote economic self-sufficiency and social well-being for them and their families. We are implementing rigorous research and evaluation projects to better understand how to serve these parents and youth.
This project aims to deepen understanding of the needs and experiences of Black fathers, families, couples, and youth served by Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) programs and identify research priorities and program strategies to ensure program services can effectively support their needs.
The project will explore how HMRF grantees can work to address the barriers and circumstances created by racial inequity through HMRF programs, including making HMRF programming more equitable for Black fathers, families, couples, and youth, and providing a compassionate, solutions-based space that appropriately reflects on the strengths and resilience of Black families.
Explore Self-Regulation Training Approaches and Resources to Improve Staff Capacity for Implementing Healthy Marriage Programs for Youth (SARHM) for a report, draft measure for observing co-regulation, practitioner brief, and toolkit all focused on ways to build staff co-regulation to support healthy relationships in youth.
In 2013, OPRE commissioned four interrelated reports on self-regulation and toxic stress from a team at the Center for Child and Social Policy at Duke University. That team and other experts have since created multiple practice-oriented resources grounded in the initial reports. Together, these reports and resources comprise the ’Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress Series.’
Discover how the Sexual Risk Avoidance Education National Evaluation (SRAENE) project is addressing congressionally mandated Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) research and evaluation methods in three distinct projects.
The Testing Identified Elements for Success in Fatherhood Programs (Fatherhood TIES) project aims to answer the question: what are the elements of fatherhood programs that lead to better outcomes for the fathers who take part in them?
This project developed a framework to provide marriage educators with a set of concepts to help them better understand their craft and discover unseen possibilities. It is designed to help marriage educators think more thoroughly, systematically...
The National Domestic Violence Hotline Visit disclaimer page (The Hotline) and loveisrespect Visit disclaimer page (LIR; the help line targeted towards young people) are supported by the Division of Family Violence Prevention and Services within ACF’s Family and Youth Services Bureau. They are critical partners in the intervention, prevention, and resource assistance efforts of the network of family violence, domestic violence, and dating violence service providers. They provide:
An Exploration of Options for the Collection of Marriage and Divorce Statistics at the National, State and Local Levels project explored options for the collection of marriage and divorce statistics at the national, state and local levels...
Many human services programs are designed such that individuals must make active decisions and go through a series of steps in order to benefit from them — from deciding which programs to apply for, to completing forms, attending meetings, showing proof of eligibility, and arranging travel and child care...
The Building Bridges and Bonds (B3) study identified and tested new, interactive, skill-building approaches that address two of the three required Responsible Fatherhood grant program areas, parenting and economic stability, within the context of six existing fatherhood programs.
Building Strong Families
The Building Strong Families (BSF) study, led by Mathematica, is a multi-site impact and implementation evaluation of healthy marriage and relationship education and support services offered to unwed parents at or near the birth of their child...
This project involved the identification and case study of selected programs working with new, unwed parents to provide those interested with the knowledge and skills necessary to enter into and sustain healthy relationships and marriages...
Ex-Prisoner Reentry Strategies Study
The Ex-Prisoner Reentry Strategies Study (or “Father Reentry Study”) was an implementation study of six Responsible Fatherhood programs initially funded in 2011 under the Responsible Fatherhood grant program. The grantees administered their programs to incarcerated, soon-to-be released, and recently released fathers both in correctional institutions and in the community...
This project explored how low-income couples make decisions. Specifically, the project explored, through observational methods, the mechanisms and factors which influence the couple as a unit (as well as the individual partners in low-income couples)...
Family Strengthening Scholars
To learn more about how OPRE is supporting graduate student dissertation research related to Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood.
Explore data and lessons learned through the FaMLE Cross-Site Project's work with the third cohort of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grantees.
Fathers and Continuous Learning (FCL)
The Fathers and Continuous Learning project is testing the use of a continuous learning methodology, the Breakthrough Series Collaborative, to increase father and paternal relative engagement in the child welfare system.
Hurricane Katrina was perhaps the largest single natural disaster in America’s history. Millions of people were on the hurricane’s path. About half a million people in New Orleans were displaced by floods caused by Hurricane Katrina...
The purpose of the Healthy Marriage/Relationship Education: Models and Measures project, awarded to Child Trends, is to bring together experts in the field to develop recommendations for “next-generation” marriage/relationship education...
This exploratory study synthesized research relevant to decision-making and behavior about family formation, marriage, employment and earnings and family time use with a focus on low-income populations and included a conceptual framework for further...
This project provided a comprehensive process and output evaluation of selected ACF Healthy Marriage grantees that serve Hispanic families, addressing a key programmatic question of the Hispanic Healthy Marriage Initiative (HHMI): how are healthy...
Hispanic Research Work Group
ACF’s Hispanic Research Work Group brings together experts in a wide range of content areas relevant to ACF’s mission to assist ACF/OPRE in identifying research priorities concerning low-income, Hispanic families.
The Home Visiting: Approaches to Father Engagement and Fathers' Experiences Study is a qualitative project that will collect information about innovative approaches used by existing home visiting programs to actively...
Explore findings on families experiencing homelessness that cover a range of domains: behavioral health, well-being, self-sufficiency, family separations, foster care, employment, family transitions, TANF receipt, SNAP receipt, and more.
In this project, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is exploring the application of Human-centered Design (HCD) across its service delivery programs at the federal, state, and local levels. To date, little is known regarding what HCD looks like in the context of human services, the requirements for implementation across a range of programs; the measurable outcomes and effectiveness of HCD; the evaluability of HCD; and the sustainability of HCD in practice.
