OBJECTIVE: To examine the impact of the New Families (NF) home visiting program on first-time parents' parental self-efficacy (PSE) assessed at six weeks and three months postnatally and to explore associations between PSE and the selected possible predictors "depressive symptoms" and "perception of sleep". DESIGN: A prospective nonrandomized controlled trial. SAMPLE: The intervention group (N = 142 mothers/121 fathers at baseline) received NF and standard care (traditional child health program). The control group (N = 86 mothers/76 fathers) received standard care. MEASURES: PSE was measured by the Perceived maternal parental self-efficacy tool (PMP S-E). RESULTS: In a socioeconomic low-risk sample, we found a statistically significant positive impact of NF on fathers' PSE at six weeks. No statistically significant impact was detected among fathers at three months or at any time point among mothers. Depressive symptoms and perception of insufficient sleep were associated with lower PSE in mothers. CONCLUSION: NF shows potential for reaching out to fathers and should be further investigated because there is a need for interventions supporting fathers postnatally. Despite the lack of impact on mothers' PSE, further investigation of how to reach mothers with depressive symptoms and sleep issues would be of interest. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04162626).
Sæther et al. (Sat,) studied this question.