Involvement of fathers in therapy: A survey of clinicians.

Abstract

Clinicians providing treatment for children and families often question which family members to include in therapy. Historically, mothers were included in child-oriented therapy to a greater degree than were fathers. To determine actual rates of including fathers in therapy, 219 clinicians with specialization in clinical child psychology and family therapy were surveyed. In addition, personal and professional characteristics of clinicians were examined to establish the association between these characteristics and inclusion of fathers in treatment. Ways to help clinicians include fathers in child-oriented therapy are discussed in light of the findings. When referring children for treatment, parents or other family members frequently ask clinicians whom should be present at the first appointment. It is typically in the first contact with the clinician or the office staff that parents are educated as to how the treatment will involve them in their child’s therapeutic services. Traditionally, parents’ inclusion in treatment has been a theoretical matter—that is, depending on the type of treatment the therapist conducts. Most cognitive– behavioral therapies focus solely on the child (Hibbs & Jensen, 1996; LeCroy, 1994), including parents in these sessions only in a psychoeducational manner to teach the parents what the children have been taught. Conversely, most family therapies focus on all family members and include parents in nearly all of the therapy sessions (Becvar & Becvar, 1993; Kaslow, Kaslow, & Farber, 1999). In fact, some family therapists do not include the children themselves in treatment depending on the focus of the problem. In a survey of family therapists, Johnson and Thomas (1999) found that family therapists were less likely to include children in therapy sessions when the children’s problem was externalizing in nature, perhaps because children with these types of problems are considered challenging and disruptive in family sessions. Their findings also indicated that children were less likely to be included in sessions when the identified problem focused on one of the parent’s issues. The issue of involving parents in child-oriented therapy, other than behavioral parent training or family therapy, has largely been ignored (Kaslow & Thompson, 1998; Mash, 1998), often leaving the clinician with little guidance from an empirical viewpoint as to whom to include in treatment. Parental issues, such as parental psychopathology, living cir