Explore this descriptive study focused on rural contexts to understand the unique opportunities and challenges for administering human services in those communities.
This exploratory study synthesized research relevant to decision-making and behavior about family formation, marriage, employment and earnings and family time use with a focus on low-income populations and included a conceptual framework for further...
This project examined a range of literature about the marriage and family formation decisions of low-income couples, including unmarried parents and those receiving public assistance, in order to document the relevant research questions that have been...
Explore OPRE's Services Assessment Framework based on Theory (SAF-T) project for reports and briefs on the development of a theoretical framework and an approach for ongoing evaluation and performance measurement for The Hotline and loveisrespect.
The NLSY97 — Potential Opportunities for Marriage and Family Research project was designed to bring together experts with extensive experience with the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data and experts on marriage and the family to identify...
To learn about the implementation and effects of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) programs, ACF awarded a contract in 2011 to Mathematica Policy Research to conduct the Parents and Children Together (PACT) evaluation. The evaluation had multiple components: separate impact and process studies for responsible fatherhood and healthy marriage programs and five sub-studies.
Explore the PREP Multi-Component Evaluation for information on how PREP grantees planned and implementation their programs, plus information on programs' infrastructure, scope, participants served, participant behaviors at program entry and perceived effects at program exit.
Learn more about Promising Youth Programs, a contract with two primary goals: 1) to provide local evaluation support to Tribal PREP and PREIS grantees; and 2) to develop curricula for underserved youth.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a widespread problem in the United States and among the vulnerable populations served by Administration for Children and Families programs. However, little is known about IPV experienced and perpetrated by fathers served by the Office of Family Assistance’s Responsible Fatherhood (RF) grantees or about how RF programs address IPV in practice.
The purpose of this task order, awarded to Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., was to conduct a systematic evidence review by identifying and cataloging studies of programs serving low-income fathers and those serving couples and rating the quality...
This project investigated how existing work on racial and ethnic disparities could inform more accurate identification and interpretation of ethnic and racial differences in programs administered by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). Through this work, this project...
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant problem in the United States, with 23% of women and 14% of men experiencing severe physical violence by an intimate partner in his or her lifetime, based on 2010-2012 data (Smith et al., 2017 Visit disclaimer page ). Given the goal of healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs (which are administered by the Office of Family Assistance at the Administration for Children and Families) to strengthen and improve the quality of marriages and relationships, addressing IPV for healthy relationship program participants is of critical concern.
OPRE awarded a contract to the Urban Institute (subcontractors are Public Strategies and the Williams Institute) to review the current state of the Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) practice field with regard to services involving same-sex couples and lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals — whether adult or youth...
OPRE awarded four cooperative agreements to fund research to conduct secondary data analysis of archived ACF data, specifically the Building Strong Families (BSF) and Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM).
Prior research suggests that there is promising evidence that couples participating in marriage and relationship education programs can learn specific skills to improve their relationships and reduce patterns of negative interaction in order to...
Explore OPRE's projects for reports and more information on self-sufficiency, welfare and employment.
The Strengthening Families with Children Born Out-of-Wedlock project was jointly funded by ACF’s Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation and Office of Child Support Enforcement. Researchers conducting this study utilized research, information...
Explore evaluation findings from a large multi-site random assignment impact and process evaluation of HMRE programs serving adults and youth.
OPRE's SIMR project uses rapid cycle learning to address implementation challenges for healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs, and provides evaluation training and technical assistance to HMRE grantees.
Learn how the SIRF project is using rapid cycle evaluation to strengthen Responsible Fatherhood programs.
The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) is undertaking a descriptive study to document the approaches and strategies utilized by tribal organizations awarded cooperative agreements under the Coordination of Tribal TANF and Child Welfare...
Explore OPRE's projects for reports and more information on self-sufficiency, welfare and employment.
The Supporting Healthy Marriage in Step-Families project: (1) summarized and synthesized the existing literature concerning the characteristics of stepfamilies, (2) catalogued and documented existing marriage support and education programs focused...
Supporting Healthy Marriages
The Supporting Healthy Marriage study, led by MDRC, is an impact and implementation evaluation of healthy marriage education and related services for lower-income married couples with children provided by eight programs across the country....
Effect sizes are increasingly applied to describe the magnitude of findings about program effectiveness across a range of policy contexts. Though more researchers are recognizing the importance of including effect sizes in manuscripts, at times these...
The Community Healthy Marriage Initiatives (CHMI) Evaluation, led by RTI, includes: (1) implementation evaluations of family strengthening demonstrations authorized by the Office of Child Support Enforcement and (2) an implementation...
The Fatherhood Research and Practice Network (FRPN) was a cooperative agreement awarded to Temple University with a subcontract to the Center for Policy Research in Denver, CO. The FRPN pursued three main goals...
Find out more about the Tribal Evaluation Health Profession Opportunity across our briefs, and snapshots on Tribal grantees implementation of career pathways into health care fields.
This brief summarizes the impact findings from three recent federal evaluations of programs serving disadvantaged noncustodial parents: the Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration (ETJD), the Parents and Children Together Demonstration (PACT), and the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED). It finds positive results on employment and earnings and parenting outcomes, but no impact on the amount of child support paid. It discusses possible explanations for this null effect and suggests that future research will want to further examine this issue.
The purpose of the Youth Education and Relationship Services (YEARS) Project, awarded to Child Trends, was to better understand the services that federally-funded Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) programs are providing to youth. The project described the organizations implementing HMRE programs...