Thinking 3 ratherthan 2 + 1: how a coparenting framework can transform infant mental health efforts with unmarried African American parents

Abstract

More than half of poor African American infants are born into "fragile fam ilies" and nearly half grow up in single-mother families with little or no father involvement. However, most prenatal interventions fail to help unmarried mothers talk and plan together with their baby's father, especially when fathers are nonresidential. This article details one of the nation's first interventions explicitly designed to support coparenting and triangular (m other-fatherinfant) relationships in African American families where the parents are unmarried, be they coupled or uncoupled. The Figuring It Out for the Child (FIOC) project in St. Petersburg, FL, successfully partnered with local comm unity leaders in designing, implementing, and evaluating a novel dyadic, prenatal intervention enrolling both coresidential and noncoresidential African American parents. The authors provide an overview of the state of the field when the project began, explain the significance of the project's community connectedness, summarize details of outreach efforts, and highlight noteworthy findings relevant to this issue